Archive for October, 2009

Atelier “Logiciel embarqué sur Milkymist”

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Howto's, Milkymist on October 27, 2009

Description
Ceci n’est pas un workshop FPGA.
Cet atelier présente des techniques de base utilisées pour la plupart des développements logiciels “bas niveau” sur systèmes embarqués, toutes plate-formes confondues (microcontrôleurs, system-on-chips [un system-on-chip n'est rien autre qu'un "gros" microcontrôleur], calculatrices, cadres photo, …). Il présentera ensuite des aspects spécifiques au system-on-chip libre Milkymist tels que la programmation graphique et l’emploi de ses accélérateurs de calcul.

Les points suivants seront abordés:

  • Pré-test d’un programme sur PC
  • Installation et utilisation d’un compilateur croisé
  • Chargement du programme dans la carte de développement
  • Bases de programmation graphique bas niveau
  • Utilisation des accélérateurs graphiques sur Milkymist

Pré-requis
Cet atelier s’adresse aussi bien aux débutants complets en programmation embarquée qu’aux personnes ayant déjà programmé sur plusieurs plate-formes et désirant se familiariser avec l’utilisation des périphériques de Milkymist.

  • Venez avec votre ordinateur portable sous Linux ou *BSD. De préférence Ubuntu ou Debian mais ce n’est pas obligatoire.
  • Connaissances de base sur la ligne de commande de Linux (cd, ls, rm, etc.)
  • Connaissances de base en C. Pour les fans de déambulateurs, je rappelle que le Arduino Programming Language(tm) est du C et que si vous savez faire clignoter une LED en l’utilisant c’est suffisant. Si vous programmez sur PC et que vous savez faire afficher les nombres de 1 à 10 avec une boucle, c’est également suffisant.
  • Si vous avez une carte à microcontrôleur AVR, vous pouvez aussi l’amener (pour pouvoir comparer). Les Arduinos sont tolérées.

Week-end de nerd
Vous êtes également bienvenus à l’atelier FPGA Workshop 4: Behind the Scenes le lendemain. Merci de vous y inscrire également si vous souhaitez participer.

Infos
Date: Samedi 7 novembre 2009, 14:00
Lieu: /tmp/lab
Merci de vous inscrire en éditant la page wiki.

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Looking for multimedia artists

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Milkymist, Misc projects on October 23, 2009

We are looking for multimedia (mostly graphics) artists for a democompo project. You do not need to have an expert level in programming to participate (if your only contribution is good looking bitmap images, that’s already a lot!), even though a little background is advisable if you want to do animated thingies or some rendered effects (we could help you however).

This mini-project consists in developing a compo on the Milkymist open hardware system-on-chip platform that will present Sanobot, the toxic gas sensor and Twitter bot of /tmp/lab, a hackerspace set up close to a chemical factory.

We look forward to presenting it at demoparties (unfortunately it was not ready for Main#4).

What is a Demoparty:

More info on Sanobot:

More info on Milkymist:

Project wiki page (with scenario outline… that you are of course invited
to improve):

So if you think you could design some cool graphics for this project, contact sebastien dot bourdeauducq at lekernel dot net. There is nothing to win, except loads of geek fun, some technical background, and hopefully a demoparty prize ;)

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FPGA Workshop 4: Behind the Scenes (November 8)

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Howto's on October 21, 2009

fpgaeditorDESCRIPTION
In the previous workshops, we have seen that FPGAs can emulate any logic circuit without moving (mechanical) parts.

FPGAs are however not magic nor mystical devices and this workshop will shed light on how they work internally. After theoretical explanations on their functioning, we will program them very close to the “bare silicon” by configuring manually each logic element on the chip, without any Verilog or schematics.

This will give you a better understanding of the challenges involved with writing open source programming tools, reverse engineering existing FPGA designs, injecting backdoors into FPGA bitstreams, and squeezing the most performance out of an FPGA chip.

PREREQUISITES
For the hands-on part:

  • Bring your laptop
  • IMPORTANT: Install Xilinx ISE. The installation takes a long time that we cannot waste during the workshop.
  • Bring a Xilinx FPGA board such as the Avnet Spartan-3A starter kit used in previous workshops.
  • The board must have a Xilinx FPGA. Boards with non-Xilinx chips cannot be used.
  • Your board must have at least 2 pushbuttons and 2 LEDs.
  • Bring any required programming (JTAG) cable and try to make sure that it works (driver installed etc.) before coming.

You can come to the workshop without a board, but obviously you might be unable to perform the manipulations yourself.

PRACTICAL INFO

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Milkymist lecture at 26C3

Posted by lekernel in Milkymist on October 19, 2009

images“Every year, between Christmas and New Years Eve, intergalactic Hacker-society meets up at Chaos Communication Congress.”

This year, the Milkymist project will be presented during the 26C3. The congress will take place in Berlin during December 27th to 30th.

The topics of the lecture will cover the benefits of open source hardware, a presentation of the Milkymist system-on-chip features, practical information for hobbyist FPGA development and some of the challenges involved with designing a high-performance and resource-efficient system-on-chip.

So, I hope to see you in Berlin; Chaos Communication Congresses are definitely events worth going to.

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Debian packages for Milkymist development tools

Posted by lekernel in Milkymist on October 16, 2009

To make your life easier, Debian packages are now available for the LatticeMico32 GCC toolchain used for building Milkymist software and for flterm, the RS232 software upload program.

dselect view

dselect view

Add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://www.milkymist.org/debian/ ./

and install with:

apt-get update
apt-get install gcc-lm32 flterm

Those packages work under Debian Testing and might also be compatible with Ubuntu. Anyone tested?

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Hackers at CERN

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Uncategorized on October 14, 2009

The /tmp/lab is organizing a group visit of CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory close to Geneva.

We have to give a 4-6 month advance notice, which probably brings the visit to February/March 2010. Because I must give an estimate of the attendees, I would be grateful if you subscribe before Monday Oct 19th.

Link: http://www.tmplab.org/wiki/index.php/Hackers_at_CERN

EDIT (Oct 16): It’s sold out!

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AK4 evicted

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Uncategorized on October 12, 2009

I am sorry to inform you that last Wednesday at 6am the cops raided the AK4 squat where the Abbenay hacklab was set up, and about 15 people were arrested and charged.

Welcome to Sweden! Cops evicting you, ordningsvakts bouncing you when you look bad, volunteer policemen picking up drunk girls in the parks, lapplisas working full time to ensure that you pay for parking your car, etc…

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