Archive for category Small projects
Looking for multimedia artists
Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Milkymist, Small 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:
- http://lekernel.net/blog/?p=446 : presentation of the project
- http://lekernel.net/blog/?p=509 : some tech info
- http://lekernel.net/blog/?p=517 : more tech details
- http://lekernel.net/blog/?p=577 : some results
- http://www.twitter.com/sanobot : Twitter feed
More info on Milkymist:
- http://www.milkymist.org : project homepage
- http://www.milkymist.org/doc/paper_overview.pdf : technical overview
- http://www.tmplab.org/wiki/index.php/FPGA_Workshop : workshop on FPGA
System-on-Chips
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 
Sanobot data for the first half of September
Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Small projects on September 19, 2009
The CSV data from Sanobot for the first half of September is now available here: sanobot_half_sept.csv. Sanobot is the toxic gas sensor and Twitter bot of /tmp/lab.
Plot of the CSV
The first column of the CSV gives the Unix time at which the measurement was taken. The other two columns are the ADC output for respectively the TGS2602 and the TGS2600.
For information about how to interpret the data, see here: http://lekernel.net/blog/?p=509 and http://lekernel.net/blog/?p=517.
Using the full CSV data, we can now try to figure out when is the best time to trigger the Twitter alert. For now, it posts a new alert when one value varies by more than 30% compared to the last posted.
NB. The huge peaks are because of people playing with cigarettes near the sensors. Smoking kills.
Demoparty Compo with Milkymist
Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Milkymist, Small projects on August 30, 2009
The demoparty MAIN#4 will take place from October 2 to 4 in Arles (France) with a lot of famous teams from the demoscene. The theme of this demoparty is the lightness of code.
The idea here is to present a compo based on the Milkymist hardware platform within a month. It may be a 2D/3D compo (or 2D only) and must be less than 10min long.
If you have ideas and/or want to be part of this, there is a small wiki page at http://www.tmplab.org/wiki/index.php/DemoParty_Compo_with_MilkyMist. Feel free to subscribe and edit this page (or the discussion tab).
ML401 FPGA boards (on which Milkymist can run) or similar boards are wanted. Required feature set is:
- Virtex-4 FPGA (XC4VLX25 or better)
- 32-bit DDR SDRAM or 64-bit SDR SDRAM (no DDR2/DDR3), 32MB at least
- NOR flash, 1MB at least
- 24bpp VGA DAC
- AC’97 sound
- Optional but nice to have: CompactFlash card reader, with SystemACE controller chip
If you have a suitable board and would like to lend it to the demoparty project, thank you very much. Contact kiniou at gmail or sebastien dot bourdeauducq at lekernel.net.
Gas measurements
Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Small projects on August 28, 2009
Many people are asking me what gases are detected by the sensors. All I can do is quote the Figaro Sensors documentations:
“The TGS 2602 has high sensitivity to low concentrations of odorous gases such as ammonia and H2S generated from waste materials in office and home environments. The sensor also has high sensitivity to low concentrations of VOCs such as toluene emitted from wood finishing and construction products.”
“The TGS 2600 has high sensitivity to low concentrations of gaseous air contaminants such as hydrogen and carbon monoxide which exist in cigarette smoke. The sensor can detect hydrogen at a level of several ppm.”
The data sheets do not say much more. In particular, I do not know if the sensors are sensitive to other types of gases, what the exact list is, and how they react to a mixture of gases.
Toxic Gas Sensors are up and running
Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Small projects on August 26, 2009
The air pollution sensors are now up and running. You can follow them on Twitter.
Sensors quickly installed
Levels are read straight from the LTC2496 ADC, with 65536 being the maximum level, corresponding to a voltage of 1.65V at the output of the sensor. The sensors (TGS2600 and TGS2602 from Figaro) are powered at 3.3V through a 1k resistor. The sensor heaters are also (under-)powered at 3.3V, this seems to work even though it is out of the specs.
A new Twitter post is made every time a value varies by more by 30%, compared to the last posted value.
DOpE port to Milkymist
Posted by lekernel in Milkymist, Small projects on August 22, 2009
DOpE, a high-quality embedded GUI software stack developed by Genode Labs, a start-up company from Dresden, is now beginning to work on the Milkymist SoC platform.
DOpE running on Milkymist
What is currently missing is support for input devices (a PS/2 core is missing). Also, this port crashes when the CPU data cache is enabled, which suggests a hardware problem as people working on the ucLinux port experience a similar issue.
Pollution sensors experiments
Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Small projects on August 9, 2009
First experimental setup
The Figaro gas sensors mounted on a piece of Veroboard. There is still plenty of space left for maybe AOPs and ADCs...
View of the Ardui... sorry, the digital oscilloscope used to plot the first graphs. 1min/div. Looks like it's working as both smell (from the chemical factory) and measured voltage go up during the third minute...
See here for a description of the project.