Day Two with the ODROID-W

First piece of advice: Never solder without the requisite amount of caffeine in your system.

I haven't powered it up just yet, one of the solder points got scorched, and got crap all over it, even when I hit it with circuit board cleaner... so there in lies my first complaint - Hardkernel, can we make these solder pads just a little bigger? Doesn't have to be much, mind, just a fraction bigger? I'm sorry, I'm not a robot, and usually, with my glasses on and everything, I can solder, but not these.

Form factor is good. Quite good actually. At a third of the size of my RaspberryPi for the main board, with a USB socket and 26 pin header its ten grams, I can think of small places for this to exist. On board LiPo charger and power management IC means it can run off the smell of an oily rag.

With the carrier board, size shoots up to near RaspberryPi, but in the deal, you get four USB ports, plus an SPI 2.2 inch LCD if you so elect, which is capable of displaying the GUI. The LCD is not of the touch variety, however, it would make a great read out for a project. This is the exact reason I got it for - its small, its got pretty much everything built in, and it can be "deeply embedded" in a box and forgotten about, while depended upon to do its job.

As mentioned, the full size 26 pin header is preserved, so is the MIPI-CSI camera interface. The MIPI-DSI display interface is gone, in the consideration of saving space. Storage is microSD or Hardkernel eMMC module. Don't think you'll get a speed boost out of the eMMC, the Broadcom BCM2835 controller is notorious at many things, being slow on its interfaces is one such thing. External display is via micro-HDMi.

We ordered this less than two weeks ago, and while I have two more weeks to run on this contract, I didn't think I would be seeing the hardware before delivery date. Hats off and many thanks to Hardkernel! Postage for the two ORDOID-W boards, the carrier board with LCD and the connector pack to Australia was reasonable also, being $25.

I will be building one for myself for demo purposes at the conclusion of this contract, and I'll be equipping mine with NFC as well as a 1D barcode scanner for varying input schemes. The database scheme will be preserved, but I'll populate the database with dummy data - SQLite serves for most basic database needs, although my admin software can administrate the heavier weight MySQL upon client preference.

At some point, if there is need or want for this project to be demoed at shows, such as the Newcastle Show, or the next Sydney Maker Faire, I can do so with ease. It'd be nice to have a complete project, not just a bunch of boards, or a baulky computer misbehaving (because its bloody Windows...!). Next Maker Faire, my Mum is thinking of running her own stall, and I've been invited along.

There has been some talk about a major manufacturer here going from "paper and pen" to a database system for one of their major products, while preserving interoperation with the rest of the industry, which is slowly being forced into the 21st Century (through no real want of their own). For their control systems, they are using XML and third generation cellular technologies on a nationwide VPN. It would be nice if this manufacturers database could spit out compatible XML to the control network, and not be some shitful Windows half arsed solution, which I can see some fly by the night merchant promising the world about. The State Government has already made a decision in the wake of two major Royal Commissions to invest in a 20 year old technology, citing the safety features, yet expecting 9.6k to carry "multiple streams of HD video..." Uh huh. Ok. Sure. Might be able to do that with specially managed 4G, but certainly not 9.6k.

Of course, I was told, China is probably going to develop the next interoperable standard for this industry, mostly because the Government runs this industry in China, not a bunch of squabbling kids in the HR department of some two bit company citing some legalise from their SOPs to add on some feature that no one else cares about when they clearly have no clue about reality, only the state of their paperwork.

Its certainly food for thought.

New Toys

ODORID-W, XMOS StartKit, and ODROID-W in the LCD carrier board. Got all of this yesterday.

Some goings on...

Just some shots around the command centre... enjoy!

Been a couple of days...

As always, please ignore the mess of cables.

In the first photo, my orange SmartRap printer, about 90% complete. The thermistor was short circuiting, and the endstops were wired wrong, but apart from that, it is fully operational. I've tested it for motor response, and all tests out. The 100W power supply also powers the attendant RaspberryPi, which hosts the 3D printer queue, currently using OctoPrint, and waiting for the next development release of Bumblebee.

The second photo shows you the result of the arm I had gotten for my Surface Pro, just with the iPad stuffed in it. The iPad is displaying Emerald Time, an app I'd heard about on the time-nuts mailing list. It takes the time from four NTP servers, and gives you an offset compared to internal time of the device. An interesting thing for me, for sure!

The desk is a little cleaner, I got sick of the mess last night, and tried to route as many cables through the hole in the desk at the back. I haven't been totally successful in eliminating all cables from my workspace just yet.

My future plans for Bumblebee is to get a BananaPi, and place it into a FairyWren motherboard, which then goes into a rackmount Mini-ITX case, with a NinjaBlocks Pi Crust stuffed in there too. It'll run a local, backup print queue using OctoPrint, but mostly take the print jobs from my own BotQueue server when I set that up. The Bumblebee host will be able to control the printers operation to the largest degree, using some magic I have on the drawing board.

In some other news, I have been invited to Maker Faire Sydney to show off my 3D scanning rig. That'll be the weekend after I get the rig, and now that Sculptris is on Mac OS X, it makes my life so much more simpler...

Halt, and catch fire, you bastard...!

I come home with an obscene amount of loot over the past two days, some of it is in the gratuitous photograph above. In the picture:

* An Asus dual core Atom Fonepad with a smashed screen, but everything else working

* A FitPC3

* A BeagleBoard Black (BBB) in case

* A RaspberryPi Model B, MkII (RPi) in case

* Lots of circuit boards for me to solder up

* A remote for 443MHz WattsClever power points

* A 915MHz Z-Wave USB stick

Please ignore the cable clutter. When you come to know me, you come to understand, as much as I like cables, and know what each one does, cables are the bane of my existence. It has become so much of a nightmare, I have frustrated partners into arguments - "Why the Hell are you playing with all of those damn cables?! Do you even know what each one does?!" Sadly, I do. So don't ever ask stupid questions, or you will get an intelligent answer.

Peeking out in the top left corner is my Parallella. Oddly, the HDMi display has stopped coming on, but SSH, and VNC after activating the server, work fine. Oh well, that display is meant for my NUC anyway, the whole point of having access to the Parallella was to have VNC on it.

The FitPC may have a new home. We'll see...

Enough obscene amounts of computing hardware for now... enjoy!

Signs of life, memory maps, and a headache

"Signs of life" is a song by Pink Floyd, the opening track on their 1987 album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason." It is quite an unusual track, and the different sounds and samples all mean something individual to me. The first picture is also "Signs of life" - this time from inside the silver chip on my Parallella board - I compiled the Hello, world! example.

Now, to those already doing cool things with the Epiphany, yeah, ok, thats no mean feat. And sure, it isn't. Except I am a Doubting Thomas, and I like to see it before I accept it as good to go. Its all good to have this fancy board on my desk, and it looks cool and all that, sure, and people are building supercomputer clusters with it, great, but does it do anything?!

And yes, it does.

The astute will note it is via VNC connection on my MacBook - this is deliberate, as I don't possess a USB hub with a power supply at the moment - got two USB hubs, no power supplies. And the last thing I want is a USB burnout on my shiny new board! Especially when I just got the wretched thing working!

Now all I have to do is make some time to evaluate exactly where I'm going to go next with this project, and jot it down in mind map format. I may make some notes tonight after dinner.

The second picture is also interesting - a rudimentary memory map arrangement for a single Epiphany core! Of course this will be integrated into my mind map.

Now if only I could get rid of this rotten headache...

Nerd care package

Straight from the bowels of Jason HQ:

That is a Z-Wave USB controller on top there under the tape... power management is important to me.