[Gllug] OSHUG #15 — Wireless (Hacking Commodity Wireless, Practical Wireless, Contiki OS, CWIG) — Thursday 26th January

[Andrew Back]

Hello,

The next Open Source Hardware User Group meeting will be on the 26th
January, and may be of interest to some GLLUGers.

Cheers,

Andrew

--

OSHUG #15 — Wireless (Hacking Commodity Wireless, Practical Wireless,
Contiki OS, CWIG)

On the 26th January 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative
Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG, (51.529049,
-0.116436)

 ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 **

At the fifteenth OSHUG meeting we'll be taking a look at wireless
technologies. We will hear how you can repurpose low cost commodity
equipment, we will be given an introduction to RF basics, we will
learn about the Contiki operating system, and we will be introduced to
Ciseco's new Wireless Internet Gateway.

- Hacking Commodity Wireless

Many people build their hacks from the ground up, but those short of
time sometimes prefer to repurpose cheap off-the-shelf components that
can be made to fit the bill. A good example being a wireless
thermometer for external use, where an off-the-shelf device provides
an inexpensive option complete with the requisite weatherproof
packaging. However, such devices typically use proprietary protocols
and good documentation is rarely available. This talk will look at how
to interface such devices where a degree of reverse-engineering is
frequently required.

Paul Tanner is a consultant, developer and maker in wood, metal,
plastic, electronics and software. His day job is IT-based business
improvement for SMEs. By night he turns energy nut, creating tools to
optimise energy use. Paul graduated in electronics and was responsible
for hardware and software product development and customer services in
several product and service start-ups, switching to consulting in
2000.

- Practical Wireless

Adding wireless connectivity to your latest open hardware project is
not difficult, provided that you take the time to understand some of
the principles of RF communication. In this talk we will learn about
the basics of wireless propagation, and take a look at some of the low
cost modules which now make adding wireless even easier.

Ken Boak joined BBC Research Department after graduating and worked on
digital picture processing of HDTV images, and coding algorithms for
video distribution around studios. Since then, Ken has worked in
laboratory instrumentation, telecommunications, low power wireless and
consumer electronics produced in the Far East. With an interest in
renewables, Ken now develops laboratory instruments to teach
undergraduates the principles of photovoltaic and wind power. Outside
of work, Ken is interested in smart wireless sensors, open source
hardware and low cost solutions for the Internet of Things.

- An Introduction to the Contiki O/S

This talk is aimed to introduce the Contiki OS and some of the
development hardware. We will learn about the process of bootstrapping
the development environment and there will be a hands-on tutorial.

Ilya Dmitrichenko was born in Soviet Latvia in 1985, grew up and
attended a secondary school there, and moved to UK as soon as Latvia
joined the EU. He attended the biggest university in London and was
rather disappointed with the education, but nevertheless carried on
and had fun working on a final year engineering project which served
as an introduction to the topic of this talk. Ilya is interested in
various aspects of hardware and software, spanning from WSN to DSP and
several other random fields.

- CWIG — The Ciseco Wireless Internet Gateway

The CWIG is a new open hardware device that is designed to be the "one
and only" platform you'd need for a wireless gateway. It employs the
same ATmega328 microcontroller that is familiar to Arduino users and
supports Ciseco's TI CC1110-based XRF module, XBee, Bluetooth, RFM12B,
X10/HomeEasy, FRAM, SD, Ethernet and over-the-air programming with
AVRDude. It's sized to be housed in a low cost, compact enclosure and
to be cheap to build using through-hole components. In this talk we
will be given an introduction to the CWIG and also to the XRF wireless
UART and programmable RF module.

Miles Hodkinson's twenty-odd year relationship with IT ended around
six years ago when he decided that it was time to do something
completely different. He had looked around without success for
something to log and control his wind turbine, solar panels and Lister
single cylinder engine, and found that nothing was flexible enough for
the money he wanted to pay (tens of pounds per device), so he decided
he would try and build it himself. After a number of years working on
a human-focused method of networking originally built using XBee
modules and now termed LLAP, his company developed the TI CC1110-based
XRF module.

Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the talks will start
at 18:30 prompt.

 ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 **

-- 
Andrew Back
http://carrierdetect.com
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