Category Archives: Copyleft

Searduino needs a gui

Posted on by sandklef

Do you want to write a gui front-end to Searduino?

 

About Searduino:

Searduino is made to ease and speed up development for the Arduino boards. In short, with Searduino you get

  • C/C++ interface – use C/C++ to program your Arduino boards
  • Makefiles – easy to use Makefiles for inclusion in your project
  • Stand alone program – build your Arduino code to run on your local computer instead
  • Simulator – run your Arduino code in a simulator to test it
  • Simulation API – write your own test cases in C/C++
  • Python simulation API – write your tests in Python
  • Arduino example (to C/C++) translation

About the gui

In a way searduino has a gui – We have been developing a gui written Python (pygtk) to make sure we write the underlying library in a way that makes it easy to develop a real gui. So there is a gui but no proper one. Anyhow, here’s a snapshot of the (non proper) Python gui:

Searduino's simulator GUI - written in PyGtk

 

We believe that the gui needs to be written in C/C++ and using a thread safe graphical toolkit. The speed which which the callbacks call the gui require as short path as possible from the source to the handler and as already mentioned that the toolkit is thread safe (the Arduin ocode is executed in a thread). There is however a threshold for max updates per second which can be used but we still believe that C/C++ is the best way – but don’t hesitate to contact us (see email address below) if you believe differently.

Want to join?

If you like creating guis and want to help out on Searduino – send an email to hesa -at- sandklef.com

Btw: the python gui was also used to test Searduino’s Python extension

 

This post was originally posted at: http://itupw185.itu.chalmers.se/searduino/

FSCONS 2010 is over, long live FSCONS 2011

Posted on by sandklef

Wow, yet another FSCONS is over. Feels a bit strange but also totally awesome, being one of the founders and organisers of the conference, to see this event having grown up to be what it is today.

In this post I will focus on my personal thoughts, as an organiser and not as a guest. So, here comes some (pseudo) random notes from me.

Previous years the feeling after the conference have been a mix of “never again” and “let’s do it again” mixed with being very tired. Last year I noticed a slight change right after the conference.  I was still tired and still wanted to go for yet another FSCONS but I didn’t have the mixed in feeling of “never again”. For this year all I think about right now, after the conference, is that it was awesome (but hey, I leave reviewing and reporting the conference to other… I may be biased 😉 ) and that I want to do it again. But I am not tired. Most of this boils don to the experience we now have in organising events like this, which ends up in better management. This better management made us relax more during the conference (I even attended some talks!). I feel confident and am looking forward to next year.

Ok, I have already said that I leave to others to report and review the conference it self and especially the content/topics presented. But I would like to say that I think the mix and quality is something we should try keep for next year’s FSCONS.

A question that have been discussed, mainly with Jonas Öberg and Rikard Fröberg, is on how to let/make/stimulate FSCONS grow and how to measure a success. For me growing in number of guests is not that very interesting. Rather I would like to follow up the impact or direct or in-direct output FSCONS may have had. So, for me, growing would mean increasing the number of impacts FSCONS have, be them measurable by some method or not. Does this sound like a fluffy goal? Well, I guess it does sound fluffy…. but to be honest, I don’t care. Let’s see what the others think during the coming FSCONS 2011preparation meeting (tomorrow).

Anyhow, I would like to thank all speakers, all staff, sponsors, both organisers etc for helping out with the conference. But more important I would like to “thank” all FSCONS visitors for really making up the event. Without guests there would not be a very interesting conference. Hey, am I neglecting the staff and the speakers? Are they not important? On the contrary, they are. But they are also visitors and is thus included. This is in my opinion one of the coolest impressions I get from FSCONS. Everyone at FSCONS is a visitor. No more, no less.

One major concern though:

Women…. there are too few women at FSCONS. Are we sending the wrong message on our website? Is the content typically “male-ish“? Could a topic be more directed to women or men? We are, however, trying to address this for the coming year.

To conclude this post:

Do you want to help us making FSCONS 2011?

Send an email to info [at] fscons.org

Enough of my random crappy thoughts….  see you next year!!!

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BTW, what do organisers do during a conference?

Well, this pictures gives you a clue:

Rikard and Jonas in action at a planning meeting during FSCONS

Speaking about free software in Huskvarna (Sweden), but missed Stockholm

Posted on by sandklef

Since we’ve been experiencing the most snow for many many years in Sweden the trains and the tubes don’t seem to be on schedule. And add to that the presentation in Huskvarna (see below) tomorrow it didn’t take much to convince my self and the others (Johan Thelin, Jonas Öberg and Jeremiah Foster) to bail out of the foss-sthlm meeting. Would have been great to see Simon Josefson (he couldn’t come to FOSDEM) and finally buy him the dinner I still owe him.  ….. which reminds me of that ams all of a sudden claims he owes me a dinner. Strange days indeed 😉

Tomorrow I’ll be speaking in Huskvarna about free software. It’s a bit of a tailor made presentation which has been very fun to elaborate on during the last weeks. I’ve made some new friends through this presentation so even before it feels great. Here’s the invitation.

I will speak a bit about the history of free software, GNU, copyright/copyleft, licenses, project management and motivation in the community and bridge to the next speaker (Jeremiah (see above)) by talking a bit about Moblin and Maemo … and yes, Meego.