SACK, robotics course, API and more

Ron K. Jeffries rjeffries at gmail.com
Wed Aug 4 12:33:08 EDT 2010


Erwin José Lopez Pulgarin:

LUA is a ~much~ lighter weight alternative to using
Python as your scripting language for the robot
project.
---
Ron K. Jeffries









On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 00:29, David Reyes Samblas Martinez
<david at tuxbrain.com> wrote:
> 2010/8/4 Erwin José Lopez Pulgarin <erwinkendo at gmail.com>:
>> Greetings
>>
>> My name is Erwin López and I am an Mechatronics engineer student in the
>> Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
> Welcome Erwin :)
>>
>> I have been using the Ben Nanonote for about a year (we bought it with the
>> help of Proffesor Camargo, the first ones to deliver) and it has been great.
>> After the end of classes, I began working with the new image of openwrt and
>> I must congratulate you, you have done a long way since the beginning of the
>> distribution for the Ben Nanonote, and also for the Debian porters, whose
>> job has being great -the new Jlime distribution cannot be left behind, it is
>> very flexible and a very good idea and complement for the BNN distributions
>> family-
> I add myself to the congratulations giving, thank you all guys :)
>>
>> Now, with the help of professor Camargo, we -the students group CEIMTUN,
>> which I am the General Coordinator- are working with the SACK platform to
>> give an introductory course of embebed systems using the SACK platform[1].
> Awesome!
>> The purpose of this is to attract participants to the V Concurso Nacional de
>> Robótica Móvil UNROBOT 2010 [2] and to introduce this development platform
>> to a broader audience. The final project in the course will be the
>> development of a mobile robotic platform guided by GPS, that must move to a
>> set of coordinates in order (similar to the GPS category for this years
>> robotics contest).
> Then surelly this page will be interesting for the project
> http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/GPS
>>
>> This brings some challenges, like a simple case to protect the SACK, the
>> mobile platform (batteries, motors, H bridge) and the development of an
>> programming API for the basic functions of the SACK (for this we are studing
>> some posibilities using python for scripting and function calling and some
>> grafical interface, like turtle art[3] and other graphical framework [4] [5]
>> (like a list published by Professor Camargo some time ago).
> I'm a big fan of python and I hope it can fulfil your needs on
> robotics but, remember that we have the 32Mb constrains (yes the final
> board and even the pre-production batch to Colombia will have 32Mb) I
> can suggest as alternative the Arduino approach to have a C/C++
> libraries than easy the programming and tools to compile/linking (no
> need for an full IDE a script will fit) as alternative if python is
> too much.
>>
>> Soon I will be creating a page in the wiki to publish all the development in
>> this subjects. [7]
> Great :) that the Qi way :P
>>
>> I share this with the community and wait for any comment on this. Colombia
>> is full with talented people and we intend to show it.
> No doubt about it :) we have a board to refute anyone who dare to deny it :)
>>
>> Maybe some contribution for the community would be some experience I had
>> installing the toolchain for the Ben in my Linux Distribution (I use
>> Archlinux [8] in x86-64 architecture). I added some simbolik links, in
>> addition to the steps made in the wiki. -Any error when installing the
>> toolchain is because missing links-.
>>
>> This are the steps i followed
>>
>> $ sudo git clone git://projects.qi-hardware.com/xburst-tools.git
>> $ cd /PATH/TO/xburst-tools/usbboot
>> $ ./autogen.sh
>> $ sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
>> $ sudo make clean
>> $ sudo ln -s
>> /PATH/TO/openwrt-xburst/staging_dir/toolchain-mipsel_gcc-4.3.3+cs_uClibc-0.9.30.1/usr/bin/mipsel-openwrt-linux-gcc
>> /usr/bin
>> $ sudo ln -s
>> /PATH/TO/openwrt-xburst/staging_dir/toolchain-mipsel_gcc-4.3.3+cs_uClibc-0.9.30.1/usr/bin/mipsel-openwrt-linux-ld
>> /usr/bin
>> $ sudo ln -s
>> /PATH/TOopenwrt-xburst/staging_dir/toolchain-mipsel_gcc-4.3.3+cs_uClibc-0.9.30.1/usr/bin/mipsel-openwrt-linux-objcopy
>> /usr/bin
>> $ sudo ln -s
>> /PATH/TO/openwrt-xburst/staging_dir/toolchain-mipsel_gcc-4.3.3+cs_uClibc-0.9.30.1/usr/bin/mipsel-openwrt-linux-objdumbp
>> /usr/bin
>> $ make
>> $ sudo make install
>
> This is a desperate beg to you and to all developers that use that
> "toolchain" technique to compile.... Please use OpenWRT Makefiles
> instead of this, it's not so hard really , there are various reason
> for that, The main one is that it can be integrated to the official
> distro and even Openwrt upstream following one of the Qi principles,
> and users can then just opkg install to add to his Nano or SAKC,
> without need to distribute the binary alone or to have to compile it
> by themselves having to reproduce the "toolchain" technique.
> In Qi project you have tools to manage the project in cooperative way
> (git, commit log to mail and irc,...) and even if you already have
> your own cvs, you can just commit the OpenWrt Makefile to qi-package
> to be build and integrated in the repositories <moaning mode off>
>>
>> Also, to change the boot logo in openwrt, I did it the long way and changed
>> the kernel patch that openwrt had, basically changing this file, using GIMP
>> to change the format of an image to ppm, replacing the text in the patch
>> with the one in the ppm (basically numbers), changing the patch limits of
>> file and compiling, and voila! If this is helpful for anyone I could post it
>> in the wiki in a more detailed manner.
> Sure, please do it.
>>
>> Also, for the robotics contest [1]  we would like to use, at least for the
>> embebed course, the QI logo in our publicity, is there any problem? Also, we
>> can offer you some kind of space for a conference, seminar, workshop, or
>> even printed info about QI hardware and their products and projects, to help
>> the project in some way, for making Qi Hardware some kind of sponsor. Any
>> help on this and other matter will be very well received  :)
>
> Ok regarding promotion of SAKC,  I think is time to make public some
> of what we have discussed interchanging  mails with people involved in
> bring the board to the real world about marketing
> 1) Tuxbrain will be the marketing and global reseller of the board
>
> 2) Inspired in this Bruce Lee words[1] we decide to rename it to
> 水Shui(Water) main points for that decision are:
>    a) SAKC sounds to too much to "suck" in english and also
> something kind of vulgar in In cantonese
>    b) Shui is more in harmony with other qi products family , like
> Ben, Ya , Xué.....
>    c) As the "Swiss army" concept Water also reflects the flexibility
> of having an FPGA in the board
>   other another non main reason that make the Shui name appealing for me
>    -We discover than Tuxbrain logo is in fact a water molecule :P
>
> 3)We will market it as "Shui board" by "Tuxbrain " part of the
> "Qi-hardware community" and I also suggest to Sharism,Emqbit to do the
> same for future products and also if they had to re-edit Ben boxes ,
> why?
>    a) Make people realize than Qi is not a company , there is still
> confusion out of this community about this
>    b) Make more appealing to other companies to join us making
> realize that they will not loose identity being part of the community
>    c) and of course raise Tuxbrain brand reconnaissance
>    This point in new in the discussion and surely it worth to open a
> thread by it self
>
> 4) We are defining  the look and feel of the marketing  material
> (logos, colors, box etc...), so beg you to be cautious to spread too
> much SAKC as SAKC until this is totally defined we don't want to be
> known as "the board that previously is called SACK" :P, of course in
> the "History" of the board SAKC will be mentioned as SAKC :)
>
> Regarding the embedded courses, Great!!! I also want to do some
> Workshops of Shui (let's start to use it :P) here :) so surely we will
> find ways to collaborate, Well don't expect much financing , I don't
> want to create false expectations. but as always sure we will find out
> ways  to help each other.
>
> Again Welcome to the Copyleft Hardware Home Erwin
>
>>
>> I will be waiting for comments.
> Me too :)
> [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ijCSu87I9k
> --
> David Reyes Samblas Martinez
> http://www.tuxbrain.com
> Open ultraportable & embedded solutions
> Ben NanoNote, Arduino, Openmoko
> Hey, watch out!!! There's a linux in your pocket!!!
>
>> Erwin José López Pulgarín
>> Representante Estudiantil Principal
>> Coordinador General Grupo CEIMTUN
>> Ingeniería Mecatrónica
>> Universidad Nacional de Colombia
>>
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