[sugar] peripherals digest Vol 1

[Arjun Sarwal]

Hi all,

This is a (low frequency) compiled update of all peripherals related
developments of the community.

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In this issue -
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* [Message1] Meet  Nicholas who is focusing on designing interfaces to read
sensor values easily
* [Message2] Meet Elijah , a doctoral student in information science at
Indiana,  who is looking for people to collaborate on providing
hardware/arduino programming activity support on the XO
* [Message3] Meet Ian - chemistry hobbyist, electricity enthusiast,
Wikipedian, sustainability advocate, and student
* [Message4] Joel Stanley quickly needs to build some peripherals
* [Message5] Mary Lou's microscope
* [Message6] Peripherals wiki page
* [Message7] (Regular feature) Question for discussion

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Message 1 -
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Hi,
 I am currently working on the software framework to allow
easy analysis of data. Specifically, I am making a system for
representing both functions and buffer based (collected) graphs
on the same canvas and how to make them interact effectively.
I have also built a very primitive GUI. Hopefully I will combine
these by this weekend, so I can get hacking on various sensors.
The goal is then to provide pre-designed setups so that one can
e.g. click on the temperature probe, hit collect, and start getting
data. After that, along with refining the GUI, designing some
useful sensors is in the todo list. Finally, integration with the
camera and mic/speaker (for distance measurement) will be
added. This is a long term schedule -- for the next two weeks,
I would like to get the GUI and functional/buffer based graphs
(including regressions, etc) working. I have never used Gstreamer
before, so that is a hurdle that I am trying to cross (or, better yet,
avoid by using pyalsa...).
       While I would like to devote all my time to this project, that is
simply not possible, so I am working on it as much as I can. This
varies from week to week, but I should have a looser schedule
now than I did until mid/early December. If anybody is interested in
helping me work on this or wants to coordinate functions, they
can feel free to contact me at nicholas.a.sinnott-armstrong at dartmouth.edu.


nick

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Message 2 -
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hi,

i am, hopefully, getting an iodata usb2rgb (usb vga dongle...) cable soon,
and will be devoting some of my OLPC time to that - probably mostly
integration work, so that we can hook olpc to other display hardware
(projectors, etc) when needed.

i'm also interested in working on integrating wiimote control with the XO.
again, a lot of that is integration work :-)  but it makes several
different kinds of sensors trivially available, modulo the availability of
a bluetooth dongle.

i'd love to work with someone on adding processing.org hardware / arduino
programming activity support to xo.  cool stuff, those projects are, and
pushing them together with OLPC is an interesting synergy.


--elijah


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Message 3 -
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Hi all,
My current projects include the various I/O devices for the XO, but my focus
is the TeleHealth Module. I am trying to design a peripheral, application,
and library for the XO to successfully bridge the "last-mile" gap between
the medical community and the children of the third-world. My work on the
activity still remains trivial at this point in time, as I am relatively new
to python. My work on the hardware is outlined in depth on the wiki page,
[[TeleHealth_Module]]. I am still working on obtaining the few remaining
components via samples, and am currently struggling to obtain an
oscilloscope and developer boards for my surface-mount components.

A bit about me: My heavy involvement in OLPC precipitated after I was
severely burned on my left hand by a plasma cutter. I have since learned
much about medical diagnosis technologies and protocols. I am a chemistry
hobbiest, electricity enthusiast, Wikipedian, sustainability advocate, and
student.  There's more to be said, but some of it is on my wikipedia user
page, [[User:ITxT]]
I look forwards to collaboration,

Ian Daniher


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Message 4 -
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(Joel would be presenting OLPC at an important conference soon - on the 20th
of November, Please help him with peripherals ideas and designs) Joel
says...

Hi,
I'm presenting OLPC at a big education conference in two weeks time
(nov 20th) and I'd like to demo some of the different bits that we
currently have.

Would you able to send me the designs that you currently have, so that
I have enough time to put the parts together before the conference?

Also, consider this a my registration of interest for any hardware, or
software, assistance required for any peripherals development.

Cheers,
Joel

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Message 5 -
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Have you checked out the $1 Microscope ?
"The microscope, which is said to have ~ 100? magnification, could be useful
to analyzing water quality, among other things. " - *wiki page *

Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI28-IS9AII
Wiki page  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Microscope

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Message 6 -
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Lots of peripherals ideas and discussions -
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals
The current focus is on "power solutions" . Please contribute to the
discussions  with ideas/design suggestions

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Message 7 -
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[Regular feature]
The question for discussion in this edition of peripherals update is ->

What is it that forms the main inspiration for you to develop a peripheral
around the XO ? Is it...

* to enhance children's learning ?
* to help the community of people where laptops will be deployed, with a
useful device ?
* build a cool device around the XO ? :-)
* Any other ?


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End of peripherals digest vol1
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-Arjun

ps - do we really need a separate mailing list for all this ,  wouldn't we
get more participation if all this was posted on devel and/or sugar
initially ?
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