The Bumble-b

Hi all,

The past week I have been playing around with my new Bumble-b, as I mentioned in my last post. Basically what I did with it is control an LED matrix. After doing that I made it in to a USB Device! Thanks to the simple library LUFA. Now I can use a simple echo > /dev/ttyACM0 command to send a text message to the display. Meaning that I have now /dev/matrix!

In this post I hope to explain how to use the Bumble-b, a  programmable USB chip, including its own built in programmer, for just $20. I would also like to encourage people here in Israel to start playing with this, since its cheap and easy to order way to get started with amateur electronics.

Here is a quick introduction video (followed by a detail post):

What is the Bumble-b?

The bumble-b is a USB programmable AVR chip with a programmer built in to it (called a breakout board). It is an AVR chip, meaning that its based on something that is widely used (the model is at90usb162). Moreover, since it has a USB connector right on it , this makes the creation of USB devices really simple. But not only USB devices alone.

For those who are thinking about getting an arduino, the main advantage I can see to an arduino over the Bumble-b is that it has analog-to-digital converters, which means its more built for connecting sensors, for things like robots. If that is not what you’re looking for, the Bumble-b will serve you well as a starting project, and is cheaper.

For more information, check out dflecher’s website (also for ordering), the bumble-b datasheet and the #bumbleb IRC channel.

Compiling code with gcc-avr (yes! now with 100% gcc)

Although I am linking here to a scripts I wrote, which should help you avoid writing in the shell, I do want to stress, that unlike the PIC project, here the compiler that is used is gcc-avr, which is fully  open  source.  I will get in to the specifics of how to use it in the IDE section.

How to get it in to programming mode

If you get a Bumble-b and plug it in right away, it will identify itself as a serial device on your computer. This is NOT the programmer, this is an initial program dflecher ships the Bumble-b with. The program lets you control the pins by sending them serial calls. Although it really is a useful program, you will want to install your own. To do that you need to set the Bumble-b to DFU mode (Device Firmware Update). This is mentioned in the schematic, but I will go over it here again:

1. Connect pin 21 (HWB) to pin 12 (GND)
2. connect a button between pin 9 (RESET) and pin 12 (GND)

Bumble-b in programmer mode

Now to go in to DFU mode press the REST button you installed. You should see in dmesg output:
usb 3-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 13
usb 3-2: New USB device found, idVendor=03eb, idProduct=2ffa
usb 3-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 3-2: Product: AT90USB162 DFU
usb 3-2: Manufacturer: ATMEL
usb 3-2: SerialNumber: 1.0.5

After getting in to programming mode, you can upload compiled .hex files to it. The programmer that is used is called dfu-programmer. It exists in the Debian repository (Kaplan, no excuses now). The commands to flash a .hex file will be:
dfu-programmer at90usb162 erase
dfu-programmer at90usb162 flash program.hex

But you can just use the scripts I wrote to do this. As explained in the next section.

Setting up an IDE environment in linux

The frustrating part for me was that unlike piklab that I used for the PICs, I could not find an IDE that will support the Bumble-b’s dfu-programmer out of the box. But rest assured! I found how to set one up. Thanks to Ori Iran’s guidelines I manage to set up an lightweight IDE called Geany to work with the bumble-b. Here are the steps:

1. Download my script packages. And extract them where you want to develop.
2. Get Geany with your distro’s repository, and open it.
3. Create a new .c file and save it (you can also open “hello_world.c” in the script package).
4. Open the ‘Build’ menu and select “Set includes and arguments”, You should get the window in the photo.
5. Set the fields as shown in the photo below (“./compile %f”  in compile field, “./program %f” in the build field, and “./run” in the execute field”).



6. You are good to go. Now to program just press ‘compile’, then “build” and ‘execute’ (don’t forget to press the RESET button before pressing ‘build’!).

The Geany IDE

LUFA library – How easy it is to make USB devices

After getting my LED matrix to display messages, I wanted to make use of the USB port, and get the matrix to work as a USB device, this was much simpler than I expected. Once I had the code to control the matrix, it was simply a matter of copying it and using LUFA.

LUFA (Lightweight USB Framework for AVRs) is a library that will let you get the Bumble-b to work as a USB device. It can be used as  a mouse, a keyboard, a joystick, a storage device and anything really (there is a full list is on the site).

To get the LED matrix to work off USB, all I had to do is copy the Demo that located in Demos/Device/ClassDriver/CDC. I also used code modified by dflecher (he built a USB missile launcher with it). Note that you will change the following lines in the makefiles of the LUFA Demo in order to use it with the bumble-b:

1. BOARD=BUMBLEB
2. MCU=at90usb162
3. F_CPU = 16000000

There is more info about what pins do (like joysticks buttons) in the LUFA readme on the bumble-b.

You can also download my matrix code and have a look.

More info?

• I will mention again that there is an IRC chat room for the #bumbleb on freenode. There is also a chat room on AVRs in general.

• dflecher’s site has all the information about the bumble-b. Also a great thanks to him for putting up with my questions .
• AVR freaks is also a good place to look for things.
• You can also take a look at the youtube videos I have been posting the last few days

Code published in the post

Just to make sure you saw all the code published in the post

• Geany-Bumble-b scripts
• matrix.c code without the USB control
• Matrix control with the LUFA library (type ‘make’ in the CDC_matrix dir to compile).

That’s it. What are you waiting for? Amateur electronics is at your grasp!

Car and the breadboard

Hey all,

I have been playing with electronics the last few days, and I thought I might show you the outcome.

I basically took a remote controlled car, and connected it to a 16F84 programmable chip, and now I can control the car using C code.

Although I am using a car in this guide, you should be able to close and open any kind of switch. Anything under 15 volts.

For people who have don’t feel like reading all this (and also for those who do), here is an action-packed video of the outcome:

After you saw that, here is how I did this.

Starting with electronics

This project was really my start on electronics. I guess reading about transistors (on my way to become an amateur radio ham) got me in to all of this. The transistor lets you control circuits with any other circuits. You better just google them, and read, the more you know the cooler things you can build!

Finding what you need is usually the harder part of the job, I better thank #electronics channel on freenode for helping me find the parts I needed. Once you find the part, you better look at its schematic, it will tell you what all the pins do. Schematics are easily searchable on the web. You can also open up old electronics (the simpler the better), and look for parts there, but it is hard to find exactly what you need, and you most likely will need to spend some money on parts (really, they cost nothing!). In Jerusalem you can check out the shop Kashayuf.

Here are the parts I used for my project:

The 16F84 programmable chip (the brain)

The 16F84A is really an obsolete chip, and is very limited. However, it was the only one I could get around here. And since it only costs 8  NIS  (under 2$),  I got more than my money worth. After all, what possibly could you get for under 2$ that you can write code for?

The programmer

Usually the programmer will cost you more than the chip. Mine cost 50$, and is called the MPLAB ICD2. I got it off ebay. Although its powerful and can program many PICs, I guess I could have gotten something much cheaper.

The software for the chip

I used an IDE to code called Piklab, it really gave me everything I needed, from programming and compiling, to pin diagrams of the chips.

To compile I sadly had to use CCS (you can see the code here). I should be able to use the open source alternative SDCC, but it seems the delay_ms() function there is not working for my chip. If anyone has any source, I’d gladly use it.

7805 – 5V Regulator

The 7085 chip lets you take anything and turn it to a 5 volt power supply. If you want to try something simple, like building a USB power charger. Watch this systm episode. That video will also explain you how a bread board works.

14066 – The switching transistor

The MC14066 chip I used is a 4-in-1 chip that lets me open and close circuits. Its really a bunch of transistors. Before using it I tried using an IR540 MOSFET transistor, but it needs +5V at its gate, and the PIC only gives out 2.5V.  Still it could be used to turn on an off motors with the LPT port, or big lights. Remember: Without transistors, you will only be able to power using the 2.5 signal that comes out form the PIC, or anything else.

Other chips Programmable chips

There are many chips, as I said in the video, the AVRs are popular, and are the basis for many projects you might have heard of (like the Arduino), you can have a look at avrfreaks for projects.

Next project – The bumble-b

While doing this project I found a really cool looking chip called the bumble-b. I ordered one, and I hope to update once I try it out.

This is really all for now, hope you enjoyed my quick introduction to electronics and my project, and I hope to do more projects before the semester starts.

Update: All 4  directions on the car are working , a friend and I hope to code it a route in the campus!

Crictor, the “technology news, for technology people” initiative I actually help found, interviewed me about the OLPC pilot in Israel, during the Israeli FOSS convention called August Penguin. Also, in the convention Netzach gave a talk about the pilot we did, and the new program with open source and eeePCs.

There are English subtitles, now, so enjoy.

You can to visit the article’s page in Crictor.

Today is the first day of school, let us hope the laptop program started here succeeds.

Hi all,

I am going to explain here how I managed to use the Cannon open source hack development kit , known as CHDK, to photograph stars and even create neat movies of the stars motion.

It all started this Monday, I was lucky to see that there is going to be Perseids meteor shower, a day in advance. So I had time getting the code ready before it was too late. I thought I would go somewhere next to Jerusalem and photograph, but in the end, friends of mine (Shy and Anna) from the Israeli Astronomy Association, which I am part of, told me they are going down south to the dessert, far away from light pollution, to take count of the meteors for the IMO. So I joined him, and my data is also available.

Before all the technical stuff, here is a video I made that shows you what this all comes to:

Now back to CHDK, and how this was done.

What is CHDK? And how do I install it?

CHDK is a firmware addon for Cannon powershot digital cameras. It supports most of them, mine is a simple powershot A590, costs to date about 700 NIS. Moreover, since its an addon, it will not void warranty, and can’t damage your camera. It has a lot of features (including games and an e-book reader!).

Installing it is really easy and comes the complete version comes with everything you need. All you do is extract the version for your camera on your SD card. Then start the camera in the review mode, and select in the menu ‘Firm Update…’, Look at CHDK’s wiki for more info.Now that CHDK is running,  pressing the (used to be useless) printer button on your camera. It will bring an <alt> symbol at the bottom of the screen, meaning all buttons will control the options of CHDK. Pressing the printer button again will move you back to use the camera menus. Restarting the camera will wipe out CHDK from the memory (you need to do ‘Firm Update’ again, to use it again). So if you want to stop CHDK, just turn the camera off and on. Uninstalling is just removing CHDK’s files from the card.

Firm Update (not really a firm update)

My Basic Ubasic application

Once I got CHDK running, and after  looking around the menus and confusing people by playing Reversi on my camera, I started looking in to the scripting capability.

One can write scripts both in ubasic and lua. I wrote mine in ubasic, although I never wrote in ubasic/basic before, it was dead easy to pick up. I choose ubasic because some developer told me lua has some timing problems. Both languages don’t need compilation, just write a text file and put it in the /CHDK/SCIPTS folder in the SD and they will run. To run a script select the ‘load script’ option, when in <alt> mode. Now, when in standby mode, using the capture button will run the selected script, and not just photograph as normal.

The programming commands I got mostly from this tutorial. Note how easy it is to let the user to have configurable parameters, print stuff on the screen, and shoot images. You can also change parameters of the camera using PropertyCase commands (see my code to see how it is used).

My meteor script, avilable here, it basically (pun!)  starts the camera, disables flash and goes in to loop shooting images on a given ISO and exposure time until the shooting button is pressed again. You can see the selection interface on the right (sorry for the typo on the word Meteor, it was late). If you use my script then you better disable the screen display before shooting, and the review time, so at night, all you see is a blinking led telling you the camera us working (was ok for the astronomer standard too). The camera lasted about an hour of photographing before the batteries ran out. Luckily I had about 4 pairs of AA batteries. There is much to improve in the script, but it works.

Loading the Meteor program

Processing Animations with FFmpeg

Sadly, I did not catch any meteors in any of my 700 images. I think I did not set the aperture to be open all the way, I expected it will do it in a dark setting.

However, connecting all the images together gave me an animation of the moving sky Using FFmpeg. It seems that FFmpeg is a bit picky about its file formats. So here is how to take your jpg images and turn them to a movie:

1. You will need to download all your images to a single folder.
2. Run this bash script I wrote, it will make an ‘out’ folder in the folder, and copy all the files numbering them 000.jpg 001.jpg etc. Like FFmpeg likes, otherwise ffmpeg segfaults (thanks to #ffmpeg on freenode for the guidlines):

#!/bin/bash
# Not enough information to compute
if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
echo "Syntax: `basename $0` "
exit
fi
i=0
#if dir exists, then go over all files and copy them
if [ $# -eq 1 -a -d "$1" ]; then
mkdir -p $1/"out"
for file in $1/*.[jJ][pP][gG]
do
cp "$file" $1/out/$(printf "%0.3d.jpg" $i)
i=$(( $i + 1 ))
done
exit
fi
exit

3. After the jpg images ready, you can run FFmpeg with this command in your folder: ffmpeg -r 24 -f image2 -i %3d.jpg -b 700000 -s 720x480 output.avi . Note you can change resolution there, bitrate, and do anything ffmpeg does. Since the images are in a camera quality you can even do HD video with a cheep camera!
4. Thats is, you have a time lapse video

My Videos

List of videos using this script. I also made a page for them here.

• Orion, Venus and Sunrise (my favorite)
• Scorpius setting
• Polaris time lapse
• Cassiopeia time lapse
• Cygnus time lapse

Closing

CHDK seems to have many new ways to take a simple camera, one you might even already have, and do things you never thought possible on a normal camera. Maybe next I’ll try using RAW imaging, that will let me get even better views of the stars.

Thanks to #chdk and #ffmpeg on freenode, for helping me out with the code.

And thanks to Anna and Shai for a wonderful night

Update: There is a forum thread in CHDK’s website about the blog post with even more talks.

Meteor Counting

Waiting in the middle of nowhere, for my bus up north

About half a year ago, a law for internet censorship passed the first stage in our parliament, on its way to become in effect. The way it was done is disguising the law as a way to protect against child pornography.

There was quite a lot of opposition and finally at the beginning of this week, the law proposal was dropped. This of course makes quite happy.

However, this week I stumbled on a Google Talk of Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. He said, and I quote (the video skips to the quote):

“I’ll give you an anecdote of a copyright  seminar. The Danish head honcho came and said: You know, the politicians don’t understand file sharing. So what we need to do is to filter the internet. But since politicians don’t understand what that means, we should associate it with child pornography. Because politicians understand child pornography.“

This is exactly what was done in Israel

In Israel, the attempt was passing an ISP filter law as a disguising against child pornography. Moreover, making this more suspicious. The proposal for the law came from a religious orthodox party called “Shas”. This suggests that someone from outside was behind this party to propose this law. Someone that was in contact with these copyright people.

One down, Another to go

There is now, a new law that is on its way to be passed. Again it shows that our politicians fail when faced with technology laws. The law is for building a biometric database of fingerprints and faces of all citizens. Although at first it seems a logical step forward, it is a known fact that these databases leak to the net in a blink of an eye (you can already get the ID database of Israel on the net).

Also, it would be easier to replicate a fingerprint than an ID card. All you need is silicon. But this would not just be an ID theft now, its an identity theft,  so easy anyone can do it!

Just an example of implication: If you have a camera in a street, anywhere in the world, you can detect Israeli citizens, and know anything you want about them. Here is a hebrew video of channel 1,  saying the above more or less. For English only readers, here is a video of the law committee throwing out a blogger with a camera (not a viral video fan, but thats all I find).

Its not over yet

Its clear that this week that we have won this round. However the people behind this ISP filter law would not stop here, it seems that its a part of a much bigger picture, and we must stay vigilant.

Sugar running on the Nokia N810

Hey all,
This past week I managed to do something quite interesting. I got sugar, running on my Nokia N810, compiled for armel.

The trick that made it work was thanks to easy Debian chroot, that got me access to installing sugar without a few good hours of compilation for arm (and I did that before).

Touchscreen is cool!

The first thing that I found pretty neat was running sugar on a touchscreen device. It really felt better, since most people that I let play with my XO and flip its screen 180 degrees naturally try touching the screen, expecting it had a touchscreen. Sugar was actually quite good with it on the Nokia.

Any hardware – Any use

It is refreshing to see Sugar running on a different system, let alone a difference architecture (armel). Sugar seems to be attributed to OLPC and its unique hardware. I guess this comes to show that to in order to get sugar really to reach its full potential, we should take in to account it can run on anything: Why not old hardware? Why not smartphones? OLPC uses the XO, but everyone else can use anything else really.

This also is connected to things going on in our pilot in OLPC Israel. I won’t get in to it in this post, because Netzach and I are going to write a report about it regarding a pilot we are doing with 9 Bedouin kids in the Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center.

More about the hardware – How to get Sugar in your pocket

If you are wondering if this actually worked fully on the Nokia (unlike people who claim Android worked there, and it’s just the x86 emulator). Well, it did pretty much work. However it was slow, and you wont get the browser working on it with 128MB ram. However I did get avahi-daemon working (remember to turn it on). Then I got in to the Chat system, and I could share things, etc. You might need to enlarge the easy chroot iso image, so you have space to install sugar. I also guess that if someone installs it on Mer (an Ubuntu-based distro for the Nokia),  it might even work faster.

Another problem is that the Nokia keyboard has no F1-F12 keys. They are essential in sugar. So I had to plug in an external USB keyboard for that. It could be fixed with an Xmodmap script.

Thats all for now more pictures below.

Watching the network view

Sugar on the Nokia talking to an XO

Nokia N810 and XO together

Tracking with the Nokia N810.

Hey all,

This Passover, I went on a trip in the North of Israel in the Golan heights.

However, apart from enjoying the beauty of nature I thought I might do a little experiment with my Nokia N810, a Linux device with a GPS receiver.

What I did was switch it on at the beginning of the tour and put it back inside my bag, ignoring it most of the time.

The result was a complete GPX file of our tour.

On the Nokia it looked nice, however I wanted to see if I can extract more data at home with the GPX file.I found 3 tools I could do with it.

The first was slicing the exact route (since I left it on after getting in the car and driving home, it had the 5 hour route I drove home too). For that I used an application called Viking. Viking also give me another bit of information I liked – it said we walked 10 kilomiters.

The second was an online tool called gpsvisualizer. This gave me a nice view of the track, along with the height variation, you can see the outcome on the right.

gpsvisualizer

Gpsvisualizer also gave me an option to convert the gpx file to a .kmz file, a googleearth filetype. So I could now load my track in to googleearth.

I could see now the route overlaid with google’s rich data, from photos to a high res satellite map, and 3d view!

The Track from Google Earth

A Deep Valley we crossed

I thought I might share with you the fun trip I had, and digital fun that came after it. I know there are others here that have gps tools and I’d love to hear what tools you use.

A lot of Caterpillars on a shoot

A nice View of the valley

OLPC Israel Debian Desktop View

Hey All,

I am Happy to update we have now a working prototype OS for the OLPC pilot here in Israel.

As explained in my last post, we have only B2/B1 laptops that are not compatible with the current sugar version. Because of this we had to develop our own OS that we will put on SD cards and in to the laptops (in the full project we want to use sugar, we did this for the B2s only really).

This system works well also with the normal OLPC units. And I’d be glad if anyone would like to use it copy, and modify.

The system is based off Debian and runs on XFCE. The B2 laptops work with only 128 RAM so we really reduced the memory usage. The kernel on the system is from build 711, which is the last to work with the B2. Still, it works fine on any OLPC. I hope we will have Kernel Headers for the release someone in the future.
I’d also like to take the opportunity for give a huge thanks to Ram-on Agmon who really got the system up and running.

You can download the latest build here.

To dump the image on to a 2GB sd card simply dd it as so:

dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/sdb conv=sync

Note:

• This will destroy all data on the card.
• The path to the sd-card device is the partition table, because the img file includes also a swap partition.
• You will need to have at least firmware q2e20.
• The distro only works on an SD card.
• If you are running a modern OLPC system you will also have to include your developer key in the right place.

One last unrelated thing (before pictures of the OS): There are updates on the web that OLPC has stopped the “give many program”, if anyone is worried about that effecting our pilot then i can assure you I talked to OLPC and it is related only to people that want to buy laptops regardless to intent and where they are in the world. Not to mention we are working as volunteers with a university to get this project to people who need it.

Hope to update soon, however I might not because I have a big test in physics the next week, and the ones after.

Guy

Here are more photos:

OLPC Israel Debian running the epiphany browser and a shell

Hello all big news:

B2 OLPC boxes

I have in my room, 24 B2 laptops!

Dima (ITU alumnai), Netzach (head of Ilan Ramon Center) and I had a meeting with Peres Center for Peace. To our great surprise, the center had 24 B2 laptops, which were laying there for more than a year without any use (if you are yelling “but why?!” then the quick answer is that none had the technical ability to get them truly working).

So to sum up: the pilot can start! .. but wait, there is a catch.

The goal of the pilot  the moment is not exactly what you might think.

The B2 machines are really old, Dan from OLPC, who just came back from Ethiopia, told me that they have B2 laptops in storage, where they belong. These are not modern OLPCs. And OLPC don’t support them anymore.

So our goal is not really to show that these computers are going to be the main learning tool for children, they are going to be mostly a tool for playing with code. OLPC Israel is not getting of the ground, because the main opposition says that its just a toy, not a “real computer” they say “its good for kids in Africa, but here its an insult to people that want what their friends have”. And with that, no funding could be received, no research is done, and the laptops just lay there.

Our pilot does see the laptops as educational toys for the moment. And we are going to try and show that in our environment they can aid children, giving them 24/7 access time to their machine that they can code on but not as a laptop (even if it would be shell only!).

This is the current status. I wish we could have gotten, right now new OLPCs, but with the current funding problem this is what we have. And once we have a report of how kids relate to the laptop, the adults might have the confidence to buy new OLPCs, and the snowball effect might go from there.

We need technical help

Luckily the B2 laptops can load the new operating system of OLPC, but one major problem remains – the graphics adapter won’t load (the new OLPC has a diffrent one). So what we need now is help compiling the old driver whose support has been dropped, on the new system. If you can help out, call me at 050-8580942, and I might even lend you a B2 unit to test this out. Because it is a big problem at the moment.

Hope to keep updating…

B2 OLPC boxes

In Israel we have no problem when it comes to cellphone reception, even in deserts you will find that the reception is at full gain. However when the access is antiques, quality and reliability of that access the becomes the really important issue.

Part of a jungle of models

It seems that the service models are quite different around the world, and this seems to directly effect the usage pattern in the country. A common problem in Asia is when one has a monopoly, where a single company is in charge of the cellphone service, usually derived by an agreement with the government. This usually creates dis-connectivity in places where there is a low concentration of people, or remote places that are hard to reach.

Israel is different

In Israel we are on the other side of the spectrum, but with a different problem.
According to Reza Jafari, the head of board of directors in the ITU (Intentional Telecommunication Union) “There need to be at least 3 service providers for a fair competition”, however, in Israel this is the case. And we do see a burst of connectivity. In a talk I had with Reza he told me that the problem in Israel is that the providers do not share the infrastructure. He told me that the ITU did try and advise the carriers in Israel, but they did not listen.

The providers are working backwards

In Israel we have 4 providers, 2 of them (Orange and Cellcom) have two septate infrastructures broadcasting on the same GSM waveband. The outcome is lower quality for all, plus the service is expensive from all the providers (infrastructures need to be maintained after all). After returning to Israel I found that the situation is only getting worse, since Pelephone (whom I counted above) is building yet another GSM network. And why should they? there are 2 already existing! This will only cause bad performance for everyone. Not to mention increasing the count of broadcasting antennas.

The Model already works in Israel

The model of virtual providers does already work in Israel when it comes to the ISPs and infrastructure providers for the Internet. And also for international calls. Thanks to that the price dropped for those services and the quality of service grew rapidly. The same needs to happen in the cellphone networks, if we want to see an expansion in the number and ways of the technology being used. The situation we have now resembles a cartel – 4 providers with an average service, for a high price. However this happens because there is no cooperation between them (unlike in a cartel). This kind of cooperation should lead to profit eventually, once customers use more frequently the provider services (that would be cheaper and better, after all). A cellphone costs 5 times more than a ground-line in Israel today, maybe virtual providers might change this.  I might also end by saying, that the law for virtual providers has passed in Israel, but we don’t seem them yet.