Next Meeting January 26th at Telford College

Andy Dean will be presenting a talk: “Installing, Configuring and Securing a Linux Email Server” at the next meeting the Linux User Group.

Poster for January meeting

Info for getting to the meeting

7-9pm meeting – talk starts at 7.30pm

Review of November LUG meeting

A new venue for the LUG and our first meeting kicked everything off great.

The room at Telford College was decent size, a projector that could be linked too (a whiteboard if you have the drivers!). There is even reasonable sound system as well. We had access from 7 to 9pm.

13 people came along to see Jons talk – some returnees – welcome back! Jons talk introducing Ubuntu went down really well, it began with a live boot, then install (brave man!) also installing typical things that a user would need to have following a newly setup Ubuntu computer – like Flash. Them Jon did a walk through the capabilities of ubuntu. This had full attention and plenty of questions asked.

We began to run out of time and some of the questions seem to naturally lead onto a second talk – like describing use of the terminal. Jon has said he’ll do another talk later in 2012 for follow-up this one.

Thanks Jon, a fine start – lets hope 2012 follows on as well as this.

MoPI a Prototype board for RaspberryPI

After RaspberryPI foundation released the Pin outs for the main connector on their site. I couldn’t wait to get a PCB made up to facilitate the easy hacking/adding of hardware on to the ‘Pi. All the more important considering the ‘Pi’s aim of providing a cheap platform for people to learn all about hands on computing. The MoPI allows you to connect directly to the ‘PI and prototype designs using both through hole and surface mount components. Secondly it provides locations for stand offs or feet to allow the user to keep the board off the wire infested desk or mount it in a case. Thirdly it provides several ways of powering either just your project or also the ‘PI it’s self, we use a very common “Jelly Bean” regulator available cheaply from EBAY good for 2-3A. The regulator is adjustable allowing for many different uses, other than powering the ‘PI. Alternatively you can power your design using the DC Jack or 0.2″ Screw terminals. We have gone to great efforts to be as general as possible allowing people to do what they want.

MoPI Prototypes

This is a good example of what can be rapidly prototyped using home/keen amateur PCB manufacturing techniques like those we hope to demonstrate at our February meeting.

Hopefully this will be the start of much more Linux Hardware/Software hacking.

Location information for next meeting at Telford College

24th November 7pm meeting for a talk by Jon Farmer about UbuntuP
See http://www.tcat.ac.uk/other/collegeinfo/map.html (look for the T) at Telford College Wellington Telford TF1 2N

 

Download this poster!SlugNov2011

New venues for the LUG

Following the closure of our old (but convenient) meeting place – we’ve now got two.

We have now a collection of dates for meetings at Telford College – and in return for putting on some events through the year to bring Linux to staff and students we’ll have a room for free. It’s a large room where a talk could be happening at one end and other discussions at the opposite.  Our first event is a talk kindly offered by Jon Farmer on installing Ubuntu and walk-through the operating system capabilities  – with discussion and questions. Could members bring along laptop with their Linux on it to demonstrate new potential members what you do with Linux and the differences between Linuxes, please.

Our in-betweenie venue is the Peacock pub in Shrewsbury – Steve has found this to be still good and meetings will take place in months where the College isn’t open (or even additional if people want them – do shout up in the listserv!).  See http://www.peacockinnpub.co.uk/

Both places are previous haunts of the Linux group – Telford College being the place it all started. This new event is an experiment – we’ll see how it goes and learn each time.

Hope to see you at Telford College on 24th November 2011  7pm onwards with a talk by Jon from 7.30pm. The room is accessible till 9pm and previously  many de-camped over to the Bridge Builder pub for the rest of the evening.

Dates for Telford College meetings

24^th November, 26^th January 2012, 23^rd February, 29^th March, 26^th April, 31^st May, 28^th June

Midmonth Builds

Just had the mid-month meeting!!

Made stuff ,broke stuff, made it better and finally took the mickey and set it on Fire!!

Most of the day was centred around testing code for testing the power settings of a pair of DC Brushless

motors used in almost all Quadracopters.  Basically a Single motor was able to lift a 2 ft piece of wood and

would of flown around with it if we were not attached to it. Problem is that in doing this both drew much more

current than stated and killed their Speed controllers ;( !! We have video of the Latter

debarcle which we’ll upload in due course.

In the mean time take a quick look at the other project which is a Pan and Tilt  device which will have two main uses

1)  Underneath the Quadracopter as a first person Cam platform

2) Part of an automated Panoramic photo taking device.

We intend to remove the bluetac and Cable ties holding the Camera when we get the code right and probably beef up the servos!

Interesting Links:

Linux Wheelchair Robot:

http://the.generaldoss.com/pip
http://the.generaldoss.com/pip2
http://the.generaldoss.com/pip3
http://the.generaldoss.com/pip4

Dave Hariis’ Blog  Various with Astrophotography

http://g0cer.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 2011 Meeting – Arduino Demo

What you can do at SLUG

Firstly thank you to Chris for an excellent demo, I think it will enthuse many of our members to do something and learn new skills in the process.

A total of 9 members turned up which wasn’t bad considering the fact that the bank holiday had waylaid a few of the regulars.
Everyone had a chance to prod Chris’s wiring!!

The Fedora 15 talk was curtailed due to the enthusiasm for the demos, we hope to run this next time when we have more time. Fedora was relegated to driving the Projector

What did those who were there think of the use of the projector shall we bring it to more meetings and deliver to a wider audience?

What would other people like to demonstrate ?

I’m voting for Lee’s Quadracopter …

Best of luck to all those about to work on something … John A

April 2011 Meeting

We had a total of seven come to the meeting not bad considering how quiet this email list as been recently and the proximity to several bank holidays!!

Seven isn’t a bad number and every one was on good form tons of subjects covered( Even Linux was mentioned).

As promised here’s some links to what we have been ranting on about :

Arduino
======

I have bulk purchased a whole 8 (now 5!!) Arduino boards. 3 have been bought by brave members who have promised faithfully to get a LED flashing by next meeting .

An Arduino is a development board with a small micro-controller on board that can be programmed to do “Stuff” via the USB

Whoopydo you might say …Why would I be interested in this?

Good question .. “Stuff” is probably a good answer too as the list can be as long as you want. Controlling Lighting/Heating/Displaying Values from your PC, Fan control, UAVs,
Ballons (ask Chris) or simply flashing that LED on and off as a learning experience.

Why Arduino?
Because it’s already well known… saves a lot of explanations
Simple/ Cheap (13£ Fom Me!! Honest John!!!) / opensource
Pre-Compiled development environments (IDEs) for Windows/Mac/Linux
Large community of developers
Large number of Providers of Special Shields that sit on the Arduino providing all sorts of
functionality like GPS/Gyros/Sensors/Mains Relays etc etc etc

Large volume of code available to hack into your own solutions

Here’s a brief selection of Arduino links to wet your appetites:

Main site

http://www.arduino.cc/

IDE software for host machine

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

Associated howto’s

http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage

Note that Fedora and Ubuntu have pre-rolled packages for all this use them they are much easier

http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage

Manufacturers and Retailers of Arduino stuff

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/666

http://seeedstudio.com/depot/

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/index.php?cPath=50&osCsid=b653652d2a35495642fbba77099c44e6

What Can I do with my Arduino???

http://hacknmod.com/hack/make-a-uav-spyplane-using-the-arduino/

http://hacknmod.com/hack/top-40-arduino-projects-of-the-web/

http://www.makerbot.com/

http://robosavvy.com/store/product_info.php/products_id/1231?osCsid=865fdbe84708cb5120c04acae3822766

Other Sites

http://hackaday.com/

http://hackaday.com/2011/04/26/enhance-your-key-fob-via-can-bus-hacking/

I hope some of you will take time to travel some of those links and be interested in doing
something . In a spirit of jumpstarting interest I have the remaining Arduino boards available at cost (£13) if any one else wants one. To get one shout on the list, in the case I have to choose due to lack of boards those who came up with an idea of what they want to do will get preference. Over the coming months I’m hoping to get more familiar with it myself and
help those interested to get further with their new widget.

Best of luck guys! Get Hacking!

Educational Resources inc TED

http://www.mutr.co.uk/

http://www.rapidonline.com/

http://www.ted.com/ (Bruce Schneier willbe a good talk BTW)

Those at the meeting know I love Aerogel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel

Cubesats

http://www.cubesat.org/

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/cubesats.php

Get to the Linux command line in the Kindle etc etc

http://hackaday.com/?s=kindle

Day 0 Arduino Flashing App

Feb 2011 Meeting – Should we start a practical-only session?

Feb 22nd at the Station Inn, horsehay Telford.
Would you like to see a practical session?
Perhaps a different day, during the weekend? Where do you want it to be, should we pay for it? (probably have to if elsewhere!) and what kind of things can you think of or do! Bring ideas to talk about.

After a lot of traffic on the listserver about this – we can decide on what to do next.

Happy New Year

I hope this year will be a good one for everyone with many more Linux users and Linux development.

It was sad to hear of the passing of Valerie, who was an artist in the digital media making use of Linux completely to create.
She went through many stages of development where her requirements often out-ran the capabilities of her laptop and sought advice in the group on this.
She was also an active online member of a group of artists across the world. Bye Val.

The LUGs continued access to the upstairs room the Station Inn, Horsehay is welcome news and meetings continue, on last Tuesday of the month, the next being January 25th from 7.30pm.