Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 — Sat 24/08 & Sun 25/08, Hebden Bridge

[Andy Bennett]

Hello,

Please find details below of the programme for Open Source Hardware Camp
2024.

Tickets are on sale at £12/day and this includes lunch. Budget
accommodation is available at Hebden Bridge Hostel, there are plenty of
B&Bs and a few small hotels.


OSHCamp will once again be hosted as part of the Wuthering Bytes technology
festival, which this year is celebrating its 11th anniversary and with the
launch “Festival Day” on Fri 23rd August. This will include talks on
modular synthesis, human creativity in the age of AI, the mythical
mainframe, and others, with more to be confirmed! For further details, see:

https://wutheringbytes.com/

Cheers,

Andy

//


-+- Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 -+-

24th & 25th August 2024 at The Birchliffe Centre, Birchcliffe Road, Hebden
Bridge, HX7 8DG.

Registration:


https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-source-hardware-camp-2024-tickets-908834156427

Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 will take place in the Pennine town of
Hebden Bridge, where it will return to be hosted as part of the Wuthering
Bytes technology festival.

Hebden Bridge is approximately 1 hour by rail from Leeds and Manchester.
Budget accommodation is available at the Hebden Bridge Hostel, which
adjoins the venue. Details of other local accommodation can be found at
www.hebdenbridge.co.uk, via Airbnb and Booking.com etc.

There will be a social event on Saturday evening from 7PM.

— Saturday :: Talks

- Adventures in Manufacturing: Things you don’t learn at school

This talk is an open book of our collective experiences, filled with the
kind of know-how that can only be picked up from the factory floor. Join us
for a candid conversation where we peel back the curtain on the world of
electronics product manufacturing. Expect invaluable lessons learned from
the ground up, offering practical advice wrapped in entertaining stories.

* Stuart Childs has spent the past few years working in the strange space
between engineers, product owners and factories — setting up production
lines and working with a variety of suppliers, from prototypes to mass
production.

* Omer Kilic is an Embedded Systems and Manufacturing Consultant who works
at the various intersections of hardware and software engineering
practices, product development and manufacturing.

- Open Source Rocketry Tools, FreeCAD and beyond

Rocketry has its challenges, but there are numerous open source tools
available to enable the design, simulation and manufacture of amateur, high
power and experimental airframes. In this talk Jo will show some of these
tools and usage, highlighting along the way how it’s only open source
community development that could possibly enable such interesting and
interoperable tools to be developed.

* Jo Hinchliffe is a technical author, maker, and community developer who
has an interest in space. Jo has developed and flown numerous open source
rocket designs and has pushed the development of open source rocketry
tools. Jo has worked with Libre Space Foundation who built and launched a
completely open source satellite off the International Space Station, as
well as other on orbit open source space projects. Jo has a wide range of
clients he writes for and is the author of “FreeCAD for Makers” available
for free download from the Raspberry Pi Press.

- The National Museum of Computing EDSAC Replica

EDSAC was the first practical general purpose, stored program, electronic,
digital computer and provided a computing service for the University of
Cambridge. It ran its first program (Squares of 1 – 100) on 6th May1949.
Because of the significance of EDSAC to British Computing, it was decided
to create a replica at TNMOC. Our task is to build a working reconstruction
of EDSAC as it was at the start of its life, providing the world’s first
computing service from 1949 to 1958. Money was raised from around 2010, and
design work started a couple of years later.

With the paper tape reader not yet available, we use an Arduino-based Solid
State Injector unit to program the computer, and a Cypress FX2 USB2 clone
as a logic analyser with PulseView software. Raspberry Pi Picos are also
used as wireless logic analysers.

* Tony Abbey received a BSc in Electronic Engineering in 1968 at
Southampton University and went on to work for the East Midlands Gas Board
on communications and instrumentation, where he found that computers could
be used for control purposes. There he worked on the Westinghouse “DP2 and
a half” computer and DEC PDP11 systems. After EMGAS he worked for 35 years
at Leicester University Space Research Dept, where he designed and
commissioned X-ray detectors for satellites, getting to Cape Canaveral
twice and French Guyana for three satellite launces. He still has
cryogenically cooled CCDs in space in the satellites XMM-Newton, Swift and
Astrosat, and he provides consulting services as a director of Helaton
Services, together with his wife.

In retirement Tony has been a director of Leicester Hackspace and he also
finds time to race a K1 dinghy at Rutland Water. Software-defined radio has
been an interest for several years and helping out at TNMOC has been
occupying a lot of his time.

- Look, no FPGA!

When creating a robust WiFi logic analyser, it is tempting to use complex
programmable logic devices; however, there are alternatives, as this talk
will show.

The end-result is a low-cost unit using a Pi RP2040 microcontroller that
can store 500,000 16-bit samples and stream them at high speed across a
WiFi network to a Web browser. I’ll be describing simple techniques to
tackle the various hardware, software and networking issues, with an
end-result that is applicable for a wide range of data-streaming
applications – without requiring any logic programming.

* Jeremy Bentham has been experimenting with electronics from an early age.
After graduating with an engineering degree, he worked for London
Undergound, specialising in 600-volt DC railway traction systems, and
on-train electronics. On leaving LUL, he worked for various Cambridge
startup companies, including a one-person consultancy specialising in
embedded systems hardware & software development. Based on this experience,
he wrote the book ‘TCP/IP Lean’, selling over 15,000 copies in 2 editions,
and was recruited by a small vehicle tracking company to create the
hardware and software for their tracking systems, of which over 500,000
units were installed.

In retirement, his interest in railway engineering was re-ignited by
joining a team restoring a 1938-vintage 'Q' stock underground train to run
in heritage service, and another team creating a 7 ¼ inch narrow-gauge
railway. He was also asked to create some high-speed wireless logic
analyser units for the valve-based EDSAC computer that has been built at
the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley. His open-source projects are
freely available (no advertisements) on iosoft.blog.

- Dye Sublimation Printing on PCBs

PCB colour choices have come a long way since the green of the 1980s, and
it seems like every colour of the rainbow is available. But when Spencer
decided to make a Pride based rainbow coloured modular computer in 2023, he
found the choices offered by the PCB fabs to be far too limited. The
solution he found was dye sublimation. This talk is about how this works
with PCBs, the workflow he developed, obstacles overcome and how cheap
equipment can be used to set up your own dye sublimation production line.
It covers the advantages of printing your own full colour PCBs, and also
some of the disadvantages and where it is not suitable.

* Spencer Owen is a self confessed retro computer geek. In 2013 he built a
Z80 based breadboard computer which went on to become the RC2014 kit
computer. Since quitting a life in IT in 2016 for this little modular
computer, it has taken him to events all over the world. He is passionate
about hobby electronics, and always keen to try doing the things that other
people haven’t done yet.

- Continuous Integration for Semiconductors - how Tiny Tapeout makes chips

Continuous integration has long been taken for granted by software
engineers, but acceptance is still growing in hardware engineers. In this
talk, Matt will show how we leverage GitHub Actions to build documentation,
create FPGA bitstreams, run tests and create all the files needed to
manufacture an open source chip. Together, these automated jobs allow us to
regularly manufacture chips filled with hundreds of tiny designs with
minimal manual intervention.

* Matthew Venn is a science & technology communicator and electronic
engineer. He has been involved with open source silicon for the last 4
years and has sent 20 chips for manufacture. He has helped over 400 people
learn the tools through his course, with hundreds more sending designs for
manufacture via Tiny Tapeout.

- Revisiting the Bit-Serial Computer Architecture

Developed near the dawn of the electronic computing age, around the end of
WW2, the bit-serial architecture played an important role in computing and
calculating machines, as a result of its simplicity and low component
count. Indeed up until about 1960, bit-serial l was the mainstay of
computing architecture, as a result of being significantly cheaper than a
parallel architecture. Similarly, in the late 1960s bit-serial was adopted
for most of the early desktop and pocket electronic calculators.

This talk explores the bit-serial architecture and reveals how it is still
relevant today, some 80 years on.

* Ken Boak has been tinkering with electronics and computing for over five
decades. His 6th birthday present was a soldering iron! He has interests in
minimal computing devices and pre-1981 computer history. Ken currently
works in the renewables field, on hydrogen fuel cells and the conversion of
ammonia to hydrogen fuel for stationary and marine internal combustion
engines.

- STEAM Punk Sunflower

Andy has been pondering how to build an "interesting" take on an LED matrix
since the mid-90s. At last year's OSHCamp, the swap table offered a glut of
LEDs and control chips that finally gave him the push he needed. After the
conference he went back home and set to work. Taking inspiration from Jiří
Praus, Mohite Bhoite and one maths professor's website that he's referred
to for far too many projects, he designed something that he hopes is an
original take on an LED matrix.

At its heart, this talk will be an OSHCamp community story that covers the
scientific, technological, electronic, artistic and mathematical basis for
a LED sunflower sculpture.

* Andy Bennett trained as an Electronic & Electrical Engineer and has a
background in consumer electronics, FPGAs, operating systems and device
drivers. For the last 15 years he has been building companies around
distributed database technology. He is currently Director of Register
Dynamics who help companies and governments apply their data usefully,
responsibly and ethically.

Andy is a Technologist that likes to inhabit the void between users,
software and the hardware that it all runs on. His love of ceramic taps is
well-documented.

- Building digital cameras for fun and science

This talk gives an introduction to how CMOS digital cameras work, from the
diode up. It goes on to describe some custom cameras designed to make
modulated light measurements and their scientific applications. The
modulated light technique can be used with conventional cameras or
photodiodes by using lower modulation frequencies.

* Roger Light did a PhD in Electronic Engineering at the University of
Nottingham, then moved on to being a researcher and finally lecturer,
designing various scientific camera chips along the way, to help with
problems ranging from biological measurement, to characterisation of grain
structure in metals. Back in 2009 Roger started the Mosquitto MQTT broker
project, and as a now ex-academic he is working as a software developer at
Cedalo, who offer support and extra functionality for Mosquitto. He still
hankers after building more cameras.

- Cost Cutting OSHW with Crafty Concurrency

Embedded hardware and software need to tackle both real-time responses to
concurrent real world demands and events, further it needs to do this in a
predictable, deterministic and safe manner. How can we achieve these
seemingly irreconcilable goals? Moreover is it possible do so with basic
tooling and without incurring excessive manpower and costs. As someone who
battles these challenges with multi disciplined professional teams for
fully funded commercial projects, you might be surprised that Alan has
discovered a secret low cost formula that anyone can source and develop
using fully open source tooling. He will open Pandora's box so you can take
a peek.

* Alan Wood has been working with parallel distributed programming for
several decades. His recent work includes smart grids, 3D printers,
robotics, automation biotec diagnostics and flow computation. His current
research is focused on multilayer concurrency and mixed language models for
complex embedded systems. He is a long term advocate of open source
communities, a moderator (aka Folknology) for xCORE, the co-founder of
myStorm open hardware FPGA community, as well as a co-founder of Surrey and
Hampshire Makerspace.

- Showing that you care about security for your open source (hardware)
project

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), Supply-chain Levels for Software
Aritfacts (SLSA) and Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Scorecards
form a trifecta of security practices and deliverables that let people know
that you're paying attention to the security of your project.

This presentation will begin with an overview of the trifecta, looking at
why each is needed and how they relate to each other. It will then go into
practical steps to incorporate them into a project repo. We will also look
at the ongoing maintenance involved once scorecards have been implemented,
and how aspects of that maintenance can be better automated to minimise
toil.

* Chris Swan has been tinkering with electronics since he was at primary
school, and got into software when he realised that it was necessary to
make hardware do interesting things. In his day job as an Engineer at
Atsign, he's helping to build the atPlatform, a Networking 2.0 technology
that is putting people in control of their data and removing the frictions
and surveillance associated with today’s Internet. On evenings and weekends
he can often be found making some sort of project around a dev board, which
have mostly been RISC-V recently. Chris is an InfoQ Editor writing about
cloud, DevOps and security, he co-hosts the Tech Debt Burndown Podcast and
is a Dart Google Developer Expert (GDE).

- Why is my robot doing that? Live visualisation of sensor data

Many sensors are a lot cheaper than they used to be. Ultrasonic, IR, time
of flight and even lidar are (kind of) within budget for enthusiasts, and
you can write code against them fairly easily. But when debugging, it's
really handy to look at the raw sensor data in a format that isn't just raw
numbers, and that's where data visualisation techniques can help. In this
talk, I'll discuss, with easy examples, how data visualisation can help you
work out why your robot is going the wrong way.

* Rick Walker used to be a real scientist, but since leaving academia the
only thing he sciences is data. He likes clear explanations, cares a lot
about effective data visualisation, and wishes he was better with robots.


— Compered by —

Kevin Murrell is a trustee of The National Museum of Computing with a
particular interest in computer technology from the 1950s and 1960s. Kevin
recently completed a rebuild of the Wireless World Computer which was
published in 1967. During working hours, Kevin is technical director of a
UK software house providing systems for the UK, Canada and Ireland. Kevin
is the proud owner of a Myford Super 7 - which occupies his spare time!

— Swap Table

Due to popular demand there will once again be a swap table at Open Source
Hardware Camp, where delegates can bring along surplus components, dev kits
and (smaller!) unfinished projects to give away and swap with others.

** Please note that larger items such as VDUs and printers must not be
brought along and any unwanted items must be removed at the end of the day!
**

— Sunday :: Workshops

- Bit Serial Computing

Build your own bit serial computer from modern 74HC series logic.

The workshop introduces the concepts of bit serial arithmetic, starting
with a simple ALU. The addition of a timing sequence generator and memory
allows 8-bit computation to be performed.

There will be a limit of 20 participants in the workshop, and a £20 charge
to cover the cost of PCBs, components and consumables.

Participants should bring:

A laptop and if possible install "H. Neemann's "Digital" simulator from his
GitHub repository.

* Run by: Ken Boak.

- Dye Sublimation Printing on PCBs

Following on from the talk yesterday, Spencer will provide some simple
blinky LED PCBs and show you how to get your colourful designs on to it. If
you have a laptop with you, you will be able to use an Inkscape template to
create your design. This could be something unique that you have drawn
yourself, or any drawing or photo that you want to use.

Alternatively, fountain pens with CMYK ink can be provided to make a
totally one-off design. Once printed and cooled down the PCB can be
assembled, so basic through-hole soldering experience may be required.

Participants should bring:

A laptop with Inkscape installed.

* Run by: Spencer Owen.

- Retro Computing Simulation

Some of us hanker after an original minicomputer with all the switches and
lights but no longer have access to the hardware. Indeed, few of us have
the space required to recreate installations from those early days when
disk drives were the size of washing machines!

There are excellent software emulations of many of these early systems, but
the excitement of operating a functioning front panel cannot be beaten!

We will show the systems running and welcome user interaction. So, get out
the old CP/M handbook and the DEC Introduction to Programming and off we
go!

We expect to be demonstrating the following running replicas:

Wireless World Computer
Raspberry Pi-based PDP8
Raspberry Pi-based PDP11
LGP-30
IMSAI 8080
Raspberry Pi-based PDP10 — possibly just the unboxing!

Participants should bring:

A laptop.

* Run by: Kevin Murrell.

- Raftabar the Robot

A follow-up to the Festival Day talk of the same title. This is not a
workshop in the normal sense and there will not be any pre-organised
hands-on tasks. It’s more of a casual/informal drop-in to see Raftabar
performing, and for more comprehensive and technical discussion about his
construction and innermost secrets.

We can talk about:

Mechanical construction using MDF, plastic and metal – No 3D printing I’m
afraid, although in many cases it would have made a much better job than my
hacksaw, file, pedestal drill and lathe.
A bit of analogue electronics.
Ultrasonic obstacle detection and distance measurement.
PWM motor and servo control.
How to follow a light beam back to bed.
PID control.
Raftbar’s software uses several finite-state machines, something that Rod
is quite passionate about and loves to talk about.
Running multiple Python 3 scripts on a Raspberry Pi and communicating
between scripts.
Invoking Python 3 scripts on Raspberry Pi boot-up.
Raspberry Pi LAN and communication to PC using RealVNC.
Raspberry Pi to Raspberry Pi serial communication using UART.
Face detection and recognition.
Audio speech to text conversion and Text to audio conversion.

Rod emphasises that he is not an expert in all areas, but will do his best
to explain the principles.

* Rod Moody was born in 1940 and at 15 years of age started an electrical
engineering apprenticeship with Dale Electric, a manufacturer of
diesel-engine driven electrical generators ranging from a few kW to a few
MW, for both base load and standby applications. Through day release and
night class he gained an HNC in electrical engineering, and at the age of
19 was appointed to the post of Test Department Manager. He went on to
become Electrical Engineering Manager responsible for running the design
office and designing control systems using relay logic, and following which
Engineering Director.

In 1992, at 52 years of age Rod joined Deep Sea Electronics as their
Engineering Manager. DSE were quite small at that time and using
through-hole technology, but with improved product design and the
introduction of SMT production they grew very rapidly over the eight years
before Rod retired in year 2000 at 60 years of age. DSE are now the leading
supplier of microprocessor based controllers to generating set
manufacturing companies worldwide.

In retirement Rod spends most of his spare time with projects involving
mechanics, electronics, and software using the Raspberry Pi and Arduino
microcontrollers. He continues to be a keen gardener as he has been from an
early age, has a keen interest in all aspects of science and engineering,
and is currently leader of the York U3A Science & Engineering World group.

NOTE:

There are separate tickets for Saturday and Sunday.
A light lunch will be provided each day.
Please aim to arrive between 09:00 and 09:15 on the Saturday as the event
will start at 09:20 prompt.