Pumping Station: One

NERP is not exclusively raspberry pi, the small computer interest group at
Pumping Station:One in Chicago.

Tonight Drew Fustini will demo the Beagle Bone.

BeagleBone (http://beagleboard.org/bone) is an open source, low-cost
credit-card-sized Linux computer that connects with the Internet and runs
software such as Android 4.0 and Ubuntu.

BeagleBone is capable of interfacing to all of your robotics motor
drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras. It can also run
OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software.

Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and
displaying mutliple video formats utilizing a completely open source software
stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards.

Drew will also hit the high points of a Raspberry Pi interface board called the
Pi Face (http://pi.cs.man.ac.uk/interface.htm)

Pi-Face Digital is the first of a range of interfaces to allow the Raspberry Pi
to control and manipulate the real world. It allows the Raspberry Pi to read
switches connected to it – a door sensor or pressure pad perhaps, a microswitch
or reed switch, or a hand held button. With appropriate easy to write code, the
Raspberry Pi then drives outputs, powering motors, actuator, LEDs, light bulbs
or anything you can imagine to respond to the inputs.

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 3-11-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in
Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

Ed Bennett ed@kineticsandelectronics.com

NERP is Not Exlusivey Raspberry Pi, the small computer interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago.

Boardforge gantry Ver 0.3a in development (Ed_B)

Several members of Pumping Station:One are collaborating on a project to produce a pick and place machine. PnP machines are robotic assembly devices that place electronic components on circuit boards as part of the soldering process. The software that will run the machine is made of several distinct subsystems including motion control and computer vision. Jay Hopkins has been doing some experiments to determine whether a Raspberry Pi can serve as the on-board controller for the machine. Tonight he’ll show nerp some of his progress. Teaser: OpenCV _will_ compile on the Raspberry PI!

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 2-25-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

This NERP, Drew Fustini will show us how to WebIDE to program the Raspberry Pi. WebIDE is free from Adafruit. Put simply, “The Raspberry Pi WebIDE is by far the easiest way to run code on your Raspberry Pi. Just connect your Pi to your local network, and log on to the WebIDE in your web browser to edit Python, Ruby, JavaScript, or anything and easily send it over to your Pi.” Drew will use a Pi Plate RGB 16×2 character “Pi Plate” as the output device.

At the 1/28 NERP, we announced that the Adafruit Industries community grants people intended to send us a care package with Raspberry Pi goodies. The package arrived last week, and rather than opening it right away I thought it would be nice to share the surprise on Monday. It’ll be fun to see what kinds of ideas come out of the box and what kinds of projects they might inspire.

As always, if you have a NERP related project that you’d like to share, bring
it along!

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 2-11-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

The new year’s first NERP Meetup will be at 7pm tomorrow night.

In the first half hour, we’ll have a beginner’s look at the Raspberry Pi board and software. We’ll see what extra hardware you’ll need to get started with the Pi and how to boot up a new board.

In the second half-hour, we’ll connect a homemade circuit to a Pi and see one method for controlling stuff with Python. You can find out more about NERP at the Meetup page,

http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/

Bring your favorites!

Anyone got a cool new game to play this holiday season? Wanna play it with a bunch of other gamer geeks? Got any awesome new minifigs, counters, or gaming dice sets that you want to show off to people for some geek cred? Just wanna hang out with some fun people and play games, drink beer, and eat some tasty snacks?
Bring  your favorite games over to Pumping Station: One this Saturday, the 5th, at 7pm and play the night away! As usual, all games are welcome [even cuddle dice, though you may have a hard time finding people to play with], major gamercred to homemade games.

See you there!

The next two tuesdays fall on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, so we will not be holding official open houses on those days.  There will likely still be people around on those days working on projects though, so if you’d like to visit drop a note on our public mailing list to see if anyone will be there to show you around.

The next official meeting and open house will be on January 8th, 2013.

Allen Kapusta will make a presentation on types of task dispatching. Any processor more complicted than an Arduino will be shared by different pieces of running code. Allen’s presentation will be a general overview of how tasks are selected for execution by the processor and what guidelines the task should follow in order to co-exist well with its neighbors.

Drew Fustini will show us how to display tweets on a character LCD connected to a Raspberry Pi. His Python examples will demonstrate a simple way to make a read-only connection to Twitter and print tweets on a 4-bit parallel connection.

NERP will not meet December 31st, but will resume its regular bi-weekly schedule starting Monday January 14th.

Eric Gregori will be giving a talk about doing computer vision on the Android platform using the OpenCV library. It will take place at Pumping Station: One’s (http://pumpingstationone.org). Automated Manufacturing Night on Thursday, 1/10, at 7pm.

Manufacturing applications for computer vision include assembly:

And inspection:

After his talk and questions, we will discuss, repair, and build CNC machines ranging from 3D printers to electronics pick and place machines.

Thanks to Eric for a wonderful talk and to everyone who came out.

Eric included the presentation, and the links he mentioned during it, here: http://buildsmartrobots.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pumping-station-one-a-great-group-of-hackers.  He has written an article on the topic here:  http://www.embedded.com/design/programming-languages-and-tools/4406164/1/Developing-OpenCV-computer-vision-apps-for-the-Android-platform

A recorded version of the talk is available here.  Unfortunately, the video and audio quality are low.

Eric is the President of EMGRobotics (http://www.EMGRobotics.com). He is a robot enthusiast with over 19 years of embedded firmware design experience. His specialities are computer vision, artificial intelligence, and programming for Windows Embedded CE, Linux, and Android operating systems.

Automated Manufacturing Night is a monthly event where a speaker will discuss a topic related to Automated Manufacturing on the third Thursday each month. It is affiliated with the CNC Build Club (http://www.meetup.com/CNC-Build-Club/), a group where folks work on automated manufacturing machines at Pumping Station: One. It is also open to the public.

Pumping Station: One is a Chicago hackerspace located at 3519 N Elston, Chicago IL 60618.

This talk was organized by Jeff McAlvay, who is working with a team from PS:One on an open pick and place machine (http://www.boardforge.com).

Monday Dec. 3rd. is back-to-basics night at NERP. In Part 1, Carl
Karsten and Bonnie King will give an introduction to Python programming
for novice programmers. The target will be the Raspberry Pi, and the
focus of their teaching examples will be on input/output to simple
hardware. In Part 2, yours truly will demo control of output devices
including simple circuits for interfacing electronics to
electro-mechanical devices.

Find us here…
http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/

-Ed

Picture of plasma cut PS:One logo taken from buildlog.net

Last Monday’s 3D printing discussion was both well-attended and full of ideas. By the end of the night the beginnings of a few exciting new projects were starting to take shape. Since there are already several CNC projects in the works at PS:One, we decided that once a month isn’t enough to satisfy our appetites for automation.

So I’m pleased to announce the formation of the CNC Build Club, which will meet every Wednesday night at PS:One to design and build machines employing computer numerical control. If you’re interested in building a 3D printer, a CNC router or a pick & place machine, you can join up with a group already working on a design. Or come up with your own idea and recruit others to work with you!

• Who: Open to the public
• Where: Pumping Station: One, 3519 N Elston Ave, Chicago, IL
• When: Every Wednesday at 7pm
• Cost: Free ($5 suggested donation for non-members to help us pay the rent)

We’re still going to have our monthly Automation Night, which will be slightly more formal and have a guest speaker, but all other Wednesdays will be focused on getting work done on projects.

Join the Google Group for the CNC Build Club. We’ll see you Wednesday night!