Open Source Hardware Camp 2014

Ben Ward giving a talk on TV White Space at last year's OSHCamp

A weekend of open source hardware related talks and hands-on workshops.

In a little over a month from now it will be time for the fourth annual Open Source Hardware Camp (OSHCamp). This year there will be no less than 12 talks and 8 workshops in total, on topics ranging from archaeological geophysics and aquaponics systems, to writing applications for the Parallella board and concurrent programming with xCORE and XC.

Once again OSHCamp will be hosted at the Town Hall in Hebden Bridge, a beautiful building with great facilities, and plenty of affordable accommodation nearby for those travelling from farther afield, not to mention fantastic scenery to take in and hills to explore before and after the event.

Saturday 16th August

The full programme of talks for the Saturday is as follows:

• Linux bootloaders and kernel configuration

• Open source archaeological geophysics - is it achievable?

• An open source aquaponics control system

• From Idea to Finished Product: A Tale of DFM and CEM

• Driving milling machines with Linux

• Oxford Flood Network - easier to Apologise Than to Ask Permission

• An introduction to writing applications for the Parallella board

• Radio Then and Pararchive: decentralised, pervasive, and open story telling

• Commercialising your ideas

• OpenTRV: energy technology that saves householders money

• Interfacing with SPI and I2C

• Concurrency in the real world with xCORE and XC

As with previous years and regular meetings, topics covered include not only open source hardware, but also projects that make use of it, along with associated technologies, software and useful techniques etc. There should be something of interest for everyone from seasoned open source hardware advocates, to those who are new it and perhaps with backgrounds in software etc.

Sunday 17th August

The Shrimping.it workshop at OSHCamp 2013

This year will also be our most ambitious yet in terms of the number of workshops, which will all run in parallel and be split across the Town Hall's Waterfront Hall and Terrace Room. These are:

• Let's build a flood network for Hebden Bridge!

• Building applications that sense and respond to the real world

• Do you want to build a robot? #meArm assembly workshop

• Introduction to Bus Pirate

• Building your first Parallella application

• The real world works concurrently and so can you

• Design a PCB Shrimp and have it fabricated

• OpenTRV build and getting started

For comprehensive talk and workshop details, along with speaker bios and registration information, see the OSHCamp 2014 event page.

The Future of Microprocessors, Rocket Engines and more!

“The Wuther”, a USB multi-tool kit that delegates at Wuthering Bytes 2013 received

For the second year running OSHCamp is being hosted as part of the technology festival, Wuthering Bytes, and on the day prior to OSHCamp, Friday 15th August, there will be a Festival Day which has its own fantastic programme of talks lined up. These include one on the future of microprocessors, from none other than Sophie Wilson, co-inventor of the ARM processor, a talk on the pre-electric roots of electronic music, and one on the development and testing of rocket engines.

For details see the Wuthering Bytes website.

Note that there will also be a social event on the Friday evening, hosted at the Town Hall and with a bar, supper available, music and a live performance from Sarah Angliss. Similarly there will be a social event on the Saturday evening, but this is likely to be a trip to a local pub.

Thanks

Finally, I'd like to thank DesignSpark for once again sponsoring OSHCamp — and who have since the very first — and to thank also XMOS and Codethink for their support this year.

Hope to see you there!

— Andrew Back