Codepope's Development Hell

ChainDuino: An interesting Arduino varient now gathering funds on Kickstarter is the ChainDuino project. Simply put it allows a number of Arduino-style microcontrollers to be chained together over CAT5 cable with that cable delivering power, using a passive Power over Ethernet mechanism, and communications, using RS-485. This could be incredibly useful in creating a large area sensor net (current max, 32 boards) as it can stretch for up to quarter of a mile and there’s no need for power sockets along the entire length apart from where you inject the power.

ODROID-W: Hardkernel are more known for their Exynos based single board computers which pack quite a punch in a small space - enough that a meaty heatsink is needed. But their latest product eschews the Exynos chippery for a Broadcom chip, the same chip as the Raspberry Pi. The ODROID-W is apparently the result of a wearable research project which saw Hardkernel minimise the Pi design down to a wearable module.

Two Gameboy-a-likes: There seems to have been a little resurgence in the idea of emulating the classic Gameboy.At the start of the month, Adafruit introduced the PiGrrl which used a 3D printed case, a hacked up SNES style controller, a Pi and an Adafruit TFT display as the screen. It’s a fine project and on my “may do” list but it was the second Pi project which really impressed me.

The new Raspberry Pi B+ is official. No change at the core, it’s the same 700mhz Broadcom chip with 512MB RAM, but it’s all changes outside. There’s a new USB/Ethernet chip, 4 USB ports, composite video pushed into the 4pin audio connector, reworked power handling and a 40 pin GPIO port. The latter is most likely to generate physical incompatibility though the layout changes mean no current cases will work. There’s more information over at Adafruit’s B+ page.

Hot Pi: First up, a hot rumour via Hackaday is that there’s a Raspberry B+ with 4 USB ports, no composite, a 40 pin GPIO port and other changes… is this real? We shall see, but the Pi has been aching for an update and even if this isn’t it, there’s a gap to be filled. MeARM by JavaScript: Two of my favourite projects, the low cost MeARM robot ARM and the JavaScript running Espruino board have been brought together for a fun little remote control project for the ARM.

Just announced in the last few hours, CentOS 7 for x86-64 has arrived. This is the first release under the new arrangements since Red Hat reversed into CentOS, leaving the distro independent but hiring a number of key players. Apart from this being a rapid arrival for a major new release, the announcement notes that they aim to get future updates heading out within 24-48 hours of release. There’s a new versioning system too, so this is Cento 7.

Want to be your own GSM Base Station? This article will show you one way, though before you get too excited you’ll need a Ettus USRP B200 which starts at £495, or some other RTLSDR rig. This isn’t a cheap venture but the article steps through bringing the BBB together with the base station and adding the call handling and routing through OpenBTS. At the other end of the scale, Hackaday pointed to this tiny bubble clock project which uses the old-school LEDs which have recently reappeared on the market and a MSP430 microcontroller to create a perfboard based clock.

Docker 1.1.0: The first post 1.0 update for Docker is in and Docker 1.1.0 now has a .dockerignore mechanism for ignoring file changes, containers that now pause when a commit it happening (rather than messing them up), container log tailing, the ability to feed tar archives to docker build and other changes which should make life a bit easier and more predictable. Rust 0.11.0: The latest Rust announcement for version 0.

And catching up with the week just past at Codescaling…. Google I/O brought us a beta version of Android Studio and a developer preview of Android L with images for emulators and the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (Wifi only). A new look and feel, lots more APIs and a general feeling that Google’s pulling their various efforts back into one cohesive while (for good or bad and for who is another discussion).

Regular readers may have noticed a bit of a slow down in postings as I’ve been rearranging the scheduling of things here at Codescaling to allow for other commitments. Hopefully, I’ll be doing a regular Sunday catchup of what would have been snippets and during the week I should, all going well, be looking at a particular thing, be it software or hardware, thats in scope that week. As some may know, I’m curating HackWimbledon and may cover some of the hands on stuff there.