OSSG Events

Category for OSSG related events, that appear in the calendar.


Chips Pt.3 (BERI, Do we need separate Hardware Construction languages? OpenTransputer) – London 18/06/2015

The BCS OSSG and the OSHUG are hosting 3 talks on Open Source Chip Designs.

The event will be held on Thursday 18th June at BCS HQ – 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required.

Note: Please aim to arrive by 6:15 as the event will start at 6:30 prompt.

BERI: An open RISC softcore for research and experimentation

OpentransputerBERI (the Bluespec Extensible RISC Implementation) is a softcore processor jointly developed by SRI International and The University of Cambridge. It implements a superset of the MIPS III ISA in Bluespec, a high-level HDL and supports a fully Open Source, permissively licensed, software stack comprising the FreeBSD operating system and the LLVM compiler suite. This talk will describe the design of the BERI processor and its use.

BERI was created to facilitate experimentation at the boundaries between CPU architecture, operating systems, and programming languages. It runs in Altera and Xilinx FPGAs, including the NetFPGA 10G board. At 100MHz, it is fast enough to use as a real computer (albeit a fairly slow one).

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Wiring the Internet of Things with Raspberry Pi & Node-RED – London 21/05/2015

The BCS OSSG, IBM UK and the OSHUG, with support from the Knowledge Transfer Network and hardware sponsored by RS DesignSpark are hosting an event on wiring the Internet of Things.

The event will be held on Thursday 21st May at Fab Lab London, 1 Frederick’s Place, Off Old Jewry, London, EC2R 8AE from 12:30:00pm to 6:30pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required.

Node-RED

Node-REDNode-RED is a visual tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. Used together with Raspberry Pi it provides a compact, powerful platform that is able to read sensors, control outputs, and send and receive data to and from the Web and other systems.

This workshop will provide an introduction to Node-RED and integrating simple sensors and outputs, applying basic processing and publishing data to the Web. No prior experience with either Node-RED or electronics is required. However, while not strictly necessary, some experience of JavaScript would be beneficial as this is used to implement custom functionality within Node-RED. (more…)


Hackerspace/makerspace/fablab panel discussion – London 16/04/2015

HackspaceThe BCS OSSG and the OSHUG are hosting a panel discussion which will explore the organisation, operation, challenges and benefits of creative spaces known as hackerspaces, makerspaces and fablabs.

There will be representatives from Makespace Cambridge, South London Makerspace, So Make It (Southampton), Fab Lab London, London Hackspace and the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK.

The event will be held on Thursday 16th April at BCS HQ – 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required.

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Make a Shrimp for Easter – a practical embedded computing workshop for kids and their parents/guardians – London 01/05/2015

The BCS Open Source and Software Practice Advancement specialist groups are hosting a workshop which looks at embedded computing for kids. The event will be held on Wednesday 1st April 2015 at BCS HQ – 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required. Places are limited; please book as soon as possible.

Synopsis

ShrimpThe Shrimp is an incredibly fun, low cost computer that can be built and programmed by just about anyone, in only a few hours and with no prior experience of electronics or programming. Comprising of a simple circuit that is assembled from a handful of components, it can quickly be made to flash LEDs and put to use in exciting projects that have switches, sensors and outputs.

During this workshop participants will first construct the basic Shrimp circuit, before programming it to blink a single LED, and then go onto a more advanced project – such as adding more LEDs and programming it to paint letters in the air with these as it is waved about (using a phenomenon termed persistence of vision). At the end of the evening, teams will demonstrate the fruits of their labours to each other and there may well be some Easter eggs to share around as a reward!

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Low Power to the People – take back Bluetooth Low Energy control! – London 19/03/2015

The BCS OSSG and the OSHUG are hosting three talks which look at Open Source wireless communications. The event will be held on Thursday 19th March at BCS HQ – 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA from 5:30pm to 8:00pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required.

Programming BLE the hard way: bare metal programming of nRF51 BLE tokens for fun and profit

Bluetooth Low EnergyThe talk will start with a brief overview of the Bluetooth Low Energy advertisement protocol and how to implement bare-metal BLE on top of the ARM-based nRF51 chip – without using the manufacturer provided Bluetooth stack. The general development flow will be explored along with some useful examples, closing with some mischief that can be caused using this knowledge.

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Augmented Reality for Walkers on Android – Southampton 17/03/2015

OpenStreetMapThe BCS Hampshire Branch, Southampton Solent University and the BCS OSSG are hosting a talk discussing the development of an Android augmented reality app for walkers in which the camera feed is overlaid with footpath data from OpenStreetMap.

The event will be held on Tuesday 17th March at Southampton Solent University, Reginald Mitchell building, 3rd floor, room RM325, 326 East Park Terrace, Southampton, SO14 0RD from 6:00pm to 9:00pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required.

 

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Exploring “Open” in Energy, Electricity from Woodchips, OpenTRV – London 19/02/2015

The BCS OSSG and the OSHUG are hosting three talks which look at Open Source technologies in support of the generation and efficient use of energy.

The event will be held on Thursday 19th February at BCS HQ –  5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA from 5:30pm to 8:00pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required.

Exploring “Open” in Energy

Hydrogen fuel cellsArcola Energy builds energy systems using fuel cells powered by hydrogen. Fuel cells are one of those great ideas that has yet to gain much traction in real markets. They put men on the moon, but since then commercial progress has been slow. One way of opening up uses of fuel cells is to involve a much wider developer community. To explore this Arcola has developed a fuel cell developer kit and started on the road to working with Open Source groups. This talk will look at our journey, the success to far and the challenges ahead.

Richard Kemp-Harper is a former research scientist who spent several years managing web development, including Open Source systems at Oxfam. He then moved into technology and innovation, working at Innovate UK running innovation programmes in intelligent mobility, rail and energy. He specialises in not being a specialist.

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Open Source in Business – Sheffield 22/01/2015 1

The Open Source Specialist Group, in association with Sheffielf Hallam University are hosting a series of talks on Open Source in Business.

The event will be held at Sheffield Hallam University, Owen Building, 1028 Lecture Theatre, City Campus, Howard Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB from 5:30 pm.

This event is free to attend for both BCS Members and non-members but booking is required.

A series of talks that explore different aspects of Open Souce in commercial contexts, including crowdfunding an open hardware microenterprise, navigating licensing issues and trade associations.

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