Category:Projects -Research and Education

2010-10-07T13:05:37Z

Rrieber:

This webpage is provided so that Researchers, Students and Professors using the Gumstix OpenEmbedded build system can showcase their Gumstix based projects, and pass on links to other sources of information and materials. This information is entirely user generated and supported.

'''Customer additions and edits are encouraged, but please read the help page before you make any major edits.'''
''Note: you will need to create a new user account if you would like to contribute or edit content on this site.''

==2010==
==== International Space University in Strasbourg, France ====
A team of three students at the International Space University have developed a Gumstix-powered experiment to track aircraft from a balloon-platform in the stratosphere. The experiment, called I-BATE (ISU-Balloon Air-Traffic control Experiment), will launch the second week of October 2010 (weather permitting) from Esrange Space Center in the Swedish arctic. There are three main components of the experiment: 1) a receiver provided by [http://www.kinetic-avionics.com/ Kinetic Avionics], which listens to a plane's transponder beacon using a system called ADS-B, 2) a custom designed board that regulates and distributes power and also controls the temperatures of various components, and 3) an Overo Earth mounted on a Tobi expansion board that stores the aircraft signals and relays it in real-time to the ground via the balloon's ethernet telemetry system.

I-BATE hopes to prove the feasibility of space-based air-traffic management to mitigate air-traffic congestion and to make air travel safer. The balloon launch is provided by a program called BEXUS, realised under a bilateral Agency Agreement between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB). The Swedish share of the payload has been made available to students from other European countries through a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). More information on I-BATE can be found on their [http://i-bate.isunet.edu/ website]. BEXUS information can be found on the [http://rexusbexus.net/ BEXUS website].

==== Aberystwyth University in Wales ====
Aberystwyth University Intelligent Robotics Group presents Pinta - the Autonomous Sailing Robot. Pinta is a modified Topper Taz sailing dingy fitted out to be computer controllable.

Pinta was designed for the [http://www.microtransat.org Microtransat Challenge] - a transatlantic race of fully autonomous sailing boats in September 2010 that starts in Valentia, County Kerry, Ireland. The race aims to stimulate the development of autonomous sailing boats through friendly competition. The finish line will be along the line of 60 degrees West, between 10 and 25 degrees North. Each team must designate a 50km wide point centred on this line to which they are aiming.

Pinta's control system runs on a Gumstix computer and PIC microcontroller and uses GPS, compass, wind and battery sensors to help it sail to a series of GPS waypoints.

Visit the Microtransat website to track Pinta's progress and watch their video on Youtube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0o5evr4EpA here].

==== Carnegie Mellon University in United States ====

The CMU Scout development team is back, demonstrating ing one of several suspension tests as part of the Scout proving grounds.

They are also in the process of prototyping their Gumstix-based computing board!

Colony Scout website [http://www.colonyscout.com here]. Robotics Club website [http://www.robotoicsclub.org here].

Watch their Youtube video via [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4883KYsylM this link]

====University of Aarhus in Denmark====

Alexandru Csete, also known as OZ9AEC, is a physicist from the University of Aarhus doing [http://www.oz9aec.net/index.php/gumstix-overo experiments with Gumstix Overo]. Alexandru also works as an all round nerd at Rovsing A/S usually in projects within the European space industry.

====King Abdullah University of Science & Technology in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, vis Stanford====

Yasser Khan is developing a [http://sites.google.com/site/tasifkhan/projects Wireless Embedded Control System] for Atomically Precise Manufacturing – to achieve the highest degree of precision possible, and ideally leading to atomically identical structures.

==2009==

===Gumstix in Universities across North America===

====Carnegie Mellon (USA) developed an undergrad course on embedded real-time systems====

Priya Narasimhan: "we're running our core [http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ee349 undergrad embedded real-time systems course] based on the gumstix. We had great success with using the gumstix, and I continued to use it for our [http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ece549 senior capstone course] as well.

Our class has 130 juniors and seniors (twice the enrollment as last year, which is a good thing ;-)."

Priya Narasimhan
Associate Professor
[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~priya Electrical and Computer Engineering Department]
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890

==== MIT Space Elevator Team ====

[http://mclinkor.mit.edu/index.php MIT Space Elevator Team] at [http://www.mit.edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology] is using GumStix hardware in their beam powered climber. The climber will be competing in the NASA Centennial [http://www.elevator2010.org/site/competition.html Space Elevator Challenge].

==== MIT Cerebro mesh network ====

[http://flounder.media.mit.edu/cerebro/index.php/Welcome_to_Cerebro Cerebro] is a scalable, light-weight platform that allows 802.11b/g devices to form a mesh network and offers presence information, exchange information without an operator or a network connection.

====NetBEAMS (Networked Bay Environmental Assessment Monitoring System)====

[http://code.google.com/p/netbeams/ NetBEAMS/ (Networked Bay Environmental Assessment Monitoring System] builds an end-to-end application for viewing measurements in real-time from probes distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay.

====Stanford AI Lab, California research on Artificial Intelligence====

Tim Hunter and his group are using Overo for research at the [http://ai.stanford.edu/ Stanford AI Lab]]

====Stanford Computer Graphics Lab, California and the Camera 2.0 project====

My research group is working with researchers from Adobe and Nokia on a project called [http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/camera-2.0/ camera 2.0], which is an effort to create hardware and software architectures for cameras that are programmable to the lowest levels. With such programmability, we hope to take much of the recent research in computational photography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_photography), done originally with DSLR cameras on tripods and in laboratory conditions, and apply it to real hand-held camera systems. One of requirements for that is to have fast, direct access to the sensor to allow for tight low-level control loops for systems such as autofocus or synchronization with flashes or other odd hardware.

An OMAP3530 looks to be a nearly-ideal processing platform for such a camera, since it is tightly integrated but still has substantial processing power - our current prototype forces us to program heavy-duty processing code on an FPGA, which is quite laborious.

Contact: [http://graphics.stanford.edu/~talvala Eino-Ville (Eddy) Talvala], Graduate Research Assistant, Stanford Computer Graphics Lab

====UC Berkeley doing river current research====

A team of researchers from the University of California at Berkeley trying to learn more about the river currents in the delta.

The researchers are working with propelled 4-foot-long submarines and floating drifters equipped with GPS-receivers for positioning, GSM-modules for communication, and sensors inside for recording temperature, salinity, and currents.

More [http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9973448-54.html here].

====University of Massachusetts Amherst's remote monitoring of riverbed ecosystems====

Rivernet is a wireless sensor network for remote monitoring of riverbed ecosystems. More [http://sensors.cs.umass.edu/projects/rivernet/hardware.html here].

===Gumstix in Universities outside North America===

==== Pixhawk: Micro Air Vehicle Computer Vision Platform ====

The Pixhawk project offers students the possibility to do a hands-on semester or masters thesis in the Pixhawk lab. In contrast to other typical semester theses, this practicum will include a lot more practical work directly on the micro helicopter. Students will have the opportunity to directly test their algorithms on the micro helicopter or on one of the hardware prototyping platforms.

For more information, click [http://pixhawk.ethz.ch/wiki/team/thesis here].

====University of Southampton: measuring glaciers in Iceland====

Kirk and his [http://envisense.org/glacsweb/index.html Glacsweb team] have a PXA255-based Gumstix connex computer sitting on a Iceland in Edmonton measuring the depth of the glacier.

Electronics and Computer Science are testing Gumstix for various sensor networks, pervasive and robotics projects. This includes a [http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~km/projs/gumstix/index.html gumsense] board for I/O to sensors.

====Aberystwyth University: Aberystwyth, Wales, UK and a transatlantic autonomous sailing boat====

[http://www.aber.ac.uk/compsci Aberystwyth University Department of Computer Science] is using gumstix in several sailing robots. These are being used to autonomously perform oceanography and to compete in the [http://www.microtransat.org Microtransat Challenge] a transatlantic autonomous boat race.

* [http://users.aber.ac.uk/cjs06/homepage/index.php?display=content/Research/Second%20Robot Sailing Robot research using the Gumstix ]

====NICTA and the University of New South Wales, Australia developed a clarinet-playing robot====

Australian research group NICTA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed a clarinet-playing robot that runs Linux. The "Robo-Clarinet" won first prize at the Artemis Music Orchestra competition for autonomous, embedded musical instrument performances.

More [http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS7651953393.html here].

==2008 and earlier==

=== Gumstix in Universities across North America ===

====Arizona State University: Tempe, AZ====
ENIPS Project (Embedded Network Intrusion & Detection System) started at CABIT Research Lab at Arizona State University in June 05. The project is to build an intrusion detection and prevention system in one tiny box, size of a cellphone, that is itself secure(transparent), robust and easy to manage.

* Website: [http://public.cabit.wpcarey.asu.edu/enips Enips]
* Contact: Weqaar Janjua <janjua@asu.edu>

====Stanford University: Palo Alto, CA====
Deanna Stewart is part of a student group ("Firehose") in the college of the Management of Science and Engineering. Deanna & Patrick & Brent & Brian & Anton (aka Firehose) have completed their study on creativity in the workplace, including studying the gumstix management team.

====University of British Columbia: Vancouver, Canada====
APSC 486 APSC 486 - New Venture Design is a one-year long joint course taught between Electrical Engineering and the Sauder School of Business in which students conceive and develop a realistic commercial product. Three APSC 486 students are using the Gumstix to implement a Bt-enabled cellphone peripheral.

For more on the gumstix at UBC, contact [http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~davem Prof. Dave Michelson ]

====Clemson University: Clemson, SC====
Gumstix are being used to gather data from wireless sensor networks out in the field and send it to our lab via Meteor Burst modem.

====Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY====
We are using gumstix for a portable equipment for measurement of fluorescence. The gumstix controls light intensity, temperature and sequences the fluid handling steppers+pumps. It also does analysis of the data and displays the results on a small LCD display.
* [http://www.ece.sunysb.edu/~bmukher Website]

====Utah State University: Logan, UT====
Using the Gumsitx to develop an advanced Laser Tag system that uses both GPS and wireless communication to enhance gameplay.

* [http://secs.elwiki.com SECS Project]

====Florida International University: Miami, Florida====
Florida International University's IEEE Student Branch Robotics Team is using Gumstix and Robostix to create an object recognizing rover for the 2008 IEEE Hardware Competition. Inquiries can be made to Chris Rodriguez <Crodr021@fiu.edu>

=== Gumstix in Universities & Tehnical Institutes outside North America ===

====Reading University: Reading, UK====
Dan Taylor's PhD focusses on detecting faults in supermarket fridges using artificial immune systems and evolutionary neural networks of various types project. He has various projects starting up involving the gumstix motherboard. More to come from Dan.

* [http://logicalgenetics.com/ PhD site]

====Technical University of Cluj Napoca: Cluj Napoca, Romania====
Radu Bogdan Rusu is in the Faculty of Automation & Computer Science as a PhD student.

Update: Radu moved to the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, [http://ias.in.tum.de Intelligent Autonomous Systems research group] (Computer Science department IX).

* [http://www.rbrusu.com PhD site ]

====University of Deusto, Spain====
Juan Ignacio Vazquez is doing research about embedding Semantic Web technologies into Ubiquitous Computing platforms in order to create more intelligent, perceptive and reactive devices. The prototypes are called ''smobjects'' (smart objects): intelligent agents that exchange semantically annotated information in order to create a shared knowledge space about the environment. Smobjects can spontaneously discover each other and be configured with high-level behaviors using appropriate vocabularies and ontologies.

One of the prototypes is a talking plant integrated in the environment, aware of existing conditions (e.g. dangerous or flammable materials) alerting the user about any existing hazard. Other prototype is a weather-aware umbrella that discovers surrounding sources of weather data (such as a rain sensor or an Internet connection to download a weather forecast), blinking if the user intends to leave home without it (if needed).

* [http://awareit.com awareIT.com (PhD site)]

[[Category: Projects]]

Build Environment Ubuntu 9.04

2010-06-11T03:26:56Z

Rrieber:

This is based on the set-up for Ubuntu 8.10 with file modifications as described [http://www.nabble.com/Ubuntu-8.10-and-Open-Embeded-td21136352.html on this thread]. gumstix-oe version is 318.

This HOWTO has also been tested and found to work with Ubuntu 9.10.

== Setup Build Environment ==
1) Get Ubuntu linux 9.04, and install it on your computer; you can install a vmware version of Ubuntu too, but it will be slow during the building process.

Reconfigure sh to point to bash, not dash:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

Answer no when asked whether you want to install dash as /bin/sh.

2) Install (build-essential, help2man, diffstat, texi2html, texinfo, libncurses5-dev, cvs, gawk, python-dev, python-pysqlite2, python-psyco, ckermit, lrzsz, subversion) by using apt-get. i.e:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential help2man diffstat texi2html texinfo libncurses5-dev cvs gawk
sudo apt-get install python-dev python-pysqlite2 python-psyco ckermit lrzsz subversion

See [[Bitbake_on_Ubuntu|Bitbake On Ubuntu]] for directions on how to setup Bitbake.

3) Download the source from svn, caching the source code
mkdir ~/gumstix
cd ~/gumstix
<nowiki>svn co https://gumstix.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gumstix/trunk gumstix-oe</nowiki>
cat gumstix-oe/extras/profile >> ~/.bashrc
sudo groupadd oe
sudo usermod -a -G oe YOUR_CURRENT_USERNAME
sudo mkdir /usr/share/sources
sudo chgrp oe /usr/share/sources
sudo chmod 0775 /usr/share/sources
sudo chmod ug+s /usr/share/sources

3.5) Modify ~/gumstix/gumstix-oe/org.openembedded.snapshot/classes/base.bbclass to correct a common SIGPIPE error (fix is in OE trunk, but not yet in gumstix-oe). basically we are adding a small function called subprocess_setup() which removes the SIGPIPE handler and then modifying oe_unpack_file() to call the function instead of system():

<pre>--- a/classes/base.bbclass
+++ b/classes/base.bbclass
@@ -728,9 +728,14 @@
:
}

+def subprocess_setup():
+ import signal, subprocess
+ # Python installs a SIGPIPE handler by default. This is usually not what
+ # non-Python subprocesses expect.
+ signal.signal(signal.SIGPIPE, signal.SIG_DFL)

def oe_unpack_file(file, data, url = None):
- import bb, os
+ import bb, os, signal, subprocess
if not url:
url = "file://%s" % file
dots = file.split(".")
@@ -799,7 +804,7 @@

cmd = "PATH=\"%s\" %s" % (bb.data.getVar('PATH', data, 1), cmd)
bb.note("Unpacking %s to %s/" % (base_path_out(file, data), base_path_out(os.getcwd(), data)))
- ret = os.system(cmd)
+ ret = subprocess.call(cmd, preexec_fn=subprocess_setup, shell=True)

os.chdir(save_cwd)
</pre>

(source: kergoth on #oe on irc.freenode.net. [http://gitorious.org/gumstix-oe/mainline/commit/f73c64e7295be1e1065f898b49f50a02e812161c original commit])

4) Downgrade to gcc-4.1 and g++-4.1 and change the links:

sudo aptitude install gcc-4.1 g++-4.1
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/gcc-4.1 /usr/bin/gcc
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/g++-4.1 /usr/bin/g++

Check the links are correct using:

ls -l /usr/bin/gcc
ls -l /usr/bin/g++

5) Log out and log in again.

6) Build the basic image, it will fail with an error in dbus:

bitbake gumstix-basic-image

Edit <code>gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/work/i686-linux/dbus-native-1.0.1-r0/dbus-1.0.1/dbus/dbus-sysdeps-unix.c</code>

Add this struct,

<code><pre>
struct ucred {
unsigned int pid;
unsigned int uid;
unsigned int gid;
};
</pre></code>

after the macros.

7) Build the basic image, it will fail with an error in sumversion:

bitbake gumstix-basic-image

Edit <code>gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/work/gumstix-custom-verdex-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/gumstix-kernel-2.6.21-r1/linux-2.6.21/scripts/mod/sumversion.c</code>

Add this line,

#include <limits.h>

after all of the other includes.

8) Build the basic image again. If it fails with an error in gconf-dbus, do the following:

a. download file http://download.gnome.org/sources/GConf-dbus/2.16/GConf-dbus-2.16.0.tar.gz

b. move and rename this file to:
/usr/share/sources/trunk_developer.imendio.com_.svn.gconf-dbus_606_.tar.gz

9) Build the basic image again, this time it should work:

bitbake gumstix-basic-image

10) If everything builds ok, it could be a good idea to modify the dbus-sysdeps-unix.c and sumversion.c files in their respective packages in /usr/share/sources as otherwise everytime you do a rebuild they will be wiped. Note that dbus-sysdeps-unix.c is found in package dbus-1.0.1.tar.gz, and sumversion.c is found in package linux-2.6.21.tar.bz2.

[[Category:How_to_-_general]]
[[Category:How_to_-_Ubuntu]]

Gumstix User Wiki - User contributions [en]

Category:Projects -Research and Education

Build Environment Ubuntu 9.04