Projects - 2007

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These projects were posted in 2007 or earlier.


Personal, Robotics and Educational Projects

Here are is a selection of personal, robotics and education projects that customers have done with their gumstix. Feel free to add your own with the edit button above!

Gumstix on YouTube.com

Click here to see the various personal and hobbyist projects at YouTube.com based on gumstix technology.


Audio

PersonalSoundtrack: Greg Elliott

Location: University of California, Irvine: Irvine, CA

PersonalSoundtrack, a tiny wearable computer, detects your walking or running speed and plays songs from your music library that match your pace. Song speed is adjusted in real-time to match subtle variations in your gait, while larger, deliberate pace changes cause the device to change songs. You simply put it on and begin moving; that's it.

Most computational devices require the user to adapt to the machine. PersonalSoundtrack offers, instead, a symbiotic relationship: both human and machine actively adapt to each other in real-time. The 'interface' is one's natural gait. There is no optimal or pre-defined experience, encouraging meandering, wasting time, and loitering.

This project has been demonstrated at several shows and featured in several magazines.

PublicSoundtrack: Greg Elliott

Location: University of California, Irvine: Irvine, CA

  • Website - PublicSoundtrack
  • Contact - gelliott followed by an at sign then uci dot edu

Tunestix

Project, open to all to contribute to, working towards a framework making it easier for people to construct their own portable music player using a gumstix computer as the base. At present only mp3s can be played off a CF card however many additions planned such as voice synthesis using flite of Wikipedia and the use of CF Wireless Card to stream iTunes shares.

  • Website: Tunestix
  • Contact: James Coxon <jac208@cam.ac.uk>

Education

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: 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 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.

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.

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.

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, Intelligent Autonomous Systems research group (Computer Science department IX).

University of Southampton: UK

Electronics and Computer Science are testing Gumstix for various sensor networks, pervasive and robotocs projects. This includes a gumsense board for I/O to sensors.

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).

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>

Aberystwyth University: Aberystwyth, Wales, UK

Using gumstix in research projects relating to sailing robots, several final year undergraduate projects and undergraduate teaching as part of a module on mobile, wearable and embedded systems.

Security-Enhanced

Tuxedo-es.org has information on Linux embedded devices developed on gumstix and taking advantage of NSA security-enhanced Linux, the JFFS2 filesystem extended attributes and other enhancements.

Robots and UAVs

Chatterboxes

The Autonomy Lab at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada is designing a fleet of small robots around Gumstix boards. We have ported Player to Gumstix, and are developing controller code and matching Player drivers for the Robostix interface board. We will release our code and designs under GPL and Creative Commons licenses as soon as possible.

  • Chatterbox interview - an interview with Professor Vaughan about his "swarm of chatterboxes" - his gumstix-driven robots.

Flockbots

FlockBots Open Robotics Specification Wiki at George Mason University: Washington, DC, USA

The goal of the FlockBots project is to produce a small (7-inch), differential-drive mobile robot crammed with functionality for about $800. The robot includes a Gumstix 200bt, servoed camera, gripper, encoded wheels, five range finders, touch sensors, and I2C. The robots are intended to be a major step up in capability from "hobby"-type robot kits running off of PIC controllers, etc., while being inexpensive enough to construct a swarm on a budget.

We have published the specification, software, vendor information, and extensive construction details in the hope that others will be able to build similar bots without having to reinvent the wheel. Almost all the robot parts are COTS and provided software is free open source. We invite you to contribute to the website: suggest design changes, revised software, or include a link to your own swarm robotics page.

AIT Dept. at George Mason University

During the 06-07 academic year, students in the AIT Dept. at George Mason University in Manassas, VA built a Gumstix based payload flown on a radio controlled helicopter to do mapping, video and networking. This is a project for a class on Information Defense Technologies. More on the mission can be found on Dr. Marchant's website and on the class wiki. During the Fall 07 term, students will integrate a Gumstix with an iRobot Create to produce a surveillance UGV. (Can it be a coincidence that GUM is an anagram of GMU?)

Penn State RCOE: University Park, PA, USA

Our group is working on Rotary-Wing UAV. Recently we use gumstix 200-bt and robostix instead of early used PC/104 system. the new gumstix system is much smaller and highly integrated, which is ideal for aerospace special demand in weight. the platform is still under development and by now everything looks pretty good. latest news will be reported on our project page.

Flightstix

The North Carolina State University [http://www.ncsu.edu/stud_orgs/ar Aerial Robotics Club is developing a UAV autopilot module for the GumStix, called FlightStix. The FlightStix may be used by ARC to compete in the AUVSI international aerial robotics competition. The system is intended for use in medium-sized fixed-wing (15-50 lb) and rotor wing (5-15 lb) unmanned aerial vehicles. The system's sensors and outputs include:

  • 10-channel independant servo-type PWM input and output
  • 3-axis gyroscope
  • 3-axis accelerometer
  • 3-axis magnetometer
  • Ultrasonic altimeter
  • 2 differential-pressure transducers (for pitot/static and barametric altitude)
  • GPS

The hardware used to develop FlightStix consists almost entirely of donations from various electronics manufacturers, including GumStix, Inc.

MIT Space Elevator Team

MIT Space Elevator Team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is using GumStix hardware in their beam powered climber. The climber will be competing in the NASA Centennial Space Elevator Challenge.

Binocular vision Gumstix

I used a gumstix to give my FIRST robot binocular vision, and over the summer I'll be using a robostix and the CMUcams to write an easy-to-customize binocular vision implementation with the CMUcams for gumstix robotics projects.


Robofish

London, England.

Professor Hu at the University of Essex, London has designed a robotic fish swimming in the London Aquarium. Next up, a whole school of fish.

Cheap Robotic Microhelicopter

A tutorial on building a robotic helicopter experimentation platform from off-the-shelf components.

ZeeRO mobile robot

The Robotics Research Group, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania has created a sub-1000 Euro mobile robot, which can be used as a standard research platform in their labs. ZeeRO (Zee RObot - see Snatch, the movie) is a differential drive, low cost mobile robot, using a Gumstix 400bt, 2 "clustered" Acroname Brainstem boards (although one of them is just for expansion purposes right now), 4 x SONAR, 2 x IR, 1 x pyroelectric sensors, together with a CMUcam2 servoed.

We ported the Player platform to Gumstix, and use Javaclient to control our robot's complex algorithms. We're experimenting a lot with neural networks, intelligent agents, and D*-like dynamic navigation algorithms.

In order to control ZeeRO from Player, we wrote a new driver (zeero) and modified some existing ones (such as the cmucam2 driver). The zeero driver is providing the following interfaces to the client library: ^- position2d (for the servos)^ ^- sonar (for the ultrasonic sensors)^ ^- ir (for the infrared detectors)^ ^ - aio (for the pyroelectric sensor)^ The cmucam2 driver (thanks to Richard Vaughan for the original driver) provides a blobfinder, a ptz and a camera interface to the robot. Schemes, pictures, ideas, explanations, and most importantly, source codes are provided on the ZeeRO web site.

The High Altitude Slug Project

This is a UK based project to send a high altitude glider powered by a Gumstix to the edge of space, around 100,000 feet.

Nomad Autonomous Buggy

Side project to produce an autonomous vehicle based on a Tamiya RCO Attack Vehicle (R/C Car) and a Gumstix connex with STUART Waysmall. Uses radio modems, GPS and PWM.

AMFO-1/Bobby

Montevideo, Uruguay.

This project belongs to three students of electrical engineering and to the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de la Republica.

Its our degree project and consists in designing, constructing and validating an autonomous flying vehicle. The main purpose was to develop a platform for further investigation in the area so it needed to be scalable. Due to limited budget, the construction was done entirely by the group which held to time problems.

The system includes:

  • 1x Gumstix connex 400xm
  • 1x Robostix
  • 1x Tweener
  • 3-axis accelerometer (2x ADXL320)
  • 3-axis gyroscope (3x ADXRS300)
  • GPS (1x GPSstix)

The system is deployed and landed manually and switched in auto-mode using a free channel from the R/C radio. It's supposed to follow a determined path (pre flight configured). Right now we are in the final stages, only resting the interface for tuning the PID loops. All the software is open source based, and very special thanks goes to all the contributors on the gumstix mailing list. You can visit a blog of the project (Spanish) to see some of the work and news, an english version and more complete webpage will be available when time permits it.


Sailing Robots

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 Microtransat Challenge a transatlantic autonomous boat race.

Currently 3 boats are using the gumstix:

  • "The ARC" - A 1.5m long plywood boat. Uses stepper motors to drive two sails and the rudder. Originally a robostix was used to do this, with a wifi enabled gumstix (connex 200 with CF wifi card) being used to reflash the robostix over i2c. This has now been replaced with a single gumstix controlling a series of GPIO14 chips to drive the steppers as well as some DS1621 temperature sensors.
  • "Beagle B" - A 3.5m long fibre glass boat based on an off the shelf dinghy. This uses two linear actuators to drive the sail and rudder, these are controlled by MD22 motor controllers over I2C from the gumstix and a GPIO14 is used to read the feedback potentiometers on each actuator. A rowind ultrasonic windsensor, GPS and PG-500 compass are all connected to serial ports on the gumstix, GPIO lines on a breakout-gs are used to switch transistors which control the power to each of these. Communications is provided by an 802.11b compact flash card configured to behave as an access point as this was found to reconnect with greater ease than using ad-hoc mode. This boat is currently being fitted out to perform oceanographic monitoring and the control system is being redesigned to incorporate two gumstix, one for robot control and another to control the scientific instruments.
  • unamed boat - A 2.75m long dinghy intended to cross the atlantic in the Microtransat Challenge. An off the shelf tiller pilot controls steering and is connected to the gumstix via a serial interface. Another motor controls the sail using an MD-03 i2c controller. Comms are to be provided with an Iridium satellite phone.

GPS related

Pegasus High Altitude Balloon Project

By James Coxon - Project Website

The Pegasus High Altitude Balloon project is a UK based amateur student run project that involves launching payloads to "Near Space" (between an altitude of 60,000ft (20km) and 325,000ft (99km). This is achieved through the use of helium weather balloons which are designed to burst at a certain height and then the payload returns to earth via parachute. We have launched 3 payloads:

  • Pegasus I - (Gumstix basix + waysmall HWUART board) - reached an altitude of 20295m
  • Pegasus II - (Gumstix connex + waysmall STUART + CFstix) - lost
  • Pegasus III - (Gumstix connex + GPSstix) - reached altitude of 19495m
  • Pegasus IV - Under Construction

Features of gumstixs used:

  • GPS (serial, compact flash and onboard)
  • Interfacing with mobile phones (gnokii)
  • Interfacing with radio (Aerocomm 868mhz radio modems + 434mhz beacons)
  • Using GPIOs to trigger camera shutters + cutdown circuits
  • Batteries

NTP Clock

By Steve Falco

I used a gumstix with a netCF and GPSstix to build an NTP stratum 1 timeserver. I have an LCD display, showing time of day, location, satellites in view, etc.

A number of mods were done to the GPSstix. I added a pulse-per-second interrupt and a GPS reset circuit. I also hacksawed the 60-pin connectors off a tweener so I could superglue the tweener to the GPSstix (and white-wire it to the uart).

I also bisected the netCF with a hacksaw, so I could bulkhead mount the ethernet connector part of the board (and yes, I am a little bit crazy...).

Anyway, I'd be happy to make the code and schematics available if anybody wants to build something similar. Some pictures and a bit more info here: NTP Clock

Other

Mobile Phones

"Homebrew" mobile phones are being developed using a Gumstix at their core. The "Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club" (SVHMPC) is a collection of enthusiasts centred on developing such phones.

gumstix in Competitions

Ninth International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition

The 2006 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech has developed a unique submarine tailored to AUVSI‘s 9th International AUV Competition. The vehicle, Clarus, is designed to pack numerous sensing and analysis capabilities into a small, mobile, and waterproof platform. A PC/104 stack is used to interface sonar, depth, vision, and compass data, and to make autonomous decisions.

The computer is connected to the propulsion system via a Gumstix/Robostix microprocessor stack and Gamoto motor controllers, which provide low level control.

Download the Viriginia Tech project information here

Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition

RIT's Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition entry utilizes a gumstix connex as its main computer.

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