Black Market Archive

=Week 1 -- Projects from 2/28/11 - 3/4/11 =

PandaMediaBox

 * Description:
 * The PandaMediaBox will contian a 7 inch TouchPanel and used to play and control audio and video media. The goal is to play media from san or nas, IPTV, webradio, usb dvb sticks, usb storage devices, bluetooth or even a vdr. For Audio it will contain an integrated amplifier and for video the user can choose between the integrated 7 inch Panel or the HDMI output. Inputs are all done over the touchscreen, additional it will be possible to control via a webinterface and a secure api for e.g. smartphone applications.


 * Time frame:
 * 3 Months for the first useable Beta, 6 Months to include all features in a stable version


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Student of computer science, have done work for an embedded sensor network and bigger software projects.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * not available till now


 * Contact information
 * overflowed[at]gmail[.]com

Helping interface for dependent people

 * Description:
 *  Hardware & Software
 * Gesture/vocal interface to help person suffering from handicap (Blindness, paraplegia, quadriplegia) or elder peoples to keep independence:


 *  For different use schemes:
 * - To locate: a speaking GPS telling location (street name) on request (button or speech recognition).
 * - Read and tell (OCR and speech synthesis)
 * - Speech recognition actuators
 * - Gesture (eye movement or body movements) or speech commands for actuations
 * - Status of remote or local sensors of equipped home
 * - Communicate easily (voip and connected link thru wifi/GSM)


 *  Bringing all these features with the help of software:
 * - Gesture integration, character read OCR: image sensor and image processing
 * - Voice recognition / speech syntheses : audio processing
 * - Actuators and sensor (Local : serial / Ethernet link; remote Bluetooth wifi)
 * - Speech synthesis integrated for reading or locating
 * - Communication VOIP (start, stop communication with predefined list of contact trigged by voice or gesture)


 *  I know all these functions already exist separately, but want to integrate all these features in one system with all the advantages of the pandaboard :
 * - Small form factor
 * - Low power consumption
 * - Connectivity (video sensors, wifi Bluetooth…..)
 * - Power for video and audio processing
 * - Linux and OMAP Community
 * - Get a fully integrated solution with one small board!!!
 * - Pandas are peaceful and powerful bears!


 * Time frame:
 *  First hardware and software integration (within 6 month):
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - GPS (uart)
 * - Webcam USB
 * - Bluetooth sensor/actuator modules
 *  Software
 * - Gesture recognition (hand, body movement) and set some linked action
 * - Speech recognition and set some linked action
 * - Speech synthesis
 * - Actuator and sensors (got some Bluetooth/serial sensors and actuators)
 * - Get street position with speech synthesis work


 *  Second hardware and software integration
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - Design of an extension board GPS (external module with uart), image sensor
 * - Battery pack and case
 *  Software
 * - Eye movement recognition and set some linked action
 * - Develop a graphical interface for option settings for helpers
 * - More integration with person environment (generally home for quadriplegic or old people)


 *  Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * - Affected by persons suffering from handicap, elder peoples…
 * - Already set up some helping electronic (sensors, actuators)
 * - Want to develop a open community of helpers around pandaboard
 * - Work in electronic engineering (software AND hardware !)
 * - Developed electronic hardware devices (digital cameras, bluetooth sensors and actuators)
 * - Got a master in signal (audio and image) processing: openCV is my best friend !
 * - Developed linux driver for image sensors, PCI boards, LCD displays…
 * - Got some gesture recognition working on my Ubuntu intel inside computer


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Gesture (wayv) :
 * OpenCVwiki :
 * Speech recognition (cmu-sphinx) :
 * Text to speech (festival) :
 * GPS (navit) :


 * Contact information
 * helpingdependent.withpandaboard[at]gmail[.]com

Android In-Air Gesture User Interface with Pseudo-Holographic Display

 * Description:
 * Adding an in-air gesture user interface and a pseudo-holographic display to the Android platform running on a Pandaboard. Finger or hand gestures will be detected by a vision sensor, either visible light or infrared, and the data will be sent to the Pandaboard either via wireless connection such as Bluetooth or via USB. The data will be processed to translate to a useful Android input method (IME). In pseudo-holographic display mode, the projector connected to the Pandaboard via HDMI will project to a pseudo-holographic setup that either uses the 360 degree light field display technique or the pyramic-shaped Pepper's ghost effect. Both the input and output processings requires intensive computing power and it will be possible with Pandaboard high speed symmetric multiprocessing together with the powerful graphics core and the multimedia accelerator. This project will be a glimpse into the future and hopefully will bring usefulness and conveniences to everyone in various scenario, only limited by imagination.


 * Time frame:
 * 6 months


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Multimedia University Faculty of Engineering lecturer for subjects such as Robotics & Automations, Embedded System Design and Engineering Mathematics.
 * Android developer in the community CodeAndroid Malaysia focus on 3D, augmented reality and hardware such as robots. Giving presentations on Android in various national open source conferences and events
 * Supervising various Final Year Projects since 2008 related to 3D, natural user interface, augmented reality and Android.
 * Involved in research projects and publications related to Wiimote and multi-touch tabletop. Publication list at http://wenjiun.blogspot.com/search/label/Publication


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page will be set up soon.


 * A related blog post at http://wenjiun.blogspot.com/2011/03/android-in-air-gesture-user-interface.html


 * Contact information
 * wenjiun1024[at]gmail[.]com

Albino Interactive Lamp

 * Description:
 * The goal of the project codenamed "Albino" is to build an intelligent lamp/information device. The first iteration will take the form of a small tabletop device.  It would be a cross between an art piece and a functional device.  The central element of the device is a speaker (about 3 inches diameter) and a small microphone surrounded by 12 light capsules forming a circle. (very crude sketch here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149476/flamp.png)  Each capsule contains an RGB LED and the extremity of the capsule acts as a button.  The most basic use of the device could be as a clock.  Since there are 12 capsules, it is easy to represent time.  Touching the capsules could also set an alarm at the desired time.  The form factor offers a lot of possibilities and the idea is to create different applications : clock, internet radio station, weather station, musical instrument tuner, beat box, voice memo recorder, memory game, event notifier (email, IM etc.)  The project being fully open, people could build their own device and build applications and plugins.  We believe the Pandaboard would be a great companion to this project.  Our previous prototype used a WiFi Arduino which wasn't powerful enough to do all those things.  The Pandaboard has built-in WiFi, soundcard, plenty of memory, furthermore, we believe we could interface with the electronics directly from the Pandaboard since it features GPIO and serial communications.


 * Time frame:
 * 3 months. We would like to have this project ready around May 2011.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Studio Imaginaire is a company that focuses on open technologies mainly in the fields of arts and medias. We spent the last few years building an open-source multitouch table and participated actively in the community (http://nuigroup.com) while realizing the project.  The Albino project is also part of a larger project called the Open Technology Cookshow.  The goal of that project is to make a web show to promote the use of open technologies, the Albino would be our first project to be featured in the show.  We would document the process of building the device and also provide some entertainment in the form of interviews with local artists and tinkerers.  The core team for the Albino project consists of 5 people:  Nathanaël Lécaudé as lead designer, Simon Emmanuel Roux as coordinator and web programmer, Eric Andrade as lighting specialist, Tomas Valencia as industrial designer and finally Carl Matteau-Pelletier as electronic engineer.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Our main site is located here : http://studioimaginaire.com

Our last project is documented on our blog : http://studioimaginaire.com/blog (some content may be only in French) A video of our first lamp prototype (that was featured on Make and Engadget) can be seen here : http://vimeo.com/15996525


 * Contact information
 * nat[at]studioimaginaire[.]com

Open-Source Aerial Imagery platform (targeting autonomous aerial vehicles)

 * Description:
 * We plan on developing a open-source and easily hackable aerial imagery platform, targeting autonomous aerial vehicles. Recently there has been a huge explosion in growth in the Open Source UAV community, as well as a similar growth in the commercial viability of these platforms for geographic/ecological surveys, crisis management, emergency response, agriculture monitoring, filming and photography, and many more.  Our platform will be relatively low-cost (especially compared to commercial solutions) and highlight the features of the OMAP and PandaBoard to excel in this application. (Onboard video camera, hardware-accelerated jpeg compression/decompression, high-speed ethernet, wireless connectivity, low-power, and more!)
 * We will support controlling external digital cameras using a variety of protocols over the USB 2.0 hosts, the onboard camera support, and both at once. For storage we'll support efficient and secure wireless transfer to a ground station (based on the implementation we used to win our competition last year) while simultaneously creating a local backup on a USB harddrive or on the SD card.  Finally we will use GIS (Geospatial Information Systems) software running that will allow users to select which areas of the ground they want imagery of, and have the platform trim out undesired (or overlapping) portions of images to maximize wireless throughput.
 * Edit: I think this will mesh well with the rest of the Unmanned/Autonomous Aerial Vehicle projects already listed.


 * Time frame:
 * 4-5 months, we plan on having this platform mission ready for the 2011 competition (see below).


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Lead software developer and Imagery system designer for the NCSU Aerial Robotics Team. Last year (2010) NCSU Aerial Robotics got top marks and First Place at the international AUVSI Unmanned Aerial Systems competition.  The competition is to develop the best mission-capable autonomous aerial imagery platform for quickly and efficiently finding targets and points of interest.  We believe the pandaboard is perfectly suited to this application, as it is smaller, lighter, and more efficient than previous platforms (from us and other teams).  Our team has experience with ARM development (Linux and FreeRTOS as well as plain EABI) in other aspects of our competition, including designing and building target boards, developing and debugging software, and live in-mission testing/evaluation.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * The group's web page front is here. Our wiki page about the imagery system (and the pandaboard proposal) is here.


 * Contact information
 * ajray[at]ncsu[.]edu

LMCE Panda Port

 * Description:
 * Linux Media Center Edition (LMCE) is a package developed for kubuntu that aims to control all aspects of a home media environment including lighting and thermostat. Details of LMCE are found here


 * This project aims to use panda as a fully entitled orbiter (see link above for definition) to enable cost effective home control panels to be installed in any given room of a users house.


 * Time frame:
 * 3 months


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Developer for this project has worked 4 years on the TI Android team and currently developing audio features for Blaze.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * TBD, will update when available


 * Contact information
 * c-kelly[at]ti[.]com

Autotender

 * Description:
 * The Autotender will be a machine that can automatically created mixed alcoholic, or non-alcoholic, drinks. Drinks will be selectable from a graphical user interface. The machine will contain hundreds of preset drinks and even allow for custom drinks to be created on the fly by entering in the ratio of ingredients and selecting drink size. The project will also contain RFID technology allowing for an individuals drinking to be tracked and even compared to other individuals and even allow for things such as BAC estimation. RFID will also allow for easier drink dispensing (we all know how difficult GUIs get after a "few" drinks") by dispensing either the last drink selected or a preset set by user. More specific implementation details can be found at the project wiki page located at http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/Autotender


 * Time frame:
 * 3 months to working prototype, 6 months to finished appealing design


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * My name is Shane Anderson and I am currently a Junior in Electrical Engineering at Western Kentucky University. I've worked on several projects including designing a line tracking robotic car, building and programming a robotic arm gripper to play chess, and more. I've also programmed video games for several devices including xbox360, android, and PC.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/Autotender


 * Contact information
 * Kalagaraz[at]gmail[.]com or larry[.]anderson224[at]topper[.]wku[.]edu

Hidippus Mystaceus

 * Description:
 * [[image:Hidippus_Mystaceus1.png]]
 * Eight legged walking robot. Brain is accomplished using Pandaboard and world sensing with omnidirectional camera.
 * Eight legged walking robot. Brain is accomplished using Pandaboard and world sensing with omnidirectional camera.


 * Time frame:
 * This is recurring project with deadline set 2..4 months for to complete. In December we plan to use both robots on competition Robotex 2011.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Team members have strong IT and lesser robotics background. Members of Tartu University robotics lab.
 * * Tõnu Samuel does electronics and programming.
 * * Kalle-Gustav Kruus is good in SolidWorks and mechanics.
 * We are working on two robots. Because you ask for our background, I include details of both:
 * * Robot with interchangeable driving platform (wheels or legs, not important) but packed with eight cameras feeding 8x60fps images to onboard PC. Images get processed in real time on NVIDIA GTS450 GPU.
 * [[image:8cam1.png|200px|8x60fps!]] [[image:8cam2.png|200px|Cameras mount]] [[image:8cam3.png|200px|Robot design ver 1]] [[image:8cam4.png|200px|GPU computing test]]
 * Old project was split into two because system with legs vibrates and this may destroy lot of expensive hardware. So, eight cameras plus GPU robot will be redone with wheels and legged robot comes next:


 * * Legged robot with omnivision for Robotex 2011. We plan to use custom webcam with Sony 360 degrees lens hidden downside under body and lightweight computing system (Pandaboard!) to analyze input.
 * We have hardware left from previous attempt:
 * [[image:Hidippus_Mystaceus2.jpg|200px]]
 * Our tests indicate, that Beagleboard C4 CPU is completely loaded when shooting single VGA image at 30fps and nothing left to process it after. Dual core Cortex A9 should perform better. Also Beagleboard lacks peripherals we need.
 * Because of his physical properties (legs in front of view) robot is limited to see better image on stop. This makes it act like real animal - walk few steps, stop to make decicions, walk again. We expect this to be really funny side-effect.
 * We publish as much information as possible, so anyone is free to reproduce anything from our work.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Old (slow etc) walking platform as we have it http://www.youtube.com/user/secrgb#p/u/4/IPtFcZlq7Kc
 * Robot preview (old type) http://www.youtube.com/user/lilldiesel#p/u/3/KGIBjwZcQCU
 * Leg system in prototype phase http://www.youtube.com/user/lilldiesel#p/a/u/0/RoQnQTMOIa4
 * Old SolidWorks design, etc http://digi.physic.ut.ee/mw/index.php/Spidertank
 * Wiki where we just started to rebuild all information from old pages (old ones are inaccessible to outside world : http://digi.physic.ut.ee/mw/index.php/Tiim_IT_Grupp
 * Some more random photos about our past walker design in test:
 * Lifting heavy weights https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539129407791965554
 * --""-- https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539129422512188946
 * --""-- https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539130084914071762
 * Onboard computer box is empty. Testing cameras with laptop https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539129983885877282
 * Just walking with wireless remote control https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539130067548972962
 * Disassembled walker https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539130133804740946


 * Contact information
 * tonu[ät]jes[.]ee

= Week 2 -- Projects from 3/7/11 - 3/11/11 =

In-Air Gesture User Interface

 * Description:
 * The project aims to add an in-air gesture user interface to the embedded Linux platform running on Pandaboard. Hand gestures will be captured by a depth camera, and the data will be sent to the Pandaboard via USB. The data will be processed with the help of various Kinect open source projects to provide a gesture user input to the applications that will be developed, as listed below:


 * Media player (hand gestures for playing, pausing, volume control), essentially a gesture TV
 * Photo browser (zooming, rotating, swiping to next)
 * Gaming (motion control)
 * Augmented reality application (panning, selecting), utilizing the RGB capture of the depth camera
 * 3D model/scene browser, which will incorporate head tracking
 * [[image:Pandaboard gesture.png|500px]]


 * Time frame:
 * 6 months


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Multimedia University Faculty of Engineering lecturer for subjects such as Robotics & Automations, Embedded System Design and Engineering Mathematics.
 * Android developer in the community CodeAndroid Malaysia focus on 3D, augmented reality and hardware such as robots. Giving presentations about Android in various national open source conferences and events.
 * Supervising various Final Year Projects since 2008 related to 3D, natural user interface, augmented reality and Android.
 * Involved in research projects and publications related to Wiimote and multi-touch tabletop.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page will be set up soon.


 * A related blog post.


 * Contact information
 * wenjiun1024[at]gmail[.]com

Glass Cockpit for Experimental Aircraft
Existing glass cockpits for experimental aircraft all have major deficiencies in their user interfaces, in my not so humble opinion. This project will generate an EADI (Electronic Attitude/Director Indicator), and will also incorporate engine instruments.
 * Description:

There are major shortcuts to make this project feasible and safe for flight. One is to buy an off the shelf ADAHRS (Air Data Attitude Heading Reference System), and there are many on the market, which will provide air data (airspeed, altitude, vertical speed), plus attitude data (pitch, roll, yaw, plus rates and accelerations), and a magentometer and a GPS. A second shortcut is to use an engine monitor from Grand Rapids because that monitor will do all of the A/D conversions and provide data in a serial output.

Remaining inputs are two serial ports for talking to radios, specifically a Garmin 430W and a Garmin SL-30, and to interface with dual concentric knobs as the only user interface control.

Futures (ha!) include Synthetic Vision, putting a computer-generated image of the ground on the background of the display. This is way cool in terms of glitz but limited in terms of utility. Also, it requires that the database be updated regularly. Another future is Enhanced Vision, using a low-light camera of some sort and putting that in the background. However, those cameras are expensive, and that would require both video in and out.

This project would take a good year to do. Because it is a safety of flight system, even with only one built, there must be a structured documentation program to cover all the bases.
 * Time frame:

20+ years in Silicon Valley, including Software Lead on the Topo robot; six years at Apple; safety research at NASA Ames and Boeing; Airline Transport Pilot and Certificated Flight Instructor; former college professor teaching aviation safety; and lots more.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

20+ years in Silicon Valley, including Software Lead on the Topo robot; six years at Apple; safety research at NASA Ames and Boeing; Airline Transport Pilot and Certificated Flight Instructor; former college professor teaching aviation safety; and lots more.
 * Wiki/URL Links:

ed.wischmeyer[at]gmail[dot]com
 * Contact information

PandaMediaBox

 * Description:
 * The PandaMediaBox will contian a 7 inch TouchPanel and used to play and control audio and video media. The goal is to play media from san or nas, IPTV, webradio, usb dvb sticks, usb storage devices, bluetooth or even a vdr. For Audio it will contain an integrated amplifier and for video the user can choose between the integrated 7 inch Panel or the HDMI output. Inputs are all done over the touchscreen, additional it will be possible to control via a webinterface and a secure interface for e.g. smartphone applications.


 * In particular the following targets will be developed, which can be used also in other projects.


 * Easy to build small case with all connectors, place for a 7 inch inframe display, on/off switch and additional place for 80*100mm board for custom use.
 * An easy to customize touch interface
 * An easy to build and cheap audio amplifier with libs to control from the pandaboard
 * Full Mediaplayer intergration into the touch interface
 * Easy to customize webinterface for configuration and use
 * Easy to customize Socket interface for various other devices, maybe even between PandaBoards


 * All these can be used in other Projects. The PandaMediaBox will be designed to be very Modular so it should be possible to add nearly anything you can imagin.
 * e.g.
 * Controll Light and Heater
 * Use in kitchen with shopping list / reciept database
 * Use itself as nas with usb hdd
 * Use as router, or fallback device with usb 3g or lte modem


 * The Project will also contain a community page and will be well documented so everyone can build an own PandaMediaBox.
 * Distributed will be a system with all interfaces and seperate modules like the MediaPlayer. So the community can fast develop modules and distribute them.
 * Installing the modules should be a one click solution on display / webinterface.


 * Time frame:
 * 3 Months for the first useable Beta, 6 Months to include all features in a stable version


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Student of computer science, have done work for an embedded sensor network and bigger software projects.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * not available till now, community page will start with the project.


 * Contact information
 * overflowed[at]gmail[.]com

Helping interface for dependent people

 * Description:
 *  Hardware & Software
 * Gesture/vocal interface to help person suffering from handicap (Blindness, paraplegia, quadriplegia) or elder peoples to keep independence:


 *  For different use schemes:
 * - To locate: a speaking GPS telling location (street name) on request (button or speech recognition).
 * - Read and tell (OCR and speech synthesis)
 * - Speech recognition actuators
 * - Gesture (eye movement or body movements) or speech commands for actuations
 * - Status of remote or local sensors of equipped home
 * - Communicate easily (voip and connected link thru wifi/GSM)


 *  Bringing all these features with the help of software:
 * - Gesture integration, character read OCR: image sensor and image processing
 * - Voice recognition / speech syntheses : audio processing
 * - Actuators and sensor (Local : serial / Ethernet link; remote Bluetooth wifi)
 * - Speech synthesis integrated for reading or locating
 * - Communication VOIP (start, stop communication with predefined list of contact trigged by voice or gesture)


 *  I know all these functions already exist separately, but want to integrate all these features in one system with all the advantages of the pandaboard :
 * - Small form factor
 * - Low power consumption
 * - Connectivity (video sensors, wifi Bluetooth…..)
 * - Power for video and audio processing
 * - Linux and OMAP Community
 * - Get a fully integrated solution with one small board!!!
 * - Pandas are peaceful and powerful bears!


 * Time frame:
 *  First hardware and software integration (within 6 month):
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - GPS (uart)
 * - Webcam USB
 * - Bluetooth sensor/actuator modules
 *  Software
 * - Gesture recognition (hand, body movement) and set some linked action
 * - Speech recognition and set some linked action
 * - Speech synthesis
 * - Actuator and sensors (got some Bluetooth/serial sensors and actuators)
 * - Get street position with speech synthesis work


 *  Second hardware and software integration
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - Design of an extension board GPS (external module with uart), image sensor
 * - Battery pack and case
 *  Software
 * - Eye movement recognition and set some linked action
 * - Develop a graphical interface for option settings for helpers
 * - More integration with person environment (generally home for quadriplegic or old people)


 *  Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * - Affected by persons suffering from handicap, elder peoples…
 * - Already set up some helping electronic (sensors, actuators)
 * - Want to develop a open community of helpers around pandaboard
 * - Work in electronic engineering (software AND hardware !)
 * - Developed electronic hardware devices (digital cameras, bluetooth sensors and actuators)
 * - Got a master in signal (audio and image) processing: openCV is my best friend !
 * - Developed linux driver for image sensors, PCI boards, LCD displays…
 * - Got some gesture recognition working on my Ubuntu intel inside computer


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Gesture (wayv) :
 * OpenCVwiki :
 * Speech recognition (cmu-sphinx) :
 * Text to speech (festival) :
 * GPS (navit) :


 * Contact information
 * helpingdependent.withpandaboard[at]gmail[.]com

3G Router
Hi,
 * Description:

So in short the use cases:
 * 3G router - uses the wifi chip capability and usb ports - benefits to driver documentation.
 * LAN router - uses the lan and wifi together - benefits to forum documentation
 * Media streamer/decoder - use of the 1080p decode facility, hdmi and dvi outputs - benefits to driver and forum documentation
 * Vehicle diagnostics - use of the serial port - entire new after market field of application

I explain some in detail below. New to all this but here is what I want to do at a minimum.


 * 1) Use the Pandaboard as a 3G/4G Broadband Router with Squid caching. Connection will be shared on WiFi as well as LAN
 * 2) Enclose suitably and mount in a vehicle and make a plan for powering the board
 * 3) For now the plan is a simple buck converter that does 12V to 5V. Can improve it by putting a delay accomodating for the car startup phase.
 * 4) Therefore, I can have WiFi in car for maps, gps, etc. Squid will help here for repeated locations.
 * 5) Should be portable so that i can regularly take out and use at home as well.

Software wise: I want to start off by solving this problem in ubuntu. That way i can post the steps to the forums/wiki pages. This process will enable me to see all the challenges with wifi drivers, compiling packages that are already existing for i386 but NOT arm. If need be I'll set up a launchpad ppa with additional stuff that i compile so that others can use the packages i've compiled for the board.

I want to then explore MeeGo and Android options. The board might be overkill for some of these but the advantage is that it can be quickly repurposed to do something else as the hardware will be capable for quite a while!

Other desired applications: While in car:
 * 1) Would like to see if i can hook it to the On Board Diagnostics port and make it do some logging?
 * 2) Hook maybe a camera to it somehow. Useful for fun random pictures :D
 * 3) Maybe get the interface onto my android phone somehow. VNC maybe?
 * 4) Maybe make it a car entertainment system?

While at home/office:
 * 1) Use as low power media center to play FullHD hopefully but at least 720p?
 * 2) Network switch/router as in car
 * 3) Use as a plain lan to wifi router when proxy settings cannot be specified on the user devices.

2 weeks for main 3G router part. I'll add more uses for it as I go along, so I guess no definite time frame for that.
 * Time frame:

By profession I am a mechanical engineer. I work in MATLAB on Ubuntu Lucid. I have some experience running a basic linux server with a DC hub, samba file sharing, DHCP. I want to use that experience in executing this project that is ARM based. I regularly submit bug reports, and collaborate on forums to get answers and help others. I want to do this for making pandaboard development easier. I would basically be documenting my beginner's experience for somebody inexperienced in embedded computing.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

http://omiio.org/content/3g-router http://andhavarapu.tumblr.com
 * Wiki/URL Links:

I will create a wiki page asap. Nothing on the blog site for now.

eshwar[at]live[.]co[.]za
 * Contact information

Amahi on Panda (PandAmahi :-) )

 * Description:

Aim is to port the Amahi Linux home server onto the PandaBoard. Amahi is a very easy to install and configurable home server. A good overview of Amahi can be found at http://www.amahi.org/features

The current version of Amahi only runs on Fedora. Since the Fedora ARM version is missing quite some packages, the goal is to get Amahi on the PandaBoard running under Debian and/or Ubuntu. This involves quite some porting effort due to the differences in package management (rpm vs. deb), configuration file locations and structure (e.g. apache2.conf and /etc/sysconfig in Fedora and httpd.conf and various locations for configuration files on Debian).

End result should be a working Amahi system supporting most (if not all) Amahi packages (sabnzbd, ushare, bittorrent, mediawiki, greyhole, Ampache, ...). A complete list can be found at http://www.amahi.org/apps?s=all

a feasibility study for the project has already been started (and until now lots of work, but no blocking issues have been identified).

All of the code will be released under GPL (the current code of Amahi is also under GPL).

approximately three months.
 * Time frame:

I have about 25 years of experience in Unix/Linux programming (started with Unix V7 on MC68020). In the past I created my own home server for beagleboard. See http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/James for details. For my previous employer I was also involved in realizing a prototype home server and in the implementation of a media player.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

Rationale for moving away from James and towards Amahi is because Amahi is much more advanced when it comes to easy installation and user interface.

Amahi has a website at http://www.amahi.org and a wiki at http://wiki.amahi.org. On this wiki a section for this project will be created.
 * Wiki/URL Links:

fransmeulenbroeks at gmail dot com
 * Contact information

Phidippus Mystaceus

 * Description:
 * [[image:Hidippus_Mystaceus1.png]]
 * Eight legged walking robot. Brain is accomplished using Pandaboard and world sensing with omnidirectional camera plus high zoom camera(s) in front. Inspiration is taken from real spiders vision system http://australianmuseum.net.au/Uploads/Images/2151/toolkit_sight_jumpingvision.jpg
 * Eight legged walking robot. Brain is accomplished using Pandaboard and world sensing with omnidirectional camera plus high zoom camera(s) in front. Inspiration is taken from real spiders vision system http://australianmuseum.net.au/Uploads/Images/2151/toolkit_sight_jumpingvision.jpg


 * Time frame:
 * This is recurring project with deadline set 2..4 months for to complete. In December we plan to use both (read on) robots on competition Robotex 2011.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Team members have strong IT and lesser robotics background. Members of Tartu University robotics lab.
 * * Tõnu Samuel does electronics and programming.
 * * Kalle-Gustav Kruus is good in SolidWorks and mechanics.
 * We are working on two robots. Because you ask for our background, I include details of both:
 * * Robot with interchangeable driving platform (wheels or legs, not important) but packed with eight cameras feeding 8x60fps images to onboard PC. Images get processed in real time on NVIDIA GTS450 GPU.
 * [[image:8cam1.png|200px|8x60fps!]] [[image:8cam2.png|200px|Cameras mount]] [[image:8cam3.png|200px|Robot design ver 1]] [[image:8cam4.png|200px|GPU computing test]]
 * Old project was split into two because system with legs vibrates and this may destroy lot of expensive hardware. So, eight cameras plus GPU robot will be redone with wheels and legged robot comes next:


 * * Legged robot with omnivision for Robotex 2011. We plan to use custom webcam with Sony 360 degrees lens hidden downside under body and lightweight computing system (Pandaboard!) to analyze input.
 * We have hardware left from previous attempt:
 * [[image:Hidippus_Mystaceus2.jpg|200px]]
 * Our tests indicate, that Beagleboard C4 CPU is completely loaded when shooting single VGA image at 30fps and nothing left to process it after. Dual core Cortex A9 should perform better. Also Beagleboard lacks peripherals we need. EDIT: Seems OpenCV makes most of overload. Last week we got 400fps with CPU load under 1% when went to V4L direct camera access.
 * Because of his physical properties (legs in front of view) robot is limited to see better image on stop. This makes it act like real animal - walk few steps, stop to make decicions, walk again. We expect this to be really funny side-effect.
 * We publish as much information as possible, so anyone is free to reproduce anything from our work.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Old (slow etc) walking platform as we have it http://www.youtube.com/user/secrgb#p/u/4/IPtFcZlq7Kc
 * Robot preview (old type) http://www.youtube.com/user/lilldiesel#p/u/3/KGIBjwZcQCU
 * Leg system in prototype phase http://www.youtube.com/user/lilldiesel#p/a/u/0/RoQnQTMOIa4
 * Old SolidWorks design, etc http://digi.physic.ut.ee/mw/index.php/Spidertank
 * Wiki where we just started to rebuild all information from old pages (old ones are inaccessible to outside world : http://digi.physic.ut.ee/mw/index.php/Tiim_IT_Grupp
 * Some more random photos about our past walker design in test:
 * Lifting heavy weights https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539129407791965554
 * --""-- https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539129422512188946
 * --""-- https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539130084914071762
 * Onboard computer box is empty. Testing cameras with laptop https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539129983885877282
 * Just walking with wireless remote control https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539130067548972962
 * Disassembled walker https://picasaweb.google.com/102951652977170321627/RobotexEelv2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJf-q4jXsYORjQE&feat=directlink#5539130133804740946


 * Contact information
 * tonu[ät]jes[.]ee

= Week 3 -- Projects from 3/14/11 - 3/18/11 =

Docking Station for In-Air Gesture User Input and 3D Pseudo-Holographic Display

 * Description:
 * The project aims to develop a docking station for devices such as Pandaboard by adding an in-air gesture user interface and a pseudo-holographic 3D display to the embedded Linux platform. In pseudo-holographic display mode, the display connected to the Pandaboard via HDMI will project to a pseudo-holographic setup that uses the pyramid-shaped Pepper's ghost effect. The reason for such display is that people will start to love 3D and this is the simplest way to implement a naked eye 3D. Hand gestures which are inherently natural and intuitive will be captured by a depth camera from a distance and the data will be processed with the help of various 3D depth camera (Kinect) open source projects to provide a gestural user input to the applications that will be developed for various scenarios, as listed below:


 * Media player (hand gestures for playing, pausing, volume control), essentially a gesture TV
 * Photo browser (zooming, rotating, swiping to next)
 * Gaming (motion control)
 * Augmented reality application (panning, selecting), utilizing the RGB capture of the depth camera
 * 3D model/scene browser, which will incorporate head tracking
 * [[image:Pandaboard_docking.png|500px]]

Both the input and output processings requires intensive computing power and it will be possible with Pandaboard high speed symmetric multiprocessing together with the powerful graphics core and the multimedia accelerator. This project will be a glimpse into the future of mobile computing and hopefully will bring usefulness and conveniences to everyone in various scenarios such as entertainments, virtual shopping, health care, information kiosks, advertising, educations etc.


 * Time frame:
 * 6 months


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Multimedia University Faculty of Engineering lecturer for subjects such as Robotics & Automations, Embedded System Design and Engineering Mathematics.
 * Android developer in the community CodeAndroid Malaysia focus on 3D, augmented reality and hardware such as robots. Giving presentations about Android in various national open source conferences and events.
 * Supervising various Final Year Projects since 2008 related to 3D, natural user interface, augmented reality and Android.
 * Involved in research projects and publications related to Wiimote and multi-touch tabletop.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page will be set up soon.


 * A related blog post.


 * Contact information
 * wenjiun1024[at]gmail[.]com

Electronic interface support for dependents

 * Description:
 *  Hardware & Software
 * Gesture/vocal interface to help person suffering from handicap (Blindness, paraplegia, quadriplegia) or elder peoples to keep independence:


 *  For different use schemes:
 * - To locate: a speaking GPS telling location (street name) on request (button or speech recognition).
 * - Read and tell (OCR and speech synthesis)
 * - Speech recognition actuators
 * - Gesture (eye movement or body movements) or speech commands for actuations
 * - Status of remote or local sensors of equipped home
 * - Communicate easily (voip and connected link thru wifi/GSM)


 *  Bringing all these features with the help of software:
 * - Gesture integration, character read OCR: image sensor and image processing
 * - Voice recognition / speech syntheses : audio processing
 * - Actuators and sensor (Local : serial / Ethernet link; remote Bluetooth wifi)
 * - Speech synthesis integrated for reading or locating
 * - Communication VOIP (start, stop communication with predefined list of contact trigged by voice or gesture)


 *  I know all these functions already exist separately, but want to integrate all these features in one system with all the advantages of the pandaboard :
 * - Small form factor
 * - Low power consumption
 * - Connectivity (video sensors, wifi Bluetooth…..)
 * - Power for video and audio processing
 * - Linux and OMAP Community
 * - Get a fully integrated solution with one small board!!!
 * - Pandas are peaceful and powerful bears!


 * Time frame:
 *  First hardware and software integration (within 6 month):
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - GPS (uart)
 * - Webcam USB
 * - Bluetooth sensor/actuator modules
 *  Software
 * - Gesture recognition (hand, body movement) and set some linked action
 * - Speech recognition and set some linked action
 * - Speech synthesis
 * - Actuator and sensors (got some Bluetooth/serial sensors and actuators)
 * - Get street position with speech synthesis work


 *  Second hardware and software integration
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - Design of an extension board GPS (external module with uart), image sensor
 * - Battery pack and case
 *  Software
 * - Eye movement recognition and set some linked action
 * - Develop a graphical interface for option settings for helpers
 * - More integration with person environment (generally home for quadriplegic or old people)


 *  Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * - Affected by persons suffering from handicap, elder peoples…
 * - Already set up some helping electronic (sensors, actuators)
 * - Want to develop a open community of helpers around pandaboard
 * - Work in electronic engineering (software AND hardware !)
 * - Developed electronic hardware devices (digital cameras, bluetooth sensors and actuators)
 * - Got a master in signal (audio and image) processing: openCV is my best friend !
 * - Developed linux driver for image sensors, PCI boards, LCD displays…
 * - Got some gesture recognition working on my Ubuntu intel inside computer


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Gesture (wayv) :
 * OpenCVwiki :
 * Speech recognition (cmu-sphinx) :
 * Text to speech (festival) :
 * GPS (navit) :


 * Contact information
 * helpingdependent.withpandaboard[at]gmail[.]com

OpenMSR
OpenMSR is a Instrumentation, Control and Automation (ICA) application, which gives you the ability to control real things / devices in a fast an easy manner. I want to port the existing app to the Pandaboard, because it is a fast, low power hardware platform, best suited for ICA applications.
 * Description:

due to the fact that it is already ported to the ARM platform, I guess it is just a matter of a few days.
 * Time frame:

I'm the main developer of the existing project and have done all work on myself.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

See the projects website at http://www.openmsr.org/
 * Wiki/URL Links:

Internet Audio Broadcast Catcher/Downloader/Player?

 * Description:
 * The project will be a command line daemon with a web API for user input, that will receive a list of RSS feeds from a user, parse the feeds, and depending upon user interaction, will download the episodes. The application will be written in the Vala language and will either use gstreamer for media playback or will wrap mplayer. A jquery based web interface will allow computers on the same network to control the application via a webbrowser and the web API will allow others to develop GUI applications to communicate with the daemon.


 * Time frame:
 * As I would be working on this in my spare time, it would probably take a week or two.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * A listing of projects that I have made is available at my website. Four of the projects are written in Vala, three utilize Gstreamer, and one parses XML. It should also be noted that I have some sweet sideburns.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * A launchpad project will be created when I decide upon a decent name. (muttonchop has a nice ring to it.)


 * Contact information
 * jezra[at]jezra[.]net

Football playing robot

 * Description:
 * The project is to build an autonomous robot, which plays football with golf balls on 2m x 3m arena by rules of Robotex. Robotex is an annual open Estonian competition of robotics mainly between three largest informatics related universities: University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology and Estonian IT College. The goal of the competition is to raise popularity of exact sciences and computer science. Our team is one of participating teams from University of Tartu.
 * This year we are trying to build a smaller and faster robot than any of robots seen on this competition this far. Features of our new robot include:
 * omnidirectional movement using brushless motors and self-designed omniwheels
 * positioning using magnetic hall sensors on wheels and data from image processing
 * localisation and mapping of target balls, goals and the opponent using self designed hyperbolic mirror based omnidirectional camera system


 * Goal of our team is to design a robot which fits to cylinder of 17cm diameter so it would also comply to size limits of Robocup SSL. That way the design and solutions could be used if our university should wish to compete there in the future. Due to the size constriction and the need to process video on-board Pandaboard with it's OMAP4 processor would be just right. Also we could make a great use of some other Pandaboard features including
 * Wi-Fi for wireless debugging,
 * chance to offload some video processing to DSP,
 * direct communication with lower level electronics through extension port
 * and possibly camera port if we should succeed in finding appropriate camera,
 * passive cooling for simplicity
 * ... so Pandaboard would be ideal :)


 * Time frame:
 * In spring we are developing our mechanical design, testing and constructing electronics, writing and testing new software on our previous robot and simultaneously on the new platform - hopefully Pandaboard.
 * In the beginning of summer we are building the parts by SolidWorks design and continuing software development.
 * In autumn we test the whole design.
 * Fully working robot must be ready for the competition in beginning of December 2011.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Our team has participated in the same event several times. Last year we designed our mirror system and reused our omnidirectional drive first used for Robotex 2008. So every year we use our old know-how and develop some new. Last time we used a laptop motherboard, but we can't use one this year as they are to large. All information of our last year robot is available in our Team Description Paper (so far only in Estonian, but don't hesitate to ask if you would like same additional info).
 * We are all students of physics or computer architecture in University of Tartu. We are supervised and helped by mentors in club of robotics of our university. There are several other projects in the club for example designing 3*3*3cm robot swarm. Some of people in club have built and programmed robots more than ten years, so there is all the help we need.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Robotex page on webpage of our club
 * Our last year log including some pictures
 * blueprint of our last robot
 * SolidWorks rendered image of field on the mirror
 * Youtube video of our image processing algorithms in action


 * Contact information
 * johu ut.ee
 * mihkel.heidelberg gmail.com

PandAmahi: Amahi on Panda

 * Description:

Aim is to port the Amahi Linux home server onto the PandaBoard. Amahi is a very easy to install and configurable home server. A good overview of Amahi can be found at http://www.amahi.org/features

The current version of Amahi only runs on Fedora. Since the Fedora ARM version is missing quite some packages, the goal is to get Amahi on the PandaBoard running under Debian and/or Ubuntu. This involves quite some porting effort due to the differences in package management (rpm vs. deb), configuration file locations and structure (e.g. apache2.conf and /etc/sysconfig in Fedora and httpd.conf and various locations for configuration files on Debian).

End result should be a working Amahi system supporting most (if not all) Amahi packages (sabnzbd, ushare, bittorrent, mediawiki, greyhole, Ampache, ...). A complete list can be found at http://www.amahi.org/apps?s=all

a feasibility study for the project has already been started (and until now lots of work, but no blocking issues have been identified).

All of the code will be released under GPL (the current code of Amahi is also under GPL).

approximately three months.
 * Time frame:

I have about 25 years of experience in Unix/Linux programming (started with Unix V7 on MC68020). In the past I created my own home server for beagleboard. See http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/James for details. For my previous employer I was also involved in realizing a prototype home server and in the implementation of a media player.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

Rationale for moving away from James and towards Amahi is because Amahi is much more advanced when it comes to easy installation and user interface.

Amahi has a website at http://www.amahi.org and a wiki at http://wiki.amahi.org. On this wiki a section for this project will be created.
 * Wiki/URL Links:

fransmeulenbroeks at gmail dot com
 * Contact information

Panda data-acquisition and FPGA dev board
Amateur scientists and other home experimenters often have difficulty finding data-acquisition (DAQ) hardware meeting their needs at reasonable cost. PC sound-card I/O is sometimes adequate; otherwise, commercial DAQ offerings in the sub-$200 range are quite limited. (In my case, the immediate motivation for this project is data collection from a magnetometer observing solar-activity-induced disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field.)
 * Description:

The Pandaboard is ideal for this application because it is inexpensive, low-power, portable, runs Linux, and offers easy high-bandwidth expansion through the GPMC bus. I propose designing an expansion board with


 * multiple 16-bit A/D and D/A channels
 * extra digital I/O
 * programmable logic for timer/counter functions and periodic sampling
 * GPS for mobile data-logging, timestamping, and oscillator calibration
 * McSPI and GPMC bus interfaces at the Pandaboard expansion connectors

A Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA will bridge the various functions with the Pandaboard interfaces. The design will be modular, such that the A/D, D/A, and GPS can be omitted, resulting in a board very similar to Eric Brombaugh's Beagleboard Tracker. Thus, this project will serve double-duty as a Tracker refresh for the Pandaboard.


 * Time frame:

Three months to a working hardware platform.

A draft schematic is ready. After a few weeks of refinement and peer review, PCB layout can begin next month. FPGA and software development for the GPMC interface may extend out to six months, depending on community involvement.


 * Background & work by project submitter:

I've been using Linux on PCs since 1994, and on ARM for about three years.

My first DAQ project was an 8-bit A/D and D/A plus dedicated timer chip, hand-wired on an ISA-bus prototyping card in high school. I enjoy dabbling with embedded microcontroller projects and building scientific instruments, like this aurora detector. I can hand-solder QFP packages. I also have a PhD in EE with an emphasis in signal processing.

http://www.keteu.org/~haunma/proj/pandadaq/
 * Wiki/URL Links:


 * Contact information

haunmaketeuorg

CANalyzer - Embedded CANBUS Monitor and Display Project
Description

CANBus is the backbone for a lot of commutation in embedded hardware. I currently have 3 separate CANBus' within 20 feet of me that I am curious about:

A OBD-II/CANBus in my Van. Another OBD-II/CANBus in my Freightliner/Fleetwood 39' Motorhome. And another XANBus/CANBus based bus that controls the Solar charge controller/Inverter/Generator on my motorhome.

Ultimately I'd like to have a single system that I can control/monitor all 3 bus' at the same time.

Project goals:

1) Learn about CANBus and contribute what I learn and write back to the open source community.

2) Modularize the various parts so I can get something working quickly and still be able to go back and enhance things later.

3) To be able to sit in my bedroom in my motorhome and monitor all 3 Bus'. (e.g. Check Battery voltage levels, manually start the generator, see if someone opens the door on my van, etc).

Time frame

Phase I - 3 weeks

Create a open source library to passively sniff a connected CANBus. Save the data to Wireshark format files. Publish the library and notes about the 3 different bus'. Use as a basis to move on to the next phase.

Phase II - 4 weeks

Create open source library to handle/process higher level ODB-II messages.

Phase III- 4 weeks

Create a open source library to handle/process XANBus messages. There appears to be some information about this bus out there already.

Phase IV - 3 weeks

Displaying information/preliminary UI: Take the information from the first 3 phases and allow it to be viewable on a remote web browser. The OMAP platform will already be running Apache under Angstrom Linux. This phase will entail creating a daemon to collect the data from the bus' with the libraries and format that data into HTLM and save in the Apache directories. I can get something going quickly this way but I can also leverage open source utilities like the GNU plotting utilities to do some cool things.

Background & work by project submitter/s

I have 30+ years as a consultant/developer creating and maintaining hardware and protocol drivers under Unix/Linux.

Additional info:

I haven't decided on a CANBus adapter yet (many to choose from) but Panda/OMAP4 is the ideal platform for this project given its horsepower and the vast number of ports.

Contact information kirkbdavis[at]gmail[.]com

TripLogger

 * Description:
 * TripLogger is a device which can be mounted on or in a car dash and provides details about the car's current performance. It would interface to the car's onboard diagnostic plug, and would record and concurrently display current engine metrics.  In addition to real-time diagnostic display, the carputer can also record and export trip information such as location (via GPS), mileage, duration, acceleration/braking characterstics, and other possible performance profiles.  Once this data is offloaded (wirelessly or via SD), it could be used by commuters to create optimum travel routes, or by just about anyone who would want to obtain more information about their driving habits.


 * Optional enhancements could include camera and sound recording. These could be used for possible vlogging or for taking snapshots along the trip.  The driver could either trigger these manually or the TripLogger could be told to take pictures when certain conditions are met (stopped at intersection, passing some landmark, etc).


 * Time frame:
 * Approximately 4 months to a demonstration prototype


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Jennifer and Mark are a creative engineering team whose latest project work centers around home and family life. Jennifer is a creative artist with a degree in bio-chemistry and an enthusiasm for increasing her technology knowledge.  Mark is a software architect by trade.  With 20+ years as a professional software engineer, Mark has worked on or overseen software projects ranging from aircraft engine maintenance tracking to smart-home integration.  Lately, Mark has partnered with his wife to work on embedded hardware platform solutions which integrate well in the home.  Mark's previous work includes work on the OpenSolaris platform, various commercial projects, and co-authoring a book many moons ago. Sam's Teach Yourself DirectX 7 in 24 Hours (Amazon)


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page to follow soon


 * Contact information
 * storycrafter at gmail dot com

Mobile Planetarium and Classrom

 * Description:
 * The mobile planetarium is a portable device which has several key features:
 * A handheld computer with touchscreen LCD for teacher or operator control
 * A small (portable) projector (e.g. FAVI B1-LED-PICO Mini Pocket Projector, Business Edition)
 * Control software which provides either a presentation interface (for general classroom use) or an astronomical guide for projecting star fields
 * Armed with this device, instructors and teachers can create classroom lectures or act as star guides. In "offline" mode, the portable classroom acts largely as a general purpose computer, allowing an instructor to layout slide-shows or other media for presentation.  In "classroom" mode, the device allows the instructor to interact with the LCD display and control previously created content (or, in case of the planetarium, input viewing parameters)


 * Time frame:
 * Approximately 3 months to a demonstration prototype


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Jennifer and Mark are a creative engineering team whose latest project work centers around home and family life. Jennifer is a creative artist with a degree in bio-chemistry and an enthusiasm for increasing her technology knowledge.  Mark is a software architect by trade.  With 20+ years as a professional software engineer, Mark has worked on or overseen software projects ranging from aircraft engine maintenance tracking to smart-home integration.  Lately, Mark has partnered with his wife to work on embedded hardware platform solutions which integrate well in the home.  Mark's previous work includes work on the OpenSolaris platform, various commercial projects, and co-authoring a book many moons ago. Sam's Teach Yourself DirectX 7 in 24 Hours (Amazon)


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page to follow soon


 * Contact information
 * storycrafter at gmail dot com

=Week 4 -- Projects from 3/21/11 - 3/25/11 =

Docking Station for In-Air Gesture User Input and 3D Pseudo-Holographic Display

 * Description:
 * The project aims to develop a docking station for mobile devices, which in this case is the Pandaboard, by adding an in-air gesture user interface and a pseudo-holographic 3D display to the embedded Linux/Android platform. In the pseudo-holographic display mode, the LCD/projector display connected to the Pandaboard via HDMI will be projected to a pseudo-holographic setup that uses the pyramid-shaped Pepper's ghost effect. The reason for such display is that this is the simplest way to implement a naked eye 3D and it can be enjoyed even by people with problem viewing stereoscopic 3D.


 * Bare hand gestures will be used to interact with the pseudo-holographic 3D display as it is known to be natural and intuitive and the user is not required to be tethered to any hardware. The hand movements will be captured by a depth camera from a distance and the data will be processed with the help of various depth camera related open source projects (libfreenect, ofxKinect) to provide a gestural user input to the applications that will be developed in this project for various scenarios, as listed below:


 * Media player (hand gestures for playing, pausing, volume control), essentially a gesture TV
 * Realistic video calling/conferencing (hand gestures for calling, hanging-up, volume control)
 * Photo browser (zooming, rotating, swiping to next)
 * Gaming (motion control) similar to XBox Kinect games
 * Augmented reality application (panning, selecting), utilizing the RGB capture of the depth camera with information overlay
 * 3D model/scene browser, which will incorporate head tracking to simulate viewing from all sides
 * Both the input and output processing requires intensive computing power, the display has to be re-rendered and mirrored to 3 additional sides and gesture recognition with a large library is a well-known heavy image processing task. This will be possible with Pandaboard with its high speed symmetric multiprocessing, the powerful graphics core and the multimedia accelerator. This project will be a glimpse into the future of mobile computing and hopefully it will bring usefulness and conveniences to everyone in various scenarios such as entertainments, virtual shopping, health care, information kiosks, advertising, educations etc.


 * Time frame:
 * 4 months


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Multimedia University Faculty of Engineering lecturer for subjects such as Robotics & Automations, Embedded System Design and Engineering Mathematics.
 * Android developer in the community CodeAndroid Malaysia focus on 3D, augmented reality and hardware such as robots. Giving presentations about Android in various national open source conferences and events.
 * Supervising various Final Year Projects since 2008 related to 3D, natural user interface, augmented reality and Android.
 * Involved in research projects and publications related to Wiimote and multi-touch tabletop.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * A related blog post.


 * Contact information
 * wenjiun1024[at]gmail[.]com

Electronic interface support for dependents

 * Description:
 *  Hardware & Software
 * Gesture/vocal interface to help person suffering from handicap (Blindness, paraplegia, quadriplegia) or elder peoples to keep independence:


 *  For different use schemes:
 * - To locate: a speaking GPS telling location (street name) on request (button or speech recognition).
 * - Read and tell (OCR and speech synthesis)
 * - Speech recognition actuators
 * - Gesture (eye movement or body movements) or speech commands for actuations
 * - Status of remote or local sensors of equipped home
 * - Communicate easily (voip and connected link thru wifi/GSM)


 *  Bringing all these features with the help of software:
 * - Gesture integration, character read OCR: image sensor and image processing
 * - Voice recognition / speech syntheses : audio processing
 * - Actuators and sensor (Local : serial / Ethernet link; remote Bluetooth wifi)
 * - Speech synthesis integrated for reading or locating
 * - Communication VOIP (start, stop communication with predefined list of contact trigged by voice or gesture)


 *  I know all these functions already exist separately, but want to integrate all these features in one system with all the advantages of the pandaboard :
 * - Small form factor
 * - Low power consumption
 * - Connectivity (video sensors, wifi Bluetooth…..)
 * - Power for video and audio processing
 * - Linux and OMAP Community
 * - Get a fully integrated solution with one small board!!!
 * - Pandas are peaceful and powerful bears!


 * Time frame:
 *  First hardware and software integration (within 6 month):
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - GPS (uart)
 * - Webcam USB
 * - Bluetooth sensor/actuator modules
 *  Software
 * - Gesture recognition (hand, body movement) and set some linked action
 * - Speech recognition and set some linked action
 * - Speech synthesis
 * - Actuator and sensors (got some Bluetooth/serial sensors and actuators)
 * - Get street position with speech synthesis work


 *  Second hardware and software integration
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - Design of an extension board GPS (external module with uart), image sensor
 * - Battery pack and case
 *  Software
 * - Eye movement recognition and set some linked action
 * - Develop a graphical interface for option settings for helpers
 * - More integration with person environment (generally home for quadriplegic or old people)


 *  Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * - Affected by persons suffering from handicap, elder peoples…
 * - Already set up some helping electronic (sensors, actuators)
 * - Want to develop a open community of helpers around pandaboard
 * - Work in electronic engineering (software AND hardware !)
 * - Developed electronic hardware devices (digital cameras, bluetooth sensors and actuators)
 * - Got a master in signal (audio and image) processing: openCV is my best friend !
 * - Developed linux driver for image sensors, PCI boards, LCD displays…
 * - Got some gesture recognition working on my Ubuntu intel inside computer


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Gesture (wayv) :
 * OpenCVwiki :
 * Speech recognition (cmu-sphinx) :
 * Text to speech (festival) :
 * GPS (navit) :


 * Contact information
 * helpingdependent.withpandaboard[at]gmail[.]com

Alex mobile robotics platform

 * Description:
 * The Alex platform is a small robot composed of the following parts:


 * iRobot Create base
 * 2 arms made of Bioloid parts
 * 2 eyes on pan tilt mounts made of Nexus One phones and Bioloid parts
 * A PandaBoard for central control


 * Alex is part of a larger project to advance artificial intelligence through embodied ai. Check out the project website for details.


 * Why Alex is Awesome:
 * Willow Garage had the right idea with the PR2, but the wrong pricepoint. Alex will be the PR2 for the rest of us. We're targeting a pricepoint just north of 1k, as opposed to 400k + for the PR2.


 * There are thousands of robotics research labs reinventing robots that can move, see, hear, pick up things, make noise, and generally interact with their environment in useful ways. With Alex we plan to stop that cycle of reinvention, and start a cycle of innovation in software.


 * Time frame:
 * Prototype in 3 months, first beta robots out the door by Christmas


 * Why Alex will get done:
 * Over the last three months, I quit my job, completed an robotics internship at Anybots, and landed a new job in Artificial Intelligence powerhouse. I'm committed to spending significant personal resources on seeing Alex get to production quality and beyond. I've already committed thousands of dollars to support similar projects like the bilibot (bilibot.com). Eventually the Alex project will be a large consumer of PandaBoards, unfortunately you just can't buy one right now!l


 * Alex and Panda:
 * The mobile robotics space is constrained by space, power, weight, and cpu. We can make use of the significant power available in mobile phones (see the cellbots project) but to provide a powerful central processing system that has room to grow you need a board with the feature set and efficiency of the PandaBoard. If we want to achieve untethered operation there's no better solution than Panda.


 * Project Website:
 * embodiedai.pbworks.com


 * Contact information
 * iandanforth gmail com

PandaPLC

 * Description:
 * The PandaPLC will consist of a PandaBoard and the surrounding hardware and software to produce an Open Hardware PLC. PLCs are the hardened industrial controllers used to run machines or automate processes in an industrial setting. They provide computing functions in an easy to use package usually with a graphical programming language that models logic with relay analogies. They generally provide rugged "real world" inputs and outputs for sensors and actuators of various types. They are widely used in industry and strongly proprietary. They are also quite primitive compared to PCs. This project aims to make use of the extremely high functionality of PandaBoard to provide functions not available or requiring expensive add ons to the PLC functions. And to make the both the hardware and software Open.
 * The PandaBoard will connect to a backplane using SPI. The backplane will have 8 slots for function cards. Each card will provide either inputs or outputs using SPI peripheral chips and any necessary level shifting, scaling and protective functions. The backplane and cards will mount in a rack that will provide a PLC unit that can be mounted in a machine cabinet or other location. The backplane will provide power to the PandaBoard and IO cards. Since the hardware is quite an endeavor in my circumstances, I will partner with an existing OSS project that will provide software to run on top of the existing Linux ports.


 * Time frame:
 * The backplane and plugin cards exist as designs with artwork and will be fabricated when I have a processor for dimensions and final details
 * Development is on a shoestring so timing will depend on some events out of my control, but I anticipate being able to prototype this summer if not sooner. The software exists but will require modest porting for the embedded environment.


 * Project goals:
 * To advance the state of the art in PLCs with superior networking, video capability, advanced math, machine vision, HMI, etc. as standard and provide an Open alternative to expensive proprietary PLCs and really expensive, Windows only programming tools. And to do these with low power, high volume, powerful, ARM processors to leverage the tremendous advances made for mobile devices.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * I have worked with Linux automation for many years and designed and built Linux based automated test equipment. I have also worked with traditional PLCs and automation gear, taught electronics, and have been known to program in C and a few others. I founded an OSS automation tools project variously known as MAT/plc and Beremiz


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Not Yet


 * Contact information
 * wideopen1[at]frontiernet[.]net

Panda-media

 * Description:
 * The pandamedia persues a dream of an completely FOSS on-top computer for gaming and multimedia.
 * I dream that the awesomeness of an fanless singleboard computer such as the Pandaboard best fits this platform, and that the power of the Pandaboard is required for pushing the awsome out at 1080p.
 * Unlike other set-top boxes it is preferable if the PandaMedia retains the ability to be used as a computer with installable applications.
 * Another point is that because it is Open Source it ought to have remote-control applications and capabilities equal to, and beyond that of todays set-top boxes.
 * Yet another point is that there should not be any need for unlocking it should in this respect be the anti-TiVo or anti-AppleTV.


 * Time frame:
 * Ought to be finished by end of summer-break unless hindered by unforeseeable hindrances.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * My skill lie in dedication and devotion beyond sensibility. Years of Linux usage (Ubuntu and Gentoo). Years of programming (C/C++). Helped detecting bugs in system several thousand concurrent users.
 * Ad-hoc guru for the schools IT-department. Currently a student (don't know how the educational level translates to US/UK systems) with advanced math and physics. Also worth mentioning includes reading ALOT of stuff on Operating Systems, Computer History, Computer Science, and creator of SMIPL.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Not yet


 * Contact information
 * martinsundhaug[at]gmail[.]com

TripLogger

 * Description:
 * TripLogger is a device which can be mounted on or in a car dash and provides details about the car's current performance. It would interface to the car's onboard diagnostic plug, and would record and concurrently display current engine metrics.  In addition to real-time diagnostic display, the carputer can also record and export trip information such as location (via GPS), mileage, duration, acceleration/braking characterstics, and other possible performance profiles.  Once this data is offloaded (wirelessly or via SD), it could be used by commuters to create optimum travel routes, or by just about anyone who would want to obtain more information about their driving habits.


 * Optional enhancements could include camera and sound recording. These could be used for possible vlogging or for taking snapshots along the trip.  The driver could either trigger these manually or the TripLogger could be told to take pictures when certain conditions are met (stopped at intersection, passing some landmark, etc).


 * Time frame:
 * Approximately 4 months to a demonstration prototype


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Jennifer and Mark are a creative engineering team whose latest project work centers around home and family life. Jennifer is a creative artist with a degree in bio-chemistry and an enthusiasm for increasing her technology knowledge.  Mark is a software architect by trade.  With 20+ years as a professional software engineer, Mark has worked on or overseen software projects ranging from aircraft engine maintenance tracking to smart-home integration.  Lately, Mark has partnered with his wife to work on embedded hardware platform solutions which integrate well in the home.  Mark's previous work includes work on the OpenSolaris platform, various commercial projects, and co-authoring a book many moons ago. Sam's Teach Yourself DirectX 7 in 24 Hours (Amazon)


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page to follow soon


 * Contact information
 * storycrafter at gmail dot com

Mobile Planetarium and Classrom

 * Description:
 * The mobile planetarium is a portable device which has several key features:
 * A handheld computer with touchscreen LCD for teacher or operator control
 * A small (portable) projector (e.g. FAVI B1-LED-PICO Mini Pocket Projector, Business Edition)
 * Control software which provides either a presentation interface (for general classroom use) or an astronomical guide for projecting star fields
 * Armed with this device, instructors and teachers can create classroom lectures or act as star guides. In "offline" mode, the portable classroom acts largely as a general purpose computer, allowing an instructor to layout slide-shows or other media for presentation.  In "classroom" mode, the device allows the instructor to interact with the LCD display and control previously created content (or, in case of the planetarium, input viewing parameters)


 * Time frame:
 * Approximately 3 months to a demonstration prototype


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Jennifer and Mark are a creative engineering team whose latest project work centers around home and family life. Jennifer is a creative artist with a degree in bio-chemistry and an enthusiasm for increasing her technology knowledge.  Mark is a software architect by trade.  With 20+ years as a professional software engineer, Mark has worked on or overseen software projects ranging from aircraft engine maintenance tracking to smart-home integration.  Lately, Mark has partnered with his wife to work on embedded hardware platform solutions which integrate well in the home.  Mark's previous work includes work on the OpenSolaris platform, various commercial projects, and co-authoring a book many moons ago. Sam's Teach Yourself DirectX 7 in 24 Hours (Amazon)


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page to follow soon


 * Contact information
 * storycrafter at gmail dot com

PandAmahi: Amahi on Panda

 * Description:

Aim is to port the Amahi Linux home server onto the PandaBoard. Amahi is a very easy to install and configurable home server. A good overview of Amahi can be found at http://www.amahi.org/features

The current version of Amahi only runs on Fedora. Since the Fedora ARM version is missing quite some packages, the goal is to get Amahi on the PandaBoard running under Debian and/or Ubuntu. This involves quite some porting effort due to the differences in package management (rpm vs. deb), configuration file locations and structure (e.g. apache2.conf and /etc/sysconfig in Fedora and httpd.conf and various locations for configuration files on Debian).

End result should be a working Amahi system supporting most (if not all) Amahi packages (sabnzbd, ushare, bittorrent, mediawiki, greyhole, Ampache, ...). A complete list can be found at http://www.amahi.org/apps?s=all

a feasibility study for the project has already been started (and until now lots of work, but no blocking issues have been identified).

All of the code will be released under GPL (the current code of Amahi is also under GPL).

approximately three months.
 * Time frame:

I have about 25 years of experience in Unix/Linux programming (started with Unix V7 on MC68020). In the past I created my own home server for beagleboard. See http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/James for details. For my previous employer I was also involved in realizing a prototype home server and in the implementation of a media player.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

Rationale for moving away from James and towards Amahi is because Amahi is much more advanced when it comes to easy installation and user interface.

Amahi has a website at http://www.amahi.org and a wiki at http://wiki.amahi.org. On this wiki a section for this project will be created.
 * Wiki/URL Links:

fransmeulenbroeks at gmail dot com
 * Contact information

Arch Linux for Panda
Porting Arch Linux to the PandaBoard, a continuation of what's already done over at PlugApps, where we ported to the SheevaPlug (armv5te) platform. Make X work as well, for a neat desktop computer experience.

Time frame:

Within 2 months of getting a PandaBoard. We have the package build system all ready for armv5te, so making a new repository for the PandaBoard wouldn't be a problem. We also have several multi-core cross-compiling machines.

Background & work by project submitter/s:

PlugApps is the wiki we run, with how-to guides for installing our port of Arch Linux on many devices. The forum and package repository are also great places to look. We have 3 full-time developers in IRC (#plugapps on Freenode) working on this.

Wiki/URL Links:

PlugApps

Contact information:

mikestaszel[at]plugapps[.]com

Low cost open hardware LCD solution for the pandaboard
The aim of the project is create an out of the box, low cost LCD solution (< U$100) for the pandaboard. The steps include the design and layout of a LCD adapter board, including final gerber files ready for PCB manufacture, a BOM of components used, modifying the Angstrom Linux kernel drivers to support the LCD and touch screen and provide these as an image and patches. Using the deliverables of this project it should be possible to make a low cost LCD solution for the pandaboard, and encourage the further enhancement of the product by the community. The New Haven Display 480x272 panel NHD-4.3-480272MF-ATXI-T-1 will be used.
 * Description:

Design, layout and respin PCBs: 4 weeks, Angstrom Linux kernel drivers 4 weeks
 * Time frame:

I am a software developer working on embedded systems and have done a similar project for the Beagleboard (see images).
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

Will be provided if project approved.
 * Wiki/URL Links:

waswart[at]hotmail[.]com
 * Contact information

Football playing robot

 * Description:
 * The project is to build an autonomous robot, which plays football with golf balls on 2m x 3m arena by rules of Robotex. Robotex is an annual open Estonian competition of robotics mainly between three largest informatics related universities: University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology and Estonian IT College. The goal of the competition is to raise popularity of exact sciences and computer science. Our team is one of participating teams from University of Tartu.
 * This year we are trying to build a smaller and faster robot than any of robots seen on this competition this far. Features of our new robot include:
 * omnidirectional movement using brushless motors and self-designed omniwheels
 * positioning using magnetic hall sensors on wheels and data from image processing
 * localisation and mapping of target balls, goals and the opponent using self designed hyperbolic mirror based omnidirectional camera system


 * Goal of our team is to design a robot which fits to cylinder of 17cm diameter so it would also comply to size limits of Robocup SSL. That way the design and solutions could be used if our university should wish to compete there in the future. Due to the size constriction and the need to process video on-board Pandaboard with it's OMAP4 processor would be just right. Also we could make a great use of some other Pandaboard features including
 * Wi-Fi for wireless debugging,
 * chance to offload some video processing to DSP,
 * direct communication with lower level electronics through extension port
 * and possibly camera port if we should succeed in finding appropriate camera,
 * passive cooling for simplicity
 * ... so Pandaboard would be ideal :)


 * Time frame:
 * In spring we are developing our mechanical design, testing and constructing electronics, writing and testing new software on our previous robot and simultaneously on the new platform - hopefully Pandaboard.
 * In the beginning of summer we are building the parts by SolidWorks design and continuing software development.
 * In autumn we test the whole design.
 * Fully working robot must be ready for the competition in beginning of December 2011.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Our team has participated in the same event several times. Last year we designed our mirror system and reused our omnidirectional drive first used for Robotex 2008. So every year we use our old know-how and develop some new. Last time we used a laptop motherboard, but we can't use one this year as they are to large. All information of our last year robot is available in our Team Description Paper (so far only in Estonian, but don't hesitate to ask if you would like same additional info).
 * We are all students of physics or computer architecture in University of Tartu. We are supervised and helped by mentors in club of robotics of our university. There are several other projects in the club for example designing 3*3*3cm robot swarm. Some of people in club have built and programmed robots more than ten years, so there is all the help we need.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Robotex page on webpage of our club
 * Our last year log including some pictures
 * blueprint of our last robot
 * SolidWorks rendered image of field on the mirror
 * Youtube video of our image processing algorithms in action


 * Contact information
 * johu ut.ee
 * mihkel.heidelberg gmail.com

=Week 5 -- Projects from 3/28/11 - 4/01/11 =

Robotics Logic Development Platform

 * Description:
 * Goal:
 * Design and build a economical yet rugged robotics platform on which to open source both hardware and software to expediate and further develop higher level logic at the hobbyist level. Platform is to be able to travel over various terrain encountered indoors, potentially in tame outdoor conditions (a yard, not a forrest), and manipulate it's environment all while taking up minimal square footage. A charging station will be designed as well for autonomous operation and recharge. My price goal for the end unit is planned to be under $2,000.
 * Plan:
 * Use and upgrade sensor package previously built for the initial prototype robot. Initial robot was differential drive system with caster balance. Plan to design around a differential drive system with balancing in place of castering. Once initial testing of the system is complete the sensors and interfaces will be incorporated into a signle daughter board for the PandaBoard. Accomodations for a second daughter board will be provided for future expansion by myself or the community. Refinement to all code in both firmware and software will be performed and provided as functions to access readings from each of the sensors as well as computed 'real world' data based on the sensor platform.
 * Sensors - Details on website:
 * - Tripple axis accelerometer - currently a dual axis
 * - Tripple axis gyroscope - currently a single axis
 * - Tripple axis flux magnetometer - currently non-existant
 * - Compensated forward and rear facing differentiating ultrasonic range finders - currently single point forward facing only
 * - Multiple temperature readings - currently non-existant
 * - Humidity reading - currently non-existant
 * - Dynamic Range Infrared Laser Range Finding Scanner - currently limited to dual range with a red laser
 * - High resolution wheel odometery - currently have 180 discrete readings per wheel rotation
 * - Pressure sensors for grip and body torque - currently no manipulator design has been selected
 * - Position feedback for the manipulator - currently no manipulator design has been selected
 * - Battery voltage measurements - currently have a voltage reading from each of the two batteries
 * - Current draw measurements for daughter board and each motor - currently non-existant - PandaBoard can measure its own draw


 * Time frame
 * - Phase 1: 1 Month - Upgrade existing prototype robot by replacing NSLU2 (see below) with a PandaBoard to enhance battery life and drastically increase processor power.
 * - Phase 2: 6 Months after aquisition of new motors and motor controllers - Redesign the chassis to a differential drive with balancing system.
 * - Phase 3: 6 Months - Design and build an economical manipulator capable of moving reasonable loads at decent speeds.
 * - Phase 4: 3 Months - Design a single daughter board for the PandaBoard which contains all upgraded sensors and control interfaces for the robot.
 * - Phase 5: 2 Months - Rewrite all code to unify API interfaces and increase effeciency by eliminating any sloppy code.
 * - Phase 6: 2 Months - Provide hardware designs and software code to the public to allow a sturdy and functional foundation to develop and test higher level logic.
 * - Phase 7: 1 Month after aquisition of parts - Build a second robot identical to the results of Phase 3.
 * - Phase 8: Forever after!!! - Explore impossible logic problems such as the traveling salesman between two robots.


 * Background & work by project submitter
 * - With degrees in Computer Science, Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), as well as Instrumentation & Control I have obtained and have held a career working for a small engineering company building control systems for industrial plants, both private and municipal, for the past 5 years.
 * - I have reworked multiple NSLU2s (Linksys Network Storage Link for USB 2.0) to have 4 internal USB ports in place of 2, an internal WiFi adapter, an up front I2C port, and an auto-power on circuit. Utilizing one of the modified NSLU2s I have designed a robot with the NSLU2 as a central processor for a series of PIC16F88 microcontrollers throughout the workings of a robot. I have also used the NSLU2s as home server facilitating the following features: Web Server, FTP Server, Streaming Internet Music Server, Local Streaming Video Server, and IRC Server.
 * - During the International ISA Student Quiz Bowl in 2003 the team I was on came in third place. The schoold I was with came in sixth place in the practical competition after being one of six teams to tie for second place. (You did read that correctly. 6 teams tied for second place.)
 * - I have also spent time training on multiple industrial robotic arms and work with PLCs daily.


 * Wiki/URL Links
 * http://www.omappedia.com/wiki/Robotics_Logic_Development_Platform
 * http://s865.photobucket.com/albums/ab212/SWR_DMaster/Protobot/


 * Contact information
 * SWR_DMaster[at]Yahoo[.]COM

PandaStar

 * Description:
 * This is a project to create a solid state full duplex repeater and gateway for D-Star use.


 * D-Star is a digital amateur radio protocol developed by the Japanese Amateur Radio League for improved quality on existing amateur bands. Currently Icom is the only commercial provider of D-Star hardware, however several amateurs have developed their own modems for use with D-Star leading to the design of homebrew D-Star repeaters. This project will take the stability of Linux and the solid state hardware of the pandoraboard to create a compact solid state D-Star repeater with commercial grade reliability.


 * The entire project will use open source hardware and open source software with the possible exception of the actual radios for reception and transmission which in most cases can be interchangeable with any with 9600 baud packet connections. Any software that need be written will also be open source and licensing of that will be dependent upon libraries used.


 * Ham radio is well knows for providing communications in disaster situations and with D-Star we are able to provide even low speed data and internet connections as well as small file transfers and text messages where radio voice messages may be unclear. D-Star also provides gps location information which may be very useful in rescue operations. Ham radio operators are also the front line of Skywarn spotters in severe weather where weather radar is unable to provide ground truth trained spotters can.


 * Time frame:
 * Phase 1 - Acquire hardware and build the software on embedded hardware 0-3 months.
 * Phase 2 - Build the software into deb packages maintaining them from source projects. 0-2 months after Phase 1
 * Phase 3 - Build a custom ubuntu distribution ready to install on the pandaboard with all needed packages prebuilt and installed. TBD


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * I have a bachelors degree in computer science with a minor in applied physics emphasis in electronics. I have previously designed and programed an embedded inventory system on motorola handheld computers with barcode readers for a warehouse company. I have been a ham radio operator for more than ten years and have a strong belief in community support and interaction.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Until I setup a more permeant web site the project can be found on my personal website. http://www.kb9yen.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=63
 * pcrepeatercontroller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pcrepeatercontroller/
 * ircDDBGateway http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ircDDBGateway/


 * Contact information
 * bmmcwhirt[at]gmail[.]com

Sakols

 * Description:
 * Sakols will be a Ubuntu based home server. Sakols will contian a 7 inch TouchPanel, some applications are to play media from san or nas, IPTV, webradio, usb dvb sticks, mangage usb storage devices and be a nas itself, home automatition, asterisks and many more. For media playback you should also be able to use the hdmi output. Inputs are all done over the touchscreen, additional it will be possible to control via a webinterface or an api for e.g. smartphone applications. Also it will contain a dyi case with space for a custom curciut board.


 * In particular the following targets will be developed, which can be used also in other projects.


 * Easy to build small case with all connectors, place for a 7 inch inframe display, on/off switch and additional place for 80*100mm circuit board for custom use.
 * An easy to customize touch interface
 * WindowManager intergration into the touch interface
 * Easy to customize webinterface for configuration and use
 * Easy to customize Socket interface for various other devices, maybe even between PandaBoards


 * All these can be used in other Projects. The PandaMediaBox will be designed to be very Modular so it should be possible to add nearly anything you can imagin.
 * e.g.
 * Controll Light and Heater
 * Use in kitchen with shopping list / reciept database
 * Use itself as nas with usb hdd
 * Use as router, or fallback device with usb 3g or lte modem
 * Asterisk
 * Internet radio clock


 * The Project will also contain a community page and will be well documented so everyone can build an own Sakols.
 * Distributed will be a system with all interfaces and seperate modules. So the community can fast develop modules and distribute them.
 * Installing the modules should be a one click solution on display / webinterface through an apt archive server.


 * Time frame:
 * 3 Months for the first useable Beta, 6 Months to include all features in a stable version


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Student of computer science, have done work for an embedded sensor network and bigger software projects. Developed two arduino shields, and some software for arduino. IOS developer and very familiar with c, java and perl, some php and SQL skills. Active in local LUG an very familiar with Debian special with maintaining packages. Very familiar with customizing fvwm2. Part time i work as administrator in 2nd and 3rd level support of a worldwide firm, also i develop special applications for them.


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Sakols_Wiki


 * Contact information
 * overflowed[at]gmail[.]com

Helping interface for dependent people

 * Description:
 *  Hardware & Software
 * Gesture/vocal interface to help person suffering from handicap (Blindness, paraplegia, quadriplegia) or elder peoples to keep independence:


 *  For different use schemes:
 * - To locate: a speaking GPS telling location (street name) on request (button or speech recognition).
 * - Read and tell (OCR and speech synthesis)
 * - Speech recognition actuators
 * - Gesture (eye movement or body movements) or speech commands for actuations
 * - Status of remote or local sensors of equipped home
 * - Communicate easily (voip and connected link thru wifi/GSM)


 *  Bringing all these features with the help of software:
 * - Gesture integration, character read OCR: image sensor and image processing
 * - Voice recognition / speech syntheses : audio processing
 * - Actuators and sensor (Local : serial / Ethernet link; remote Bluetooth wifi)
 * - Speech synthesis integrated for reading or locating
 * - Communication VOIP (start, stop communication with predefined list of contact trigged by voice or gesture)


 *  I know all these functions already exist separately, but want to integrate all these features in one system with all the advantages of the pandaboard :
 * - Small form factor
 * - Low power consumption
 * - Connectivity (video sensors, wifi Bluetooth…..)
 * - Power for video and audio processing
 * - Linux and OMAP Community
 * - Get a fully integrated solution with one small board!!!
 * - Pandas are peaceful and powerful bears!


 * Time frame:
 *  First hardware and software integration (within 6 month):
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - GPS (uart)
 * - Webcam USB
 * - Bluetooth sensor/actuator modules
 *  Software
 * - Gesture recognition (hand, body movement) and set some linked action
 * - Speech recognition and set some linked action
 * - Speech synthesis
 * - Actuator and sensors (got some Bluetooth/serial sensors and actuators)
 * - Get street position with speech synthesis work


 *  Second hardware and software integration
 *  Hardware
 * - Pandaboard
 * - Headset /Microphone
 * - Speaker
 * - Design of an extension board GPS (external module with uart), image sensor
 * - Battery pack and case
 *  Software
 * - Eye movement recognition and set some linked action
 * - Develop a graphical interface for option settings for helpers
 * - More integration with person environment (generally home for quadriplegic or old people)


 *  Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * - Affected by persons suffering from handicap, elder peoples…
 * - Already set up some helping electronic (sensors, actuators)
 * - Want to develop a open community of helpers around pandaboard
 * - Work in electronic engineering (software AND hardware !)
 * - Developed electronic hardware devices (digital cameras, bluetooth sensors and actuators)
 * - Got a master in signal (audio and image) processing: openCV is my best friend !
 * - Developed linux driver for image sensors, PCI boards, LCD displays…
 * - Got some gesture recognition working on my Ubuntu intel inside computer


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Gesture (wayv) :
 * OpenCVwiki :
 * Speech recognition (cmu-sphinx) :
 * Text to speech (festival) :
 * GPS (navit) :


 * Contact information
 * helpingdependent.withpandaboard[at]gmail[.]com

PandAmahi: Amahi on Panda

 * Description:

Aim is to port the Amahi Linux home server onto the PandaBoard. Amahi is a very easy to install and configurable home server. A good overview of Amahi can be found at http://www.amahi.org/features

The current version of Amahi only runs on Fedora. Since the Fedora ARM version is missing quite some packages, the goal is to get Amahi on the PandaBoard running under Debian and/or Ubuntu. This involves quite some porting effort due to the differences in package management (rpm vs. deb), configuration file locations and structure (e.g. apache2.conf and /etc/sysconfig in Fedora and httpd.conf and various locations for configuration files on Debian).

End result should be a working Amahi system supporting most (if not all) Amahi packages (sabnzbd, ushare, bittorrent, mediawiki, greyhole, Ampache, ...). A complete list can be found at http://www.amahi.org/apps?s=all

a feasibility study for the project has already been started (and until now lots of work, but no blocking issues have been identified).

All of the code will be released under GPL (the current code of Amahi is also under GPL).

approximately three months.
 * Time frame:

I have about 25 years of experience in Unix/Linux programming (started with Unix V7 on MC68020). In the past I created my own home server for beagleboard. See http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/James for details. For my previous employer I was also involved in realizing a prototype home server and in the implementation of a media player.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s:

Rationale for moving away from James and towards Amahi is because Amahi is much more advanced when it comes to easy installation and user interface.

Amahi has a website at http://www.amahi.org and a wiki at http://wiki.amahi.org. On this wiki a section for this project will be created.
 * Wiki/URL Links:

fransmeulenbroeks at gmail dot com
 * Contact information

TripLogger

 * Description:
 * TripLogger is a device which can be mounted on or in a car dash and provides details about the car's current performance. It would interface to the car's onboard diagnostic plug, and would record and concurrently display current engine metrics.  In addition to real-time diagnostic display, the carputer can also record and export trip information such as location (via GPS), mileage, duration, acceleration/braking characterstics, and other possible performance profiles.  Once this data is offloaded (wirelessly or via SD), it could be used by commuters to create optimum travel routes, or by just about anyone who would want to obtain more information about their driving habits.


 * Optional enhancements could include camera and sound recording. These could be used for possible vlogging or for taking snapshots along the trip.  The driver could either trigger these manually or the TripLogger could be told to take pictures when certain conditions are met (stopped at intersection, passing some landmark, etc).


 * Time frame:
 * Approximately 4 months to a demonstration prototype


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Jennifer and Mark are a creative engineering team whose latest project work centers around home and family life. Jennifer is a creative artist with a degree in bio-chemistry and an enthusiasm for increasing her technology knowledge.  Mark is a software architect by trade.  With 20+ years as a professional software engineer, Mark has worked on or overseen software projects ranging from aircraft engine maintenance tracking to smart-home integration.  Lately, Mark has partnered with his wife to work on embedded hardware platform solutions which integrate well in the home.  Mark's previous work includes work on the OpenSolaris platform, various commercial projects, and co-authoring a book many moons ago. Sam's Teach Yourself DirectX 7 in 24 Hours (Amazon)


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page to follow soon


 * Contact information
 * storycrafter at gmail dot com

Mobile Planetarium and Classrom

 * Description:
 * The mobile planetarium is a portable device which has several key features:
 * A handheld computer with touchscreen LCD for teacher or operator control
 * A small (portable) projector (e.g. FAVI B1-LED-PICO Mini Pocket Projector, Business Edition)
 * Control software which provides either a presentation interface (for general classroom use) or an astronomical guide for projecting star fields
 * Armed with this device, instructors and teachers can create classroom lectures or act as star guides. In "offline" mode, the portable classroom acts largely as a general purpose computer, allowing an instructor to layout slide-shows or other media for presentation.  In "classroom" mode, the device allows the instructor to interact with the LCD display and control previously created content (or, in case of the planetarium, input viewing parameters)


 * Time frame:
 * Approximately 3 months to a demonstration prototype


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * Jennifer and Mark are a creative engineering team whose latest project work centers around home and family life. Jennifer is a creative artist with a degree in bio-chemistry and an enthusiasm for increasing her technology knowledge.  Mark is a software architect by trade.  With 20+ years as a professional software engineer, Mark has worked on or overseen software projects ranging from aircraft engine maintenance tracking to smart-home integration.  Lately, Mark has partnered with his wife to work on embedded hardware platform solutions which integrate well in the home.  Mark's previous work includes work on the OpenSolaris platform, various commercial projects, and co-authoring a book many moons ago. Sam's Teach Yourself DirectX 7 in 24 Hours (Amazon)


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * Wiki page to follow soon


 * Contact information
 * storycrafter at gmail dot com

GoodMorningPanda

 * Objective
 * To create a mobile system deployed to be used to stream voice or data in order to communicate between different endpoint in a mesh approach as a energy-autonomous solution using the PandaBoard.


 * Project name origin
 * The project name takes origin from the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam" where Adrian Cronauer make use of the radio to spread happiness among the soldiers in Vietnam.


 * Short description
 * The project is to use the communication capability of the PandaBoard to create a wireless mesh endpoint that can stream voice or data to communicate relevant information to other endpoints. The main application field will be to provide distributed, server-less communication capabilities to achieve a communication scenario quite similar to VHF or UHF radio sets.


 * We want to focus on some recent communication techniques such as Mesh like wireless signaling with a shared user embedded database in order to develop a server less equipment and SIP signaling protocol to initialize the voice/data session. The project has the objective to make heavy usage of the wireless communication capabilities of the PandaBoard, and the multi core processing support of the CPU. The latter will be particularly interesting to support very low bitrate vocoder, such as narrowband AMR. The other interesting topic is to prove the feasibility of having an energy autonomous system. The main idea is to have the PandaBoard connected to a green energy power source such as a solar panel. This will enable the system to operate in emergency situations as during natural disasters or war crisis. We believe that in case of severe and distributed faults to current telecommunication networks, small autonomous systems like GoodMorningPanda could be of help to those who survived the disaster.


 * Project usage
 * Possible usage of the project are:
 * Fixed server-less WIFI phone for in-building communications;
 * Tactical game ( soft air game like ) wireless radio equipment for voice communication;
 * Inter-vehicle PTT communication system;
 * Emergency coordination for post-disaster communications;
 * Human related data transmission like heartbeat, blood pressure stats, visual medical image with a web cam for wireless long distance medical assistance.


 * Project planning
 * Phase 1:
 * Make some exploration about the wireless technologies to use for data transmission and for data storage on the PandaBoard, to understand for what is the best user database and communication pattern. Time needed: 1 month


 * Phase 2:
 * Initial transmission test with a non multimedia low-bitrate data like temperature and other sensor (pressure, flow). Implementation of the SIP signaling and UDP transport with open source SIP stack. Time needed: 1 month


 * Phase 3:
 * Test the data communication in a Mesh like approach, making the session initialization server-less. Create the mesh-like transportation layer to provide the user position knowledge. Time needed: 4 months


 * Phase 4:
 * Add multimedia transport of image and voice data. Time needed: 1 month


 * Phase 5:
 * Explore energy harvesting techniques to provide a green energy power to the board for in-emergency environments operation. Time needed: 1 month


 * Documentation
 * All the phases will be documented with a open wiki system with source code and development environment.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s
 * Our design team is composed by 7 engineers with quite different backgrounds and specialties: the "common factor" is our interest and commitment toward Embedded Linux and its applications. Besides we also share the same employer, all of us working for an Italian high-tech company focused on Telecommunication Security. The skills of team members ranged from Electrical Engineering and FPGA design, Telecommunication Engineering as well as Computer Science Engineering.


 * Contact information
 * telsiano dot panda at gmail dot com

IPISLIPWI - If Panda Isn't So Lazy It'll Play With IPISLIPWI

 * Description
 * This project aims to develop a gaming console with controller based on motion-sensing. The core of the project will be a linux-based distro with a "Minority Report"-like interface and a library to facilitate the development of games. The hardware side will be as simple as possible and it's formed by two different branch:
 * The console based on the PandaBoard;
 * The motion-controller based on commerial off-the-shelf (COTS) products.
 * Currently we're thinking to use four webcams to capture images which will be read and processed to get the player's movement. At first, the motion-sensing will need the use of some simple items which could be easily recognized (i.e. colored gloves). In the following releases there could be the support for microphone input and speech recognition. Currently the games we're thinking to are:
 * Pong:
 * A simple remake of the old glorious tennis game. The pad is moved through the player's hand movement. We thought to place the screen on a table and each player will stand in the front of his side. The webcams will catch the player's hand position and follow its movement with the pad. Using a squared portion of the screen and four webcams it will be possible to have up to four players
 * Pool:
 * As in the pong example, the screen must be placed horizontally on a table. Four webcams, one for each side of the table, will trace the position of both the player's hand and using this information will determine the stick movement. We're evaluating the development of an X.org input device and the support of other existing games.


 * Time frame
 * The development of the first working prototype will take about 6 months. The final product should be ready after 3 months and subsequent releases with bugfixing and new features will be evaluated after the 1.0 release.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s


 * Our design team is composed by 7 engineers with quite different backgrounds and specialties: the "common factor" is our interest and commitment toward Embedded Linux and its applications. Besides we also share the same employer, all of us working for an Italian high-tech company focused on Telecommunication Security. The skills of team members ranged from Electrical Engineering and FPGA design, Telecommunication Engineering as well as Computer Science Engineering.


 * Contact information
 * telsiano dot panda at gmail dot com

Panda McFly

 * Description:
 * Recent researches by Dr. E. Brown from the Hill Valley Univerity proved that it is possible to develop a completly working flux capacitor with a little power consumption of 1.21 gigawatts. If his research will be confirmed, our goal is to speed the PandaBoard up to 88 Mph and send it back to the Friday 1st April 2011. Once it got there, the PandaBoard will hack your system, allowing me to win the prize.
 * Obviously, if you'll reward me, this will prove that my project has been a success!
 * Obviously, if you'll reward me, this will prove that my project has been a success!


 * Time frame:
 * The project will be ready yesterday.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_McFly


 * Wiki/URL Links:
 * http://lmgtfy.com/?q=back+to+the+future


 * Contact information
 * panda dot mcfly at gmail dot com

Domus Pandae
To create a flexible and extensible system suitable for domotics, built around the Pandaboard platform. The main idea behind this project is to leverage Pandaboard flexibility to build a complete, flexible and scalable platform for domotics applications. The main focus will be posed on building a system able to act as a front door control mechanism. The project is codenamed "Domus Pandae". The desired characteristics of the conceived solution can be summarized as follows:
 * Description:
 * It shall be able to control the access to a private property or to a restricted area controlling the operation of the door (e.g. the front door of an apartment).
 * The access to the restricted area shall be granted only in two cases:
 * The requesting user has successfully completed an authentication procedure (see below);
 * An authorized user is granting the access remotely through the system (i.e. it shall be possible to remotely open the door).


 * There shall be a user database in order to define:
 * User access rights;
 * User roles, i.e. Security Administrator, Normal User, Guest, ...
 * User profile, i.e. different ring tones, enabled access time, types of authentication supported, etc...


 * It shall provide an extensible and modular framework able to support the concept of "authentication plugins". This framework should be somewhat similar to Pluggable Authentication Method (PAM) design concept for Linux system, providing the possibility for the user to select the most suitable authentication method among all the available, e.g.:
 * Pin-based authentication;
 * Smart Card based authentication;
 * Near-field communication authentication;
 * Biometric authentication (fingerprint, face recognition, etc...)


 * It shall be able to provide basic video-surveillance features such as the ability to record audio and video acquired from a USB webcam.
 * It shall be able to stream the captured video to an authenticated terminal through some kind of remote connection such as a UMTS link or an ADSL.
 * The system should be able to inform the Security Administrator user that someone is trying to authenticate with the system. This information can be local only or could be remotely delivered through ADSL or UMTS as for the previous case.
 * The system shall support the remote management using strong authentication methods: this enables the Security Administrator to remotely operate on the door the door, granting or denying access to users in real time.
 * The Pandaboard accelerometer can be exploited to detect breaking attempt on the front door.

The Domus Pandae project is split in different design phases. Each phase is meant to achieve a significant milestone in the development.
 * Time frame
 * Phase 1:
 * Exploration
 * Deadline: T0 + 1 month
 * Aim: During this phase the Team will investigate the state of art in the field.
 * Deliverable: To identify all the necessary technologies for the project implementation.


 * Phase 2:
 * Design specification
 * Deadline: T0 + 3 months
 * Aim: To collect the design specification describing use cases, system architecture, test procedures, etc..
 * Deliverable: A specification document will be released as the output from this design phase.


 * Phase 3:
 * Prototyping
 * Deadline: T0 + 9 months
 * Aim: To demonstrate system's feasibility.
 * Deliverable: A working prototype of the system based on Pandaboard; all the software framework able to support multiple authentication methods; the video subsystem as well as the remote control part.


 * Phase 4:
 * Testing
 * Deadline: T0 + 11 months
 * Aim: To assess system's compliance and reliability.
 * Deliverable: Revision 2 of the software produced during Phase 3.


 * Phase 5:
 * Documentation
 * Deadline: T0 + 12 months
 * Aim: To provide a documentation of the overall project architecture as well as the API documentation.
 * Deliverable: Support documentation to the project.


 * Background & work by project submitter/s
 * Our design team is composed by 7 engineers with quite different backgrounds and specialties: the "common factor" is our interest and commitment toward Embedded Linux and its applications. Besides we also share the same employer, all of us working for an Italian high-tech company focused on Telecommunication Security. The skills of team members ranged from Electrical Engineering and FPGA design, Telecommunication Engineering as well as Computer Science Engineering.


 * Contact information
 * telsiano dot panda at gmail dot com

SpyPanda
To build a platform for environment surveillance and wireless security
 * Objective

Is your home wireless network secure? Have you ever had the need to monitor or to keep under surveillance your house? If you answered yes to at least one of the above then you need SpyPanda!
 * Short description

SpyPanda is a platform built to provide you the ability to sniff all the wireless activity, both WiFi and Bluetooth. It logs all the relevant info on the traffic it senses, even the GPS location of the measurement. Additionally it can capture audio and video, recording it on an SD device or streaming it to an enabled terminal. SpyPanda can be configured to operate in two different configurations, namely:
 * Security Scanner profile: in this configuration SpyPanda will assess the security of your home network, acting both as a passive sniffing tool as well as an active attacker. Following an approach similar to the well-known Nessus tool, it will try to discover system's vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Lastly a port scanning tool is provided in order to report all the open port found in the scanned wireless network.
 * Environment Surveillance profile: in this configuration SpyPanda will try to keep itself as "quiet" as possible, limiting its activity to recording and logging. The user has the ability to select what need to be observed (traffic to and from specific IP addresses, particular packet contents, unknown MAC address, ...) and the triggering event, i.e. what will turn your SpyPanda on. Besides simple network logging it is also possible to keep track of other info such as audio and video captured by proper devices, physical properties such as room temperature, umidity,...

All the captured data will be stored in an encrypted form and will be available both on line through a WEB interface as well as for off line use.

3 months for the specification and general architecture of SpyPanda, 4 months of development for the idea demonstrator, 3 months to finalize it and 1 month for the tests.
 * Time frame

Our design team is composed by 7 engineers with quite different backgrounds and specialties: the "common factor" is our interest and commitment toward Embedded Linux and its applications. Besides we also share the same employer, all of us working for an Italian high-tech company focused on Telecommunication Security. The skills of team members ranged from Electrical Engineering and FPGA design, Telecommunication Engineering as well as Computer Science Engineering.
 * Background & work by project submitter/s


 * Contact information
 * telsiano dot panda at gmail dot com