BeagleBoard.org in Google Summer of Code!

BeagleBoard.org has been listed as one of the accepted mentoring organizations for the Google Summer of Code 2010!!!



Over 365 organizations applied and we are among the 150 lucky Free and Open Source projects that were accepted. About 1,000 students are expected to have their project proposals accepted and Google will be providing US$5,000 to every student and US$500 to the mentoring organization for every successfully completed project. Texas Instruments will be providing BeagleBoard hardware through the BeagleBoard.org Sponsored Projects Program. TinCanTools has offered to provide Zippy boards to students using those in their projects.

Now is the time for mentors (people who would like to assist the students), to sign up on the GSoC2010 site and to update the ideas list. It is also the time for students to get familiar with the BeagleBoard.org project and community before applications begin being accepted on March 29, so be sure to hang out on the #gsoc and #beagle channels on irc.freenode.net.

Spread the good news and bring on the projects!!!

Several OMAP/Beagle patches land upstream for Linux 2.6.33

I'm feeling pretty happy and excited today looking at the patches Linus Torvalds has recently merged into the Linux kernel mainline, such as a huge patch set from Tony Lindgren[1]. I'm particularly happy to see that DSS2 is there[2], so there shouldn't be any more confusion about what display driver to use on OMAP. The USB EHCI (host port) driver also finally got merged[5]. I also see a large number of power management patches being included.

Baseline support for several OMAP3 systems has also been included, including the Always Innovating Touch Book[3], AM3517 EVM[6], IGEPv2[7], CM-T35[8], OMAP3630 Zoom-3[9] and some updates for the OpenPandora[4]. Many of the OMAP3 development boards[10] and open development platforms are still not listed or easy to find in the Kconfig descriptions or board instance files.

A large number of bug fixes are also included.

It typically takes Linus 2-3 weeks to put together the first release candidate. After that, it typically takes 2-3 months to hammer out the bugs enough to make the the release. I'm looking forward to seeing great testing and contributions from the OMAP and BeagleBoard communities following the release of Linux 2.6.33-rc1!!

[1] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=9c3936cb694ffd559c80dc3eb75b61f769a39259
[2] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/arm/OMAP/DSS
[3] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=7a079cab4632265fc87ee483daf57879d5dd87f2
[4] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=8d88f7f70cca3fa6aabac287fccd40cebacb92d1
[5] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=54ab2b02ef6a454b4cca969f546d0dd43fec7308
[6] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=c625327e2f5a506a89563e14ed837c82fa61548f
[7] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=58e111621d402d41cb0cabae7c532d6194b7d943
[8] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=2886d128d8ff83af88b9cbe6dbf7f0d2bbee8d76
[9] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=5f35fbe8b8a05743fb9686e33194a126cd4273f6
[10] http://wiki.omap.com/index.php?title=OMAP3_Boards

Videos of intro to Nov 17th community lightning talks and all the Aug 27th talks

See the full list of movies in the YouTube playlist. They include OMAP3-based open platforms like the Always Innovating Touch Book and the Oregon State ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) OSWALD, software frameworks running on OMAP3 like Gnome, Ubuntu, GStreamer, and QNX Neutrino, projects for open software defined radio (SDR), hardware projects to expand Beagle with LCDs and Ethernet, the DM355-based open camera project LeopardBoard.org, and new applications like the PicoFlamingo presentation system.

To see the slides or join the Nov 17th event, visit the wiki page. Enjoy!

NEON training

One of the most important aspects of the BeagleBoard.org community is that I'm mostly irrelevant. This means that I'm not a bottleneck to the important things that happen in the community. Unfortunately, it also means that I'm also not always in-the-loop on great events coming up that utilize the BeagleBoard and getting the word out to everyone on-time. Even so, I imagine a lot of you are going to the ARM Techcon3 and can make use of this nice litte bit of hands-on training using the BeagleBoard that I learned about from Ken Havens:

Turning the NEON Light On (Hands-on Workshop)
Wednesday, Oct 21 3:00pm - 4:30pm
TechMart: San Jose room

Friday, Oct 23 10:00am - 11:30am
TechMart: San Jose room

This seminar will be a hands-on introduction to NEON (the SIMD extension on Cortex-A processors) using Beagleboards running Ubuntu Linux. Attendees should be software engineers with some prior experience of armcc or gcc with an interest in low-level software optimizations.

Beagleboard in India costs 3500 Rupees less ...

It is great to know that IDA systems will be shipping beagleboards in India for just Rs 8999 http://www.idasystems.net/beagle_board

In the past beagleboards were available for 12500 Rs, thanks for Gerald Coley, CircuitCo and IDA to work together in getting the cost down for India.

IDA systems is also announced as official distributor for Beagleboards http://beagleboard.org/buy. So any one in India can get local support for beagleboards and shipping should be fast with no lead times like before.

Good Luck to IDA and beagle board India users.

Regards,
Khasim

http://hawkboard.wordpress.com/
http://hawkboard.org/

Beagle Clinic India : August Event - an update

Beagle Clinic India was held at Texas Instruments campus on 29th Aug 2009. More details about participants and the technology discussed please click the link below,
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/bangalore_user_meet#Beagle_Clinic_India
Few action items that were taken during the meet with probable solutions are given below :
- USB HOST hangs when multiple devices are connected – OE kernel
need to post this query to linux-omap-vger kernel mailing list and get the support
- SGX training online – NON angstrom distribution
Girish is helping on generating this training content should be available by early next week.
- LCD board for Beagle
No support yet.
- Operating frequency for 600Mhz
This is possible with PM brach, echo 5 > /sys/power/vdd1_lock
- Arrange one hands on Gstreamer and SGX sessions
In next beagle clinic we can take up one of these.
- A wiki page for QT to get it working on beagleboard
Need to find a voluteer for this.
I have taken other inputs on cleaning up the code.google.com/p/beagleboard, sorry due to multiple things was not able to do this, it should be done by end of next week.
Other topics discussed were
Leopard: to support mmc boot support in u-boot, will have to check this out.
Devkit (with answers) :
- USB Host not working : will be resolved by embest in next two months.
- Audio and board hang : embest will test can get back
- WinCE images not working: Give more details to embest
- Support : embest is considering supporting the team on beagle mailing list
- Camera module: Not available for customers
I will be in Pune for trainings on OMAP L , DM355 leopard and beagleboard on Sept 24th and Sept 25th, I am not sure if I can co-ordinate the beagle clinic this month also we long weekend holidays coming up next month, please suggest an alternat date for the same.
Next event :
- Hands on training with SGX modules
- Show case OMAP L 138 platform (ia)
- Get some one on call to discuss USB issues.
- If possible get gstreamer hands on training.
Kindly note this event is mainly meant to fix and solve issues we are facing with beagleboard, leopard board and other community platforms.

Thanks to attendees, lets keep this going to make things easier with beagle board.

Khasim
khasim@beagleboard.org

Beagle Board at ESC Boston

The Beagle Board is back at ESC Boston! There will be a user's group meeting following the training sessions. There is a two-hour hands-on introduction and 3 hands-on classes featuring Android, DSP-accelerated audio/video, and use of the 3D graphics accelerator. Classes are free for ESC attendees with a $99 setup fee to get access to a lab station if you bring your own Beagle Board and $299 to get a new Beagle Board with the class.

For more information, visit http://beagleboard.org/esc.