Using Perl to read Linux events

For a simple demo that played a movie on a BeagleBoard, I wanted to add a simple mechanism to start the movie over again if the USER button was pressed.

To read a Linux input event, it is as simple as just performing a read. The only trick to this for me, however, is that I wanted the read to timeout. This was resolved by using the Perl alarm() function can catching the signal within an eval().

I've uploaded a gist of my example play_movie.pl script:

Vote for the winner in the TI/UT BeagleBoard Design Challenge

BeagleBoard UT Design Challenge! TI and UT Austin students step up to the challenge What is the most inventive thing that can be done on the BeagleBoard today? Students from the University of Texas at Austin have stepped up to the challenge to find new and unique ways to push the envelope, inspired by the BeagleBoard to break barriers of innovation. Which BeagleBoard-based design would you like to own? Vote for your favorite today! Voting takes place between January 27th – February 10th. To cast your vote, please view projects at ti.com/beagleboardchallenge. Think you can do better? Visit beagleboard.org to begin your own development.

Looking for a college intern for this summer

In the past, for job postings and other commercial solicitations around the BeagleBoard I've recommended utilizing the BeagleBoard LinkedIn group because I never went deeper than the page that said that the job board was free.  As I tried to list my own opening, I found that it was going to cost me almost $200.  Given that, I welcome anyone contacting me with information on cheaper ways to do job listings and other commercial solicitations related to BeagleBoard activities.

What I'm inquiring about here is to fill an ARM microprocessor community development team internship position at Texas Instruments for summer 2011.  You can find other job opportunities at TI with TI's CareerBuilder site (try keyword "Linux") or at http://careers.ti.com.

Job Description
Serve the needs of open source software developers utilizing TI ARM-based microprocessors by advocating within TI, consolidating and communicating valuable information internally and externally, and solving technical and organizational challenges including patches to fix open source software bugs or functional gaps in software like u-boot, Linux, applications within GNU/Linux distributions and tools to build software systems. Producing written, recorded and interactive presentation materials to train technical and semi-technical audiences on utilization and extension of open hardware platforms, such as the BeagleBoard, is required. A public reputation in open source software development is highly desirable. Some travel required. On-line communication skills are a must. This position is potentially very flexible in hours and location as long as mastery of communications with the core team can be demonstrated. Other potential benefits include flexibility in software projects and resources of perhaps the largest volume ARM microprocessor supplier in the industry.

Minimal Skills Required

• On-line communications
• Conflict resolution
• C and C++ programming
• Shell scripting
• Demonstrated knowledge in Linux, operating system and build system concepts
• Software revision control management
• Oral and written communications in English (additional languages are desirable, especially Japanese, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Hindi)

Company Description
Texas Instruments (TI) is a global analog and digital semiconductor IC design and manufacturing company. In addition to analog technologies, digital signal processing (DSP) and microcontroller (MCU) semiconductors, TI designs and manufactures semiconductor solutions for analog and digital embedded and application processing.

Where to send your information
Please send all TI ARM microprocessor community development job related queries to me with "JOB" in the subject heading and to my jkridner account on beagleboard.org.

BYOES at ESC Boston

Last chance to Register for BeagleBoard Workshop, Sept 20-21 at ESC Boston The two-day embedding training at ESC Boston, with BeagleBoard.org and Microsoft, is rapidly approaching. Don’t miss your chance to learn how to develop with Windows Embedded Compact 7 on the BeagleBoard-xM, a community-driven single-board computer.    Register Now     September 20-21 at ESC Boston Sessions are FREE to all paid conference attendees. BeagleBoards can be purchased for $150 during registration. Participants will have access to BeagleBoard-xM and an SD card that contains the distributions for the classes as well as demos, tools and more. To learn more about BeagleBoard-XM please visit us online. Buy a BeagleBoard-xM Kit for only $150* *Supply is limited.

Announcement from TI of BeagleBoard-xM hands-on training at ESC Chicago

Get hands-on training with the new BeagleBoard-xM, June 7-8 at ESC Chicago Attend ESC Chicago, June 7 & 8, and get hands-on interactive training with the new BeagleBoard-xM and talk with industry experts as they give you all of the hardware, boot, and kernel basics required to start development immediately. Attendees will learn how to engage with the BeagleBoard developer community, as well as how to obtain and utilize the source code projects most fundamental to the boards functionality. For those actively developing there will be targeted classes available addressing: Streaming media Graphical user interfaces Embedded Linux Android development for non-handset designs Register Now for ESC Chicago Sessions and kits are FREE to registered BeagleBoard workshop attendees. Arrive early, as space and board availability is limited. Come and experiment with the BeagleBoard-xM to see what new ideas it sparks in you. For more information or to order a BeagleBoard, please visit www.beagleboard.org Click here to register for BeagleBoard classes at ESC Chicago. SHARE THIS EMAIL

The platform bar is a trademark of Texas Instruments. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Six BeagleBoard.org GSoC projects launching

BeagleBoard.org was approved to mentor six (6) students during this year's Google as they execute their projects.  The students, projects, and mentors are:

• Christopher Friedt's project is NEON Support for FFTW.  He is being mentored by Mans Rullgard.  I'm proposing Philip Balister as a co-mentor. Christopher attends C.A.U. Kiel, Germany.  You can follow his work at http://perpetual-notion.blogspot.com/.
• Tobias Arrskog's project is Optimizing rendering of XBMC and aiding the port to ARM.  He is being mentored by Mike Zucchi.  I'm proposing Mans Rullgard and Søren Steen Christensen to assist as co-mentors. Tobias attends Lunds University, LTH. Sweden.
• Yaman Umuroglu's project is RPC-like POSIX wrappers for DSPEasy. Yaman is mentored by Katie Roberts-Hoffman.  I'm proposing Laine Walker-Avina and Frank Walzer to assist as co-mentors.  Yaman attends Middle East Technical University in Turkey.
• Varun Jewalikar's project is a High level interface to exploit the Pulse Width Modulation abilities of the BeagleBoard.  Varun is being mentored by Søren Steen Christensen.  I'm proposing Cristina Murillo to assist as a co-mentor, but I'll be looking to see if we can add a co-mentor in India.  Varun attends Delhi College of Engineering in India.
• Nicolas Boichat's project is a USB sniffer on Beagle Board.  Nicolas is being mentored by Hunyue Yau.  I'm proposing Laine Walker-Avina and Frans Meulenbroeks to assist as co-mentors.  Nicolas is finishing his Masters at EPFL (Switzerland).
• Pramod Poudel's project is OpenCV DSP Acceleration.  Pramod is being mentored by Leonardo Estevez.  I'm proposing Katie Roberts-Hoffman and Luis Gustavo Lira to assist as co-mentors.  Pramod attends University of Texas at Tyler, Texas, USA.

Thanks all for each of the roughly 60 proposals submitted to BeagleBoard.org!!  I hope that you'll continue to participate and will consider submitting a proposal again next year.  There's been a bit of a lag in the weekly sponsored projects. Boards should be in the GSoC students' hands this week, so I hope that you register your project there to still have the opportunity to get a board and execute your idea.

From the GSoC timeline, we are currently in the Community Bonding Period and very close to launching our projects:

Community Bonding Period:	Students get to know mentors, read documentation, get up to speed to begin working on their projects.

May 24:	Students begin coding for their GSoC projects; Google begins issuing initial student payments provided tax forms are on file and students are in good standing with their communities.

Every student should be in contact with his/her mentor and co-mentors on a regular basis.  This Monday, May 17th will be an all-hands meeting on #beagle at 14:00 UTC / 10AM EDT.

P.S. Mentors registered with GSoC, please contact me if I don't have the roles defined adequately--I don't mind adding additional co-mentors.

Ubuntu image writer simplifies getting start using the BeagleBoard

If you happen to have a 2GB SD card and you are thinking about trying the Angstrom demo that Koen has created but are scared of all the partitioning, formatting, and copying instructions you are finding on the web, then I hope I'm about to share some joy with you.

Ubuntu now distributes a tool for writing images onto USB sticks and SD cards for the purpose of evaluating Ubuntu. For those of us who use Linux on a daily basis, it serves largely the same purpose as the 'dd' command, but it runs in Windows and Mac OS X as well and has a GUI to help prompt you along the way. You can get the tool from:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles

Additionally, Koen, a maintainer for the Angstrom Distribution, has produced an image under his demo directory at:

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/sd-images/2gb/

You'll still need a tool to uncompress the image (which is Bzip2 compressed), but the rest should be mostly self-explanatory. Hopefully other distributions will follow and more SD images will be available soon!