Driving stepper motor with beaglebone

Beaglebone case

The beaglebone case from sparkfun.com.
I can't mount the 4th screw because of SMD resistors that too close to the mount hole.

Connecting external GPS to ODROID-X (Android ICS)

This bluetooth GPS can be connected to USB. 

I connected it to ODROID-X. After some patches it works.

File that should be patched: android/device/hardkernel/proprietary/libodroid-gps/Android.mk

ODROID-X playing 1080p video

ODROID-X from www.hardkernel.com playing 1080p video with hardware acceleration. Finally one of ARM boards is capable of doing it. I tried it with beagleboard and pandaboard - absolutely no way.
Beagleboard SGX drivers is still under development - forever and ever.
Pandaboard ES is getting really hot. The result - CPU changing clock constantly from high to low. You should install serious cooling system on it.
This one - ODROID-X - is really impressive with customized distribution of Android. This version of Android includes Dice player, that can use GPU hardware decoding. And there is XBMC patch for using this player. The board has great community support.
Ubuntu distribution is still missing graphic drivers.

Oscam card server on beaglebone

I own a Beaglebone (TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8). I was thinking about use of it.
It can control 4 PWMs (for servos for example), but I already have a servo robot (mega168 bot).
It is capable of running zoneminder - surveillance software. But all my USB cameras didn't work with it - they very old.
Here are the instructions to build oscam server with it.

1. Install ubuntu 12.04: http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu#Demo_Image
2. Update kernel: http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu#Advanced
3. Update ubuntu with

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade 

4. Install ftp server

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

5. Configure it (/etc/vsftpd.conf)

local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES

6. Restart vsftpd

sudo service vsftpd restart

7. Install all development stuff: build-essential, automake, subversion, etc
8. Install libusb from source:

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/libusb/libusb-1.0/libusb-1.0.9/libusb-1.0.9.tar.bz2
tar -xf libusb-1.0.9.tar.bz2
cd libusb-1.0.9
./configure
make
sudo make install 

9. Get oscam (http://www.streamboard.tv/oscam/wiki/GettingOscam)

svn checkout http://www.streamboard.tv/svn/oscam/trunk oscam-svn
cd oscam-svn
sudo make USE_LIBUSB=1 EXTRA_FLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib"

10. Now you have oscam in "Distribution" folder

sudo cp ./Distribution/oscam-1.20-unstable_svn7488-arm-linux-gnueabihf-libusb /usr/local/bin/oscam

11. Put oscam configs in /usr/local/etc:  oscam.conf, oscam.server, oscam.user

12. Create oscam script (/etc/init.d/oscam):

#!/bin/sh
# Start/stop the OScam daemon.
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          OScam
# Required-Start:    $syslog $network $pcscd
# Required-Stop:     $syslog $network $pcscd
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start and Stop OScam
# Description: OScam init script. This script start and stop OScam.
### END INIT INFO

NAME=oscam
DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/$NAME
CONFIG_DIR=/usr/local/etc
PIDFILE=/var/run/oscam.pid
LOG=/var/log/oscam/oscam.log
LOGUSR=/var/log/oscam/oscamuser.log
LOGCW=/var/log/oscam/cw.log
STARTAS="$DAEMON -- -b -c $CONFIG_DIR"

#test -f $DAEMON || exit 0
[ -x $DAEMON ] || exit 0
[ -d $CONFIG_DIR ] || exit 0

# Get lsb functions
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

echo $NAME

clear_file() {
    # Clear log and pid file if exists
    if [ -e $PIDFILE ]
then
   rm -f $PIDFILE
fi
if [ -e $LOG ]
then
   rm -f $LOG
fi
if [ -e $LOGUSR ]
then
   rm -f $LOGUSR
fi
if [ -e $LOGCW ]
then
   rm -f $LOGCW
fi
}
case "$1" in
start)
        clear_file
        log_daemon_msg "Starting OScam daemon" "OScam"
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exe $DAEMON --startas $STARTAS
        log_end_msg $?
;;
stop)
        log_daemon_msg "Stopping OScam daemon" "OScam"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --exe $DAEMON
        log_end_msg $?
        ;;
restart)
        log_daemon_msg "Restarting OScam daemon" "OScam"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --retry 5 --quiet --exe $DAEMON
        clear_file
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exe $DAEMON --startas $STARTAS
        log_end_msg $?
        ;;
status)
status_of_proc -p $PIDFILE $DAEMON $NAME && exit 0 || exit $?
        ;;
*)
        log_action_msg "Usage: /etc/init.d/OScam {start|stop|restart|status}"
        exit 2
        ;;
esac
exit 0

13. Set script permissions

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/oscam

14. Add script to startup:

sudo update-rc.d oscam defaults

14. Restart the beaglebone and open the page in browser: http://XXX.XXX.X.XX:8888, with beaglebone IP. You should see the oscam running.

15. You can check oscam errors with:

 sudo service oscam start

or

sudo service oscam restart 

Update 07-Dec-2012: Smargo Card reader from ebay works great with this configuration. In file oscam.server should be written:
protocol=smartreader
device=002:003 (or something else depend on lsusb output)

Accelerometer adxl335

The Mega bot upgraded with accelerometer. He can feel the position now. When he is upside down - the servos stops. The alarm will be added later.

The accelerometer from Sparkfun (the low one)

The very first test (on one axis)

The final test (on all axes)

Mega bot finds the way out

Another video of my bot travelling inside the house

Current sensor for MegaBot

MegaBot updated with current sensor from Sparkfun
Now it can sense motors overload, when it is stuck.

The sensor

The updated bot

The obstacle handling

BeagleBone PWM

Today I discovered a few important things.

1. PWM and GPIO in BeagleBone can be activated from shell. And it can be used for servo control.

2. DSO 2090 has linux software on http://www.openhantek.org. Finally, I don't need Windows for my scope.

PWM pulses

Wi-fi adapter that I use

Ubuntu wi-fi auto connect

I had 2 days of headache trying to make Beaglebone to connect to my wi-fi network upon startup. I installed ubuntu on it (oneiric 11.10). Currently it has only command line interface via serial.
Here is the solution how to configure it. My wi-fi network is open an has MAC connection control.

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant

/etc/network/interfaces

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
ssid="MyHomeNetwork"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=NONE
}