I spent last week at the SDR Forum Technical Conference. I spent the week talking with people I know about various SDR ideas and "networking". Highlights of the week were our Radio Challenge Team received an award for beat design, I received an Outstanding Technical paper award (I am not really sure why). Overall a very good week.
There were several presentations on partial reconfiguration of Xilinx FPGA's. It looks like the technology is close to being usable. When I get a little more time, I need to learn FPGA programming.
After the Conference, I went skiing at Arapahoe Basin with my friend Mike.
And yes, I need to create more blog entries.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
I'm still here
Currently finishing off "the thesis". The abstract should be finished this afternoon, then another review by my advisor. Then I'll give it to my committee and schedule the defense date. Of course, one of my committee members left during my eternity here, so I need to replace him.
I'm procrastinating by running builds for the SFF SDR board including some fixes I made in OSSIE, and a build for the gumstix verdex + netwifimicroSD so I can test this hardware setup. I need to get the configs for the SFF SDR board split from the Davinci EVM and push the Verdex+netwifimicroSD changes.
The week of November 4-9 I will be at the SDR Forum Technical Conference in Denver. Big plans there involve looking at skis and doing some skiing after the conference. Oh yeah, probably some work related stuff also.
I'm procrastinating by running builds for the SFF SDR board including some fixes I made in OSSIE, and a build for the gumstix verdex + netwifimicroSD so I can test this hardware setup. I need to get the configs for the SFF SDR board split from the Davinci EVM and push the Verdex+netwifimicroSD changes.
The week of November 4-9 I will be at the SDR Forum Technical Conference in Denver. Big plans there involve looking at skis and doing some skiing after the conference. Oh yeah, probably some work related stuff also.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Lyrtech Small Form Factor Board
I have had a Lyrtech Small Form Factor SDR (SFFSDR) board since May 9. I had about 8 weeks to get Linux running on it for the SDR Forum Radio Challenge contest. Sadly I could not make it run Linux in that time frame, so we switched to plan B for the contest. Since my thesis writing is nearly done, I have some time to see how good the davinci support committed to u-boot a couple of months ago is, I took another stab at getting Linux on the board
The davinci support in u-boot is good, I had the board working in a day. Some minor kernel config changes have the kernel booting, and this morning I set up root over NFS and got minimal-image running. It was great seeing the Angstrom ASCII logo scroll onto the screen.
Now to get an OSSIE image built .... And get the NAND flash working with the kernel so I can create a self contained system.
The davinci support in u-boot is good, I had the board working in a day. Some minor kernel config changes have the kernel booting, and this morning I set up root over NFS and got minimal-image running. It was great seeing the Angstrom ASCII logo scroll onto the screen.
Now to get an OSSIE image built .... And get the NAND flash working with the kernel so I can create a self contained system.
root@davinci-dvevm:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : ARM926EJ-S rev 5 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 148.27
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp java
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 5TEJ
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0x926
CPU revision : 5
Cache type : write-back
Cache clean : cp15 c7 ops
Cache lockdown : format C
Cache format : Harvard
I size : 16384
I assoc : 4
I line length : 32
I sets : 128
D size : 8192
D assoc : 4
D line length : 32
D sets : 64
Hardware : DaVinci EVM
Revision : 64460000
Serial : 0000000000000000
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Back from Berlin
The final day of OEDEM was highlighted by the dinner sponsored by Tarent. I had a very good pork dish and dessert. I am not sure if the entree was "German Food", but people suggested the dessert was Austrian.
After dinner I walked back to my hotel along Bernauer Strasse, paralleling the former Berlin Wall. Walking past the wall gave me time to reflect on the changes that have ocurred during my life time. I was born in 1961, shortly before the wall was built, I am very to glad to see Berlin recovering from this tragedy.
The trip to Berlin for OEDEM has been a very good thing. The OpenEmbedded developers are excellent people, both on a personal and a professional level. The level of technical skill work ethic rivals anything I have seen in my various careers. I strongly recommend people find an open source project to participate in . Even if you are not a coding god, open source projects need users, testers, people to help track problems and most importantly, people that can write.
Many of the issues discussed at OEDEM could be traced back to inadequate documentation.
Wednesday, I had to catch a plane at 0930, this meant getting up at 0600. The airport was a combination of a subway and bus trip that went smoothly. The connection at Frankfurt was short, but went smoothly. I arrived at the gate as the plane was boarding. There was some chaos as the USAir staff rechecked our passports and walked us through the security questions again. Then I had to get new boarding passes. Finally made it on the plane.
The Airbus A330 has an on demand inflight video system. This made watching movies on the plane tolerable.
Back in Charlotte I had dinner and found out there is free wireless in Charlotte now. This made up for the ridiculous security line I had to go through after clearing customs. Note, if you plan to go through security in Charlotte, add one hour.
Before going home, I stopped by my office to pick up my thesis after my advisor made comments. And finally headed to bed.
After dinner I walked back to my hotel along Bernauer Strasse, paralleling the former Berlin Wall. Walking past the wall gave me time to reflect on the changes that have ocurred during my life time. I was born in 1961, shortly before the wall was built, I am very to glad to see Berlin recovering from this tragedy.
The trip to Berlin for OEDEM has been a very good thing. The OpenEmbedded developers are excellent people, both on a personal and a professional level. The level of technical skill work ethic rivals anything I have seen in my various careers. I strongly recommend people find an open source project to participate in . Even if you are not a coding god, open source projects need users, testers, people to help track problems and most importantly, people that can write.
Many of the issues discussed at OEDEM could be traced back to inadequate documentation.
Wednesday, I had to catch a plane at 0930, this meant getting up at 0600. The airport was a combination of a subway and bus trip that went smoothly. The connection at Frankfurt was short, but went smoothly. I arrived at the gate as the plane was boarding. There was some chaos as the USAir staff rechecked our passports and walked us through the security questions again. Then I had to get new boarding passes. Finally made it on the plane.
The Airbus A330 has an on demand inflight video system. This made watching movies on the plane tolerable.
Back in Charlotte I had dinner and found out there is free wireless in Charlotte now. This made up for the ridiculous security line I had to go through after clearing customs. Note, if you plan to go through security in Charlotte, add one hour.
Before going home, I stopped by my office to pick up my thesis after my advisor made comments. And finally headed to bed.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
OEDEM Day 3
Today the hard work started started. The OpenEmbedded project is growing and attracting new user communities. Many of the issues discussed revolved around the problem of supporting and integrating new users into the OE community. We really should try streaming video for people who cannot be here, but all we have are minutes.
In my late update last night, I covered yesterday's eating details. Still no German food. There are calls to attempt a German lunch. Possible my German food experience will be a currywurst in the Frankfurt airport tomorrow on my way home.
Tonight we have a dinner sponsored by Tarent, a German company that uses OpenEmbedded. I am not sure where this is (I heard the name last night), but maybe it will be a German restaurant.
On the bicycle situation, our Dutch representative assures there are not very many bicycles in Berlin and I should go to the Netherlands to see bicycles. I also saw a recumbent when I went for coffee this morning. Our Dutch representative also try to report that he lost his wallet and passport on Friday in the train station. Apparently, the German police told him that him being an idiot was a problem for the Dutch authorities, not the German police.
In my late update last night, I covered yesterday's eating details. Still no German food. There are calls to attempt a German lunch. Possible my German food experience will be a currywurst in the Frankfurt airport tomorrow on my way home.
Tonight we have a dinner sponsored by Tarent, a German company that uses OpenEmbedded. I am not sure where this is (I heard the name last night), but maybe it will be a German restaurant.
On the bicycle situation, our Dutch representative assures there are not very many bicycles in Berlin and I should go to the Netherlands to see bicycles. I also saw a recumbent when I went for coffee this morning. Our Dutch representative also try to report that he lost his wallet and passport on Friday in the train station. Apparently, the German police told him that him being an idiot was a problem for the Dutch authorities, not the German police.
Monday, October 8, 2007
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