OHMC2022 Project announcement
Contents
Overview
The OHMC2022 aims are to
- build upon last year's efforts,
- focus on Simple Add Ons (SAO),
- deliver our first OHMC FPGA project and
- align with LCA2022's theme of community engagement.
OHMC2021 was our first LCA on-line mini-conference and opening up our development efforts prior to the day of the mini-conference. We aim to do better again this year, in part helped by building upon the 300 SwagBadge 2021 already out there. Also, by reaching out to HackerSpaces / MakerSpaces and individuals who'd like to be more closely involved in the process, especially around designing and building custom D.I.Y SAO hardware and firmware.
The OHMC for 2022 will have a hardware kit posted out to participants in the workshop, for a fee (TBA) to cover the cost of the boards and postage.
What does the hardware kit look like? It's a Swagbadge again, now in a more penguin shaped form factor. It has:
- a LolinLite ESP32 microprocessor, giving you Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
- runs micropython (no special IDE required)
- SAO connection points
- a single large LCD screen (a change from last year's double screens)
- two capacitive touch sliders
- a belly-button reset button (no more fumbling around to find the somewhat obscured location of last year)
- Supported by an open-sourced embedded network framework, the Aiko Engine for microPython
- With a number of SAO connectors so you can extend and add on your own hardware components
But wait, there's more: we're also aiming to supply the "Rockling":
- a fish-shaped PCB SAO for the Tux Swagbadge to hold
- which has an FPGA on board
- and audio connectors to connect to a speaker/headphones
- and hopefully software to let it act as a Theremin
We'll also have the usual suite of brilliant talks about projects and ideas in the open hardware space by people who are experts in their field.
Building upon OHMC 2021
We have some unfinished business with OHMC 2021 ... we didn't get to seriously build or help anyone else to design and build any Simple Add Ons (SAOs).
Additional images
Safety precautions
- When using any hardware ordered off the internet, you can't be quite certain what software might be present on it. Before shipping these badges to you, we reflashed a fresh copy of MicroPython onto the Lolin32.
- The framework running on the badge is Aiko, which is open source.
- The software on the badge is available on the CCHS repository, also all open source.
- The badges are designed to communicate over MQTT - a lightweight standard for messaging on IoT devices, but we are aware of privacy considerations: you don't want anybody able to control your badge from afar. The swagbadge protocol provides support for encrypted messages.
