OSH Camp : Wuthering Bytes 2014

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Wuthering Bytes is relatively new; but OSH Camp isn't. OSH being Open Source Hardware - the event has now grown and expanded into something resembling other barcamp type (un)conferences (like Oggcamp, Barcamp Blackpool, etc.) where creative people get together and demonstrate, talk or discuss what they have been making, creating or how open source has affected their projects and lives.

I was advised to just turn up to Wuthering Bytes for the saturday, though it looks like the Friday had just as much fun and similarly good content (the talks weren't repeated across the days) the sunday consists mainly of workshops (I feel I have enough Raspberry Pi's lying around and Arduino's that I can hands on enough myself at the moment).

Hebden Bridge is where OSH Camp is hosted, in the town hall and upon arrival at the location I was informed by a stylised sign which, I would've photographed except I was driving past it, informing me that this location has been a source of inspiration and creativity for years upon years (I'm paraphrasing). It's easy to see why, once you get into the heart of the place. Set deep in a valley (or so it feels like it) you're surrounded by a lush, green landscape that's hand carved with buildings from stone set into the ground like a play set dumped into a sand pit at a nursery. A homely and warming, welcoming feel.

There are also a lot of ducks.

I'm not sure why, but apparently the ducks are always watching and involved when it comes to hackers.

Upon arrival I was given my lanyard and badge; along with a goodie bag, with a toy inside! All of the parts required to make a Nutclough portable mono audio amplifier. Joy! Toys! I shall be making and soldering that up later. Amidst the packaging was typical advertisement cards and such. The badge was to be customised with stickers that were available to encourage people to discuss topics with one another; but the talks listed were far too interesting and outside of that I was busy enjoying my coffee.

The first talk was a good introduction and overview of Linux Bootloaders and Kernel Configuration; presented by Melanie whom infrequently goes to my local Hackspace  I learnt more about U-Boot. This is something that is ever more prevalent if you've ever rebuilt your image for the RIoTboard and then discovered that you've forgotten to use it, or for your SAMA5D3 board because then it fails to boot properly and/or boot the rootfs and as with all of the talks of the day, the Raspberry Pi was mentioned and thrown into conversation (with much lamenting of how poor implementations of U-Boot were for it).

Omer Kilic gave a great talk on considerations to have when you have an idea that you're prototyping and you want to bring it to a finished product. The main message to take away from it was to think about reproducibility in an automated manner that meant it was simple to test while it was still in its freshly created form. I mean, who wants to plug and unplug a bazillion USB cables to see if their 20+ Arduino clones will run a sketch ?

Also worth a look was a very Internet of Things concept to monitor and watch rivers in and around your city or town. Originally conceived as used for Oxford, the Flood Network could easily be maintained much like GeoCaches are but serve a granular purpose of giving instant feedback as to when the water levels are rising and when we should be worried.

The Open Thermostatic Regulator Valve (OpenTRV) was showcased and promises to be another potential internet of things but also a revolutionary environmental impact device allowing for room by room control and monitoring for activity to help to create a 'bubble of warmth' that follows you around your house, museum, workplace or university - picking up on human activity in the location and then instructing the heating system to activate to a set temperature. Apparently no existing systems allow for this granular monitoring of temperature and control of individual radiators while also maintaining the temperature of the house.

Later in the afternoon we were then introduced to a method that was similar to buildroot, called Baserock which I didn't fully understand. I had the impression that the complexity didn't entirely come across in the presentation but I think the idea is that it's a reproduce-able way to track and create images for your embedded systems and/or dev-boards. Which should, once grappled with, make life easier and has some board profiles already. I could be mistaken, I was that partly confused in the presentation but others seemed to understand.

I'm told that recordings of the presentations will be made available online, so they'll either be on the Wuthering Bytes site or on their Twitter feed. Suffice to say, I'll be going next year.