Legos for the iPad Generation: Innovators @ Bloomberg.

littleBits Founder Ayah Bdeir discusses her opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnets for prototyping and play. Bloomberg’s Sheila Dharmarajan reports on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” Emily Chang also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)

This is a great video and some fantastic reporting by Bloomberg. The dive in to open-source hardware pretty heavily.

Five open source hardware projects that could change the world By Andrew Back

Update: The previous article /link / post was a fake site or something.

Freaklabs – Open Source Wireless – Technique vs Feel.

I recently got into an interesting discussion on Twitter with some other engineers regarding the parallels between dancing and engineering. I often get a surprised look from people when I tell them I used to be a professional dancer. Perhaps its because I look like a nerd, or perhaps its because I am one. In any case, its true and its something that I spent many years and countless hours doing. 

The strange thing is really that it’s nothing different from engineering. Engineering is also something that I’ve spent many years and countless hours doing. In both cases, they started out mostly just for fun, and once you get good, you can make money off it. But that’s not what I really want to talk about either. 
 
In dancing, there is “technique” and there is “feel”. To make money from dancing, you need to have technique. That means that you need to understand the basics of body movement, have strong fundamentals in the particular dance genre, and your body must be trained to imitate movements that you see someone else doing, usually quickly. Technique is something that you spend a lot of time in studios, rehearsals, and training to build up. You work with choreographers, work with other dancers, learn choreography, and get everyone synchronized. This is essential for productions such as concerts, recitals, musicals, film, etc. The majority of professional dancers have extremely strong technique and if you’re a choreographer, you generally look for dancers with strong technique because they’re easier to train for choreography.

Love this, read the entire post here.

The democratization of hardware @ PowerSource | Blog on EDN.

Adafruit got into the parts/kit business with its detailed tutorials that include step-by-step instructions and photographs to lead newbies through the basics of Ohm’s Law and soldering, and on to programming the open-source hardware Arduino platform. Unlike traditional electronic distributors that rely on application engineers, the site effectively crowdsources its application engineering support through its forums and FAQ pages on the kits and parts. This reliance on the knowledge of the site’s fans is part of a well-thought-out business plan: Adafruit’s founder, Limor Fried, detailed the company philosophy in, “15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business.”

Individual parts offered by Adafruit benefit from its excellent documentation and  tutorials. Speaking from personal experience, a couple of years ago I bought a TLS2561 light-to-digital converter from TAOS Semiconductor (now part of austriamicrosystems.) It seemed like a handy component to have in getting a quick, objective measurement of LEDs. However, although documentation existed for the part, its outputs were hard to interpret and it was not easy to hook it up to a computer for datalogging. I quickly gave up and forgot about it.

Then, last summer Adafruit introduced the a new product, aTLS2561 premounted on a small pc board with a couple of chip resistors and some headers, with a tutorial as well as a software library for the open-source Arduino platform. As theAdafruit tutorial says, “To use this sensor and calculate Lux, there’s a lot of very hairy and unpleasant math. You can check out the math in the datasheet but really, it’s not intuitive or educational – it’s just how the sensor works. So we took care of all the math and wrapped it up into a nice Arduino library.”

My sentiments exactly – I just wanted to start using the sensor. It worked great. (See photo, which shows a boarduino, a slimmed-down version of the arduino.) Adafruit was able to take a part that sells competitively for about $2 each, add a couple of passive components, and a well thought-out online tutorial, and sell it for $12. And it was worth every penny of it to me.

Digi-Key had a similar start back in 1972, selling its “Digi-Keyer Kit” to ham radio enthusiasts and today it’s a $1B company. History could repeat itself with a whole new generation of parts and kits providers.

Read more!

Developer Wanted: Open-Source Motor Control Board at Parallax Inc @ Adafruit Jobs Board.

Parallax Inc. is looking to expand our external developer team by searching for an outside engineer to design a motor control board compatible with current RepRap hardware. The design should feature the P8X32A multicore microcontroller from Parallax, which supports the current trend of RepRap hardware evolving into cheaper, easier to use and higher quality solutions. The design should be completed by early March 2012 and meet the requirements outlined here.

Read more!

This sounds like a cool job that gets you paid to make great oshw!

Chomp – the Affordable, Open-Source MIDI Controller by Max Justicz.

Hey Phil/Limor, I just posted up my first kickstarter project (I’m a high-school student).  It’s open-source, Arduino based, and awesome! I just wanted to let you guys know that you helped me get interested in electronics in the first place.  After raising $455 in under 1.5 hours, I think I’ve picked a pretty good hobby.

Here’s the link: http://kck.st/xdnUhp

Thanks so much for everything you guys! By the way — I taught a short term class at my school (which is about 4 weeks long) on the Arduino (we bought all of our kits, sensors, and LCDs from you guys) and it went GREAT!!!!  Here’s a project one of my friends made during the second week (having never programmed before):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtwqUQUAPx8. You guys rock! -mjusticz

The IR Shield. falldeaf writes -

Hi Lady Ada! I designed and built a custom Arduino shield and wrote some firmware and software that turn it into a web-connected universal remote…

Interview with ColorHug maker, Richard Hughes @ Banu Blog.

For a while now, I’ve wanted Banu to do interviews of makers of things with free and open designs. Being a fan of PingMag MAKE, it was apparent that there was a lot of hard work, learning, fun and satisfaction to be had in making. It’s too bad that PingMag shutdown, but they still inspire. So when the ColorHug comes along—an open hardware product related to graphics—there’s no better time to start interviewing. Solder when the iron’s hot!

The ColorHug is a colorimeter that can be used to calibrate computer displays. It was created by Richard Hughes (hughsie). It is a fully open hardware project, and the design, drivers and firmware are available on the Gitorious code hosting website. From the branches and commit logs it appears that others have taken an interest in its development too, and have begun to contribute to it.

Read more…

ISS tracking theme clock face – Monochron Clock Kit. SPACECHRON, Scott writes -

Some of my christmas money went towards purchasing a Monochron Clock kit from Adafruit.com.

It turned out to be an awesome build and I had lots of fun putting it together. I also chose it because it allows you to program your own clock “faces” for it. I’ve programmed a Space themed face for it that simulates the space station ground track. I’ve also programmed an autodim feature for the backlight because my preferred daylight brightness was too bright at night. The fact that I can customize it to fit my needs is an awesome thing. I wish there were more products like it.

Amazing, and the code is GitHub.

Today we’re announcing our new open-source wearable electronics platform and series of accessories. We rarely announce something until it’s shipping to customers, but you’ll see a lot of these out in the world from our testers as they show off some projects – so we wanted to post about this now.

For the last few years Ladyada has been thinking about everything she wanted in a wearable electronics platform for Adafruit’s community of makers, hackers, crafters, artists, designers and engineers. After months of planning, designing and working with partners around the world for the best materials and accessories, we can share what we’re up to. The hardware is now in the hands of our staff and testers!

We call it the FLORA.

Adafruit created the FLORA from scratch after many months of research and we really think we came up with something that will empower some amazing wearable projects.

The FLORA is not the first wearable Arduino / Arduino-compatible. Leah Buechley’s LilyPad was developed in 2007 – we wanted to also make something that’s wearable, but it needed to be a completely new platform for our accessories/modules and goals for the project.

We’ll have updates and more big news soon in the wearable electronics space, so please stay tuned to the Adafruit blog. We have a product page you can sign up for soon, you can sign up to be notified when we have the first round of units ready. As always we’ll have great pricing for educators, resellers and hackerspaces.

We’ve put together a list of features/decisions that we hope will answer many of the questions about the FLORA. Please feel free to post up any questions in the comments. There may be some minor revisions to the hardware since we are in beta and working with our testers in the field. We wanted to share our thought/design process, we hope it helps others when designing hardware.

The FLORA FAQ

The FLORA is small (1.75″ diameter). We wanted the smallest possible board for our wearable platform.

It’s based on our experiences shipping our own, shipping, customer-tested Atmega32u4 Breakout Board.

The FLORA comes with projects at launch, the FLORA addressable and chain-able 4,000 mcd RGB LED pixels and premium stainless steel thread.

Here’s a quick video! (HD version).

The FLORA has built-in USB support. Built in USB means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up. No additional purchases are needed! Works with Mac, Windows, Linux, any USB cable works great. Currently the PCB comes with a mini B connector but future versions may change to microUSB. Either will work great.

The FLORA has USB HID support, so it can act like a mouse, keyboard, MIDI, etc. to attach directly to cellphones. Our iPhone/iPad/Android app coming soon.

The FLORA’s modules include: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more.

The FLORA has a small but easy to use onboard reset button to reboot the system.

The FLORA is fabric friendly. The FLORA does not use FTDI headers (built in USB support) headers of any kind sticking out can grab and tear fabric.

The FLORA has an onboard 3.3v 100mA regulator with protection schottky diode and USB fuse so that power is consistent and can power common 3.3v modules and sensors.

The FLORA has onboard polarized 2 JST battery connector with protection schottky diode for use with external battery packs from 3.5v to 16v DC in. Can be used with LiIon/LiPoly, LiFe, alkaline or rechargeable NiMh/NiCad batteries of any size.

The FLORA does not have a LiPo charger included by design, this allows safe use with multiple battery types and reduces risk of fire as it is not recommended to charge these batteries on fabric.

The FLORA has onboard power switch connected to 2A power FET for safe and efficient battery on/off control. Often FETs are not included in other designs that leads to switch failure as small SMT switches are rated for only 20mA current use.

The FLORA power system is specifically designed to allow easy control and power of a large quantity of digital RGB LED pixels such as the FLORA pixel series of accessories.

The FLORA is extremely beginner-friendly – it is difficult to destroy the FLORA by connecting a battery backwards due to polarized connector and protection diodes. The onboard regulator means that even connecting a 9V battery will not result in damage or tears.

The FLORA has 4 indicator LEDs: power good, digital signal LED for bootloader feedback, data rx/tx.

The FLORA has an ICSP connector for easy reprograming for advanced users.

The FLORA has 14 sewing tap pads for attachment and electrical connections. Data buses are interleaved with power and ground pads for easy module and sensor attachments without worrying about overlapping traces which are not possible with conductive thread.

The FLORA works with the Adafruit-fixed Leonardo bootloader (not released) and will work with any future released Leonardo-compatible bootloader. FLORA is currently using our Adafruit bootloader and Adafruit USB vendor ID.

The FLORA comes with Adafruit’s support, tutorials and projects. Adafruit has dozens of projects that will be released with the FLORA in 2012 and has staff 100% dedicated to creating tutorials and projects for use with the FLORA.

The FLORA is made in NYC at Adafruit, it was designed by Limor Fried (Ladyada) she is an Electrical Engineer with a proven track record of providing over 26 high-quality libraries for Arduino/Arduino IDE, over 100 tutorials, open-source code and contributions to the Arduino project. She was a member of the MIT wearables group and likes to sew.

We hope you’ll be as excited about FLORA as we are. Post any questions in the comments! We’ll stop back throughout the day to answer them!

NEW PRODUCT – Coobro Geo Kit – DIY GPS Geocaching Pendant. The Coobro Geo is an easy to assemble GPS navigation kit. Upload coordinates, turn it on, and the Coobro Geo will help you navigate to any destination on earth by using LEDs to show you the correct direction and distance remaining. Before you leave on your quest, press and hold the breadcrumbs button and the Coobro Geo will remember your location and help you navigate back. Store up to five pre-entered destination coordinates and five breadcrumbs, or modify the open source code and store as many coordinates as you want.

We met the maker of this project our weekly ASK AN ENGINEER show-and-tell, and liked his product so much we wanted to carry it!

Use the Coobro Geo to help you find geocaches, store and navigate between hot fishing spots, complete a scavenger hunt, or simply help you find your car after a hike.

Features:

• High quality Fastrax UP501 GPS module with 66-channel receiver
• All through hole kit is easy to solder and requires minimal tools
• Completely open source hardware and software
• Program the software using the Arduino IDE
• Stores breadcrumbs in EEPROM so it remembers locations when turned off

Kit Includes:

• 1x Fastrax UP501 GPS Module
• 1x Atmega328 DIP Processor
• 1x Coobro Geo PCB
• 14x Bright Blue LEDs
• 2x 10 Ohm Resistor Networks
• 4x .1uF Ceramic Capacitors
• 1x 10uF Electrolytic Capacitor
• 2x Slide Switches
• 1x Push button
• 3x Header pins
• 1x Atmega328 Socket
• 1x 8MHz Ceramic Oscillator
• 1x AAA Enclosed Batter Holder
• 1x Lanyard
• 1x Power Supply Jumper

This kit requires assembly by the user. It’s not a difficult kit, and can be put together even by a beginner using a soldering iron, solder, diagonal cutters and other small hand tools. Notice: in order for this kit to work, you’ll need to have an FTDI cable or an FTDI breakout board such as our FTDI Friend they are not included. You may also want to pick up some AAA batteries, 3 are required and are also not included.

Open Source Hardware: This kit is 100% open source hardware. The makers provide the Eagle Cad design files, schematics, and software for your hacking pleasure.

In stock and shipping now!

This is a cool project!

ZPM Espresso is making an open source home espresso machine @ VentureBeat.

Making good home espresso is possible, but the machines tend to cost a small fortune. ZPM Espresso, a startup in Atlanta, is hoping to change that with its open-source espresso machine.

If the company succeeds, it could have a nice market for itself, as the espresso and specialty coffee market have been growing quickly around the world. (Can you tell based on how many Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee places there are?).

The founders like drinking espresso and they took apart a bunch of old machines to see how it’s done. They figured out how to make a machine for less money, but including important features such as PID controls, custom temperature, pressure profiles, and open source hardware and software using Arduino, a kind of microcontroller. The microcontroller governs the behavior of the thermoblock and the pump, rather than relying upon mechanical controls. That allows the data to be analyzed, saved, and shared.

OpenVSP via /.

At the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Nashville, NASA engineers unveiled the newly open sourced OpenVSP, software that allows users to construct full aircraft models from simple parameters such as wing span and fuselage length, under the NASA Open Source Agreement. Says the website, ‘OpenVSP allows the user to create a 3D model of an aircraft defined by common engineering parameters. This model can be processed into formats suitable for engineering analysis.

Joe writes…

Built the adafruit data logger. Then stuck it in the freezer.

Adafruit Data logging shield for Arduino – v1.0 – Here’s a handy Arduino shield: we’ve had a lot of people looking for a dedicated and well-designed data logging shield. We worked hard to engineer an inexpensive but well-rounded design. Not only is it easy to assemble and customize, it also comes with great documentation and libraries.

You can get going quickly – saving data to files on any FAT16 or FAT32 formatted SD card, to be read by any plotting, spreadsheet or analysis program. We even have a tutorial on how to use two free software programs to plot your data The included Real Time Clock timestamps all your data with the current time, so that you know precisely what happened when!

Please note that this item does not come with an Arduino (you’ll need one to use with the shield), or an SD card. It does come with the RTC battery, however. The kit is un-assembled, You’ll need some basic soldering skills to put it together, but even if you don’t have much experience you can get it done in under 1 hour.

• SD card interface works with FAT16 or FAT32 formatted cards. 3.3v level shifter circuitry prevents damage to your SD card
• Real time clock (RTC) keeps the time going even when the Arduino is unplugged. The battery backup lasts for years
• Included libraries and example code for both SD and RTC mean you can get going quickly
• Prototyping area for soldering connectors, circuitry or sensors.
• Onboard 3.3v regulator is both a reliable reference voltage and also reliably runs SD cards that require a lot of power to run
• An Arduino with a ’328 chip is pretty much required, you can get an upgrade chip from us if you have an older Arduino (such as NG/Diecimila)

For more information, including libraries, schematics and examples see the data logger shield webpage

RGB LED Ring V2 — sequels don’t have to be bad @ My 2µF.

This is the successor to my old (and lame) RGB LED Ring project.

Version ’2.0 alpha’ – an intermediate step to true enlightenment – uses one LED driver IC and 3 P-channel MOSFETs cycling through the primary colors. This requires special attention in the code to attempt color balancing (forced dot correction at all times).

As of ’2.0 beta’ (likely to become the final version) it comes with 3 dedicated constant current LED driver chips (MBI5168), which completely avoids multiplexing the LEDs and boosts brightness again. Color balancing is done entirely in hardware using 3 potentiometers. The hardware differences should be taken care of in the core part of the demo code, ‘User-land’ code is mostly the same.

Lovely!

Joi Ito: Open-source hardware is a no brainer — Tech News and Analysis.

Open-source hardware is on its way and it’ll foster a new era of innovation, according to MIT Media Lab director Joichi “Joi” Ito.

The emergence of freely available hardware designs and near-free components will unleash the same sort of technology innovation that open-source software kicked off a decade or so ago, Ito said Tuesday.

Read more, this is great

Before Hexbug, mad scientists created BristleBot.

Lenore Edman and her husband, Windell Oskay, had wanted to make a robot out of a brush for some time. Visiting hardware stores, they pushed brooms, scrub brushes and wire brushes along the floor to gauge movement and bristle stiffness.

Their “aha” moment came during a visit to the dentist. Handed free toothbrushes, Edman and Oskay smiled. The bristles were pliable. The nylon brush was cheap. And here was a brush that was soft but strong enough to motor.

They cut the toothbrush at its neck, affixed the head with a piece of double-sided tape, and placed a small battery and pager motor on top. Set loose on the floor, the BristleBot, as they called the bug-like brush, vibrated and zoomed to life.

Not long after, in December 2007, they posted an instructional BristleBot video on YouTube. Since then, the concept has inspired a book, “Invasion of the Bristlebots,” and the video has attracted more than 3.7 million views.

…”In recent times, they have helped create an accepted definition of open source hardware, participated in the annual Open Source Hardware Summit in New York, and are in the exploratory stages of building a foundation to support open source hardware.”

Makers Going Pro by TJ McCue @ Kickstarter.

Makers Going Pro: How They Made the Jump

A Handbook of Strategies, Tactics, & Tips for Starting a Maker Company

Makers Going Pro is a book for makers that want to start a company and take their passion, dream, or hobby to the next level and earn a living from it. If you’ve been thinking about starting a company around your maker skills, this book will highlight how other makers have succeeded and how they did it.

In Makers Going Pro, I’ll interview leading maker company founders and other maker movement experts for insights and inspiration into how maker companies succeed. In fact, I’ve been conducting interviews for the last 2 months and plan to have a sample chapter up within a week.

Just for reference, makers are do-it-yourself types, fixers, hackers, inventors, entrepreneurs, indie craftspeople and artisans. The makers who are successful at creating a company have something to teach us. Some maker companies are fairly simple, but they have leveraged innovative marketing, sales, and operations tips and techniques to get profitable. Others are more complicated and can teach us about patents and legal hurdles to avoid if you have intellectual property to protect. Many have gone the path of open source and I’ll share some of the pros and cons of open vs closed source.

I’m interviewing some of the best known maker companies out there and compiling their ideas, philosophies and tips for starting and running a maker company

Making Science Fun With High-Tech Popsicle Sticks And Pipe Cleaners @ Forbes.

The result is littleBits, a company 29-year old Ayah founded last September. The company offers a variety of kits made up of modules, about the size of Lego bricks, for prototyping or for playing. The modules, which  can be snapped together by means of small magnets to make larger circuits, have unique functions, such as light, sound, sensors, buttons, motors.  No soldering, no wiring, no programming on computers is required to make the tiny circuit boards work; just snap and play and make things happen. Ayah likes to call her little circuits similar to the “popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners we used to use for crafts.”  By this past Christmas, Ayah had found two parts manufacturers, one in China, the other in California, and managed to assemble 3,000 starter kits priced at $89.

Ford Announces New Research Lab in Silicon Valley.

Ford Motor Company will open a research lab in Silicon Valley in early 2012, hoping to keep pace with consumer technology and mobile innovations. Ford joins General Motors, BMW, and the Renault-Nissan Alliance as the latest company to establish a presence in Silicon Valley. Verizon and AT&T recently announced similar moves to the west coast.

Working to support the work of Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, the new lab will try to recruit local talent, as well as establish partnerships with new tech startup firms and researchers. The move also puts Ford in closer proximity to the other members of its “innovation network” – its Advanced Design Studio in Irvine, California, and its connectivity platform partner Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.

The Palo Alto-based lab will focus on researching new solutions for personal mobility, creating open-source hardware and software developer kits, and developing ways to utilize a vehicle’s multitude of sensors for mobile apps.

This is cool, we’d also like to Ford sponsor TechShops and Hackerspaces

Solar PV Monitoring System / OpenEnergyMonitor. Glyn writes -

Here is the documentation for a solar PV monitoring system that’s been developed as part of the OpenEnergyMonitor project. It’s based on Arduino and is fully open-source; hardware, firmware and web application.

The system monitors both generation and consumption and gives the user a clear indication of when their household electricity demands are being met by their solar PV array (green light) or when their not (red light). The wireless display also shows how much electricity is currently being exported or imported. Monitoring data is also posted on-line by a wireless
web-connected base-station to our powerful open-source web-application emoncms.

This development is part of the actively on-going OpenEnergyMonitor project to design and build open-source tools for the monitoring, visualization and control of energy.

Visualizing the logistic map with a microcontroller. utku writes -

The logistic map is one of the simplest nonlinear dynamical systems that clearly exhibit the route to chaos. In this paper, we explored the evolution of the logistic map using an open-source microcontroller connected to an array of light emitting diodes (LEDs). We divided the one dimensional interval [0, 1] into ten equal parts, and associated and LED to each segment. Every time an iteration took place a corresponding LED turned on indicating the value returned by the logistic map. By changing some initial conditions of the system, we observed the transition from order to chaos exhibited by the map.

EFF’s 2011 Holiday Wish List.

With the winter holidays fast approaching, now is the time to make our wish lists. There are plenty of presents EFF would like to receive for the holidays — the defeat of the Internet blacklist bills SOPA and PIPA would make a great start — but here are just a few of the things that companies could do to protect digital civil liberties this season.

Read more.

Here is bunnie’s talk from the 28th Chaos Communication Congress. Check out all the slides too for some great hardware.

This is the product we now have in the Adafruit store, the NeTV.

Implementation of MITM Attack on HDCP-Secured Links
A non-copyright circumventing application of the HDCP master key

A man-in-the-middle attack on HDCP-secured video links is demonstrated. The attack is implemented on an embedded Linux platform, with the help of a Spartan-6 FPGA, and is capable of operating real-time on HD video links. It utilizes the HDCP master key to derive the corresponding private keys of the video source and sink through observation and computation upon the exchanged public keys. The man-in-the-middle then genlocks its raster and cipher state to the incoming video stream, enabling it to do pixel by pixel swapping of encrypted data. Since the link does no CRC or hash verification of the data, one is able to forge video using this method.

Significantly, the attack enables forging of video data without decrypting original video data, so executing the attack does not constitute copyright circumvention. Therefore, this novel and commercially useful application of the HDCP master key impairs equating, in a legal sense, the master key with circumvention. Finally, the embodiment of the exploit is entirely open-source, including the hardware and the Verilog implementation of the FPGA.

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT
In September 2010, the HDCP master key was circulated via Pastebin. Speculation ensued around the application of the master key to create HDCP strippers, which would enable the circumvention of certain copyright control mechanisms put in place around video links. Unfortunately, this is a legally risky application, for a number of reasons, including potential conflicts with DMCA legislation that criminalizes the circumvention of copyright control mechanisms.

This talk discloses a new use for the HDCP master key that side-steps some of the potential legal issues. This hack never decrypts video; without decryption, there is no circumvention, and as a result the DMCA cannot apply to this hack. Significantly, by demonstrating a bona-fide commercially significant purpose for the HDCP master key that does not circumvent an access control measure, this hack impairs the equating of trafficking or possession of the HDCP master key to circumvention and/or circumvention-related crimes.

The main purpose of this hack is to enable the overlay of video content onto an HDCP encrypted stream. The simple fact that a trivial video overlay becomes an interesting topic is illustrative of the distortion of traditional rights and freedoms brought about by the DMCA. While the creation of derivative works of video through dynamic compositing and overlay (such as picture in picture) seems intuitively legal and natural in a pre-HDCP world, the introduction of HDCP made it difficult to build such in-line equipment. The putative purpose role of HDCP in the digital video ecosystem is to patch the plaintext-hole in the transmission of otherwise encrypted video from shiny disks (DVDs, BDs) to the glass (LCD, CRT). Since the implementation of video overlay would typically require manipulation of plaintext by intermediate processing elements, or at least the buffering of a plaintext frame where it can be vulnerable to readout, the creation of such devices has generally been very difficult to get past the body that controls the granting of HDCP keys, for fear that they can be hacked and/or repurposed to build an HDCP stripper. Also, while a manufacturer could implement such a feature without the controlling body’s blessing, they would have to live in constant fear that their device keys would be revoked.

While the applications of video overlay are numerous, the basic scenario is that while you may be enjoying content X, you would also like to be aware of content Y. To combine the two together would require a video overlay mechanism. Since video overlay mechanisms are effectively banned by the HDCP controlling organization, consumers are slaves to the video producers and distribution networks, because consumers have not been empowered to remix video at the consumption point.

The specific implementation of this hack enables the overlay of a WebKit browser over any video feed; a concrete example of the capability enabled by this technology is the overlay of twitter feeds as “news crawlers” across a TV program, so that one may watch community commentary in real-time on the same screen. While some TV programs have attempted to incorporate twitter feeds into the show, the incorporation has always been on the source side, and as such users are unable to pick their hashtags. Now, with this hack, the same broadcast program (say, a political debate) can have a very different viewing experience based on which hashtag is keyed into the viewer’s twitter crawler.

TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION
A Spartan-6 FPGA was used to implement a TMDS-compatible source and sink. TMDS is the signaling standard used by HDMI and DVI. The basic pipeline within the FPGA deserializes incoming video and reserializes it to the output. In this trivial mode, it is simply a signal amplifier for the video.

In order to enable the overlay of a WebKit browser, an 800 MHz ARM-based Linux computer is connected to the FPGA. The Linux computer is based upon the PXA168 by Marvell, and it features 128 MB of DDR2 and a microSD card for firmware. The distribution is based upon Angstrom and it is built using OpenEmbedded with the help of buildbot. The entire build system for the Linux computer is available through a public EC2 cloud image that anyone can copy and rent from Amazon.

From the Linux computer’s standpoint, the FPGA emulates a parallel RGB LCD, and thus from the programming standpoint looks simply like a framebuffer at /dev/fb0. There is also a device management interface revealed through I2C that is managed using the standard Linux I2C driver. The I2C management interface handles routine status requests, such as reading the video timing and PLL state, and also handles reading out sections of snooping buffers, the significance of which will be discussed later. The FPGA also has a chroma-key feature where a magic color (240,0,240) is remapped to “transparent”.

The FPGA itself is bootstrapped through a programming interface where the device’s compiled bitstream is sent to the FPGA by writing to /dev/fpga. There are also IOCTLs available on /dev/fpga that enable other meta-level functions such as resetting the FPGA or querying its configuration state.

In addition to passing through the TMDS signal, the FPGA also has the ability to listen to and manipulate the DDC. The DDC is an I2C link found on HDMI cables that enables the reporting of monitor capability records (EDIDs) and also is the medium upon which the key exchange happens. Therefore, being able to listen to this passively is of great importance to the hack. The FPGA implements a “shadow-RAM” which records all reads and writes to specific addresses that fall within the expected address ranges for EDID and HDCP transactions.

The FPGA also implements a “squash-RAM” which is used to override bits on the I2C bus. Since I2C is an open collector standard, overriding a 1 to a 0 is trivial; but, overriding a 0 to a 1 requires an active pull-up. The hardware implements a beefy FET on the DDC to enable overriding 0′s to 1′s. The DDC implementation uses a highly oversampled I2C state machine. I2C itself only runs at 100 kHz, but the state machine implementation runs at 26 MHz. This allows the state machine to determine the next state of the I2C bus and decide to override or allow the transaction on-the-fly. The “squash-RAM” feature is used to override the EDID negotiation such that the video source is only informed of modes that the FPGA implementation can handle. For example, this implementation cannot handle 3D TV resolutions, so the reporting of such capabilities from the TV is squashed before it can get to the video source. This causes the source to automatically limit its content to be within the hardware capabilities of the FPGA, and to be within the resolutions that are supported by the WebKit UI.

The key exchange on HDCP consists of three pieces of data being passed back and forth: the source public key (Aksv), the sink public key (Bksv), and a piece of shared state (An). The order in which these are written is well-defined. The completion of the transfer of the final byte of Aksv serves as a trigger to initialize the cipher states of the source and the sink. During this time period, each device computes the dot-product of the other device’s KSV with their internal private key (which is a table of forty 56-bit numbers) and derives a shared secret, known as Km. This is basically an implementation of Blom’s Scheme.

In order to implement the man-in-the-middle attack, the three pieces of data are recorded, and the authentication trigger is passed from the FPGA to the Linux computer through an udev event. udev triggers a program that reads the KSVs from the snoop memory, and performs a computation upon the HDCP master key and the KSVs to derive the private keys that mirrors those found in each of the source and sink devices. In a nutshell, the computation loops through the 40×40 matrix of the HDCP master key, and based upon the KSV having a 1 at a particular bit position it sums in the corresponding 40-entry row or column of the master key to the 40-entry private key vector. The use of a row or columns depends upon if the KSV belongs to a source or a sink.

Once the private keys vectors have been derived, they can be multiplied in exactly the same fashion as would be found in the source or sink to derive the shared secret, Km.

This shared secret, Km, is then written into the FPGA’s HDCP engine, and the cipher state is ready to go. In practice, the entire computation can happen in real-time, but some devices go faster or slower than others, so it is hard to guarantee it always completes in time, particularly with the variable interrupt latency of the udev handler. As a result, the actual link negotiation caches the value of Km from previous authentications, and the udev event primarily verifies that Km hasn’t changed (note that for each given source and sink pair, Km is static and never changes, so unless users are pulling cables out and swapping them between devices, Km is essentially static). If the Km has changed, it updates the Km in the FPGA and forces a 150ms hot plug event, which re-initiates the authentication, thereby making the transaction fairly reliable yet effectively real-time.

Significantly, this system as implemented is incapable of operating without having the public keys provided by both the source and the sink. This means that it cannot “create” an HDCP link: this implementation is not an operational HDCP engine on its own. Rather, it requires the user of this overlay hack to “prove” it has previously purchased a full HDCP link through evidence of valid public keys. This “proof of purchase” exhausts the proprietary rights to the link associated with first sale doctrine.

Once the FPGA’s HDCP cipher state is matched to the video source’s cipher state, one can now selectively encrypt different pixels to replace original pixels, and the receiver will decrypt all without any error condition. This is because encryption is done on a pixel by pixel basis and the receiver does little in the way of verification. The lack of link verification is in fact quite intentional and necessary. The natural bit error rate of HD video links is atrocious; but this is acceptable, because the human eye probably won’t detect bit errors even on the level of 1 in every 10,000 bits (at high error rates, users see a “sparkle” or “snow” on the screen, but largely the image is intact). Therefore, this latitude in allowing pixel-level corruption is necessary to keep consumer costs low; otherwise, much higher quality cables would be required along with FEC techniques to achieve a bit error rate that is compatible with strict cryptographic verification techniques such as full-frame hashing.

The selection of which pixel to swap is done by observing the color of the overlay’s video. The overlay video is not encrypted and is generated by the user, so there is no legal violation to look at the color of the overlay video. Note that other pixel-combining methods, such as alpha blending, would necessitate the decryption of video. If the overlay video matches a certain chroma key color, the incoming video is selected; otherwise, the overlay video is selected. This allows for the creation of transparent “holes” in the UI. Since the UI is rendered by a WebKit browser, chroma-key is implemented by simply setting the background color in the CSS of the UI pages to magic-pink. This makes the default state of a web page transparent, with all items rendered on top of it opaque.

Note that pixel-by-pixel manipulation of the incoming video feed is done without any real buffering of the video. A TMDS pixel “lives” inside the FPGA for less than a couple dozen clock cycles: the lifetime of a pixel is simply the latency of the pipelines and the elastic buffers required to deskew wire length differences between differential pairs. This means that the overlay video from the Linux computer must be strictly available at exactly the right time, or else the user will see the overlay jitter and shake. In order to avoid such artifacts, the time resolution requirement of the pixel synchronization is stricter than the width of a pixclock period, which can be as short as dozen nanoseconds.

In order to accomplish this fine-grain synchronization, a genlock mechanism was implemented where vertical retrace signals (which are unencrypted) trigger an interrupt that initiates the readout of /dev/fb0 to the FPGA. However, the interrupt jitter of a non-realtime Linux is much larger than a single pixel time, so in order to absorb this uncertainty, a dynamic genlock engine was implemented in the FPGA. An 8-line overlay video FIFO is used to provide the timing elasticity between the Linux computer and the primary video feed; and the vertical sync interrupt-to-pixel-out latency of the Linux computer is dynamically measured by the FPGA and pre-compensated. In effect, the FPGA measures how slow the Linux box’s reflexes are, and requests for the frame to start coming in advance of when the data is needed. These measures, along with a few lines of FIFO, ensure pixel availability at the precise time when the pixel is needed.

SUMMARY
A system has been described that enables a man-in-the-middle attack upon HDCP secured links. The attack enables the overlay of video upon existing streams; an example of an application of the attack is the overlay of a personalized twitter feed over video programs. The attack relies upon the HDCP master key and a snooping mechanism implemented using an FPGA. The implementation of the attack never decrypts previously encrypted video, and it is incapable of operating without an existing, valid HDCP link. It is thus an embodiment of a bona-fide, non-infringing and commercially useful application of the HDCP master key. This embodiment impairs the equating of the HDCP master key with copyright circumvention purposes.

LINKS

• an article on the hack
• another good article
• developer resources page
• link to get an NeTV to play with
• hardware sources for NeTv

This document makes a case for using a BSD style license for software and data; specifically it recommends using a BSD style license in place of the GPL. It can also be read as a BSD versus GPL Open Source License introduction and summary.

Read more…

Updated! We just added the Arduino R3 outline to our EAGLE library for making Arduino shields that use the new pins.

Top Ten Things To Do In 2012 @ ECN: Electronic Component News.

0b0000.0000: Build something open source. It’s amazing what is available. Back in the heyday of hobby electronics, it was easy to find projects in magazines such as “Popular Electronics.” You could get kits from Heathkit of RadioShack. But, for the most part, all of those things went away. With Open Source, you can build an almost unlimited variety of gadgets. What’s more, you can taylor your build to your experience level. If you want to do it all, just get the files, fab your boards, buy your parts and solder it up. If you’re less ambitious, buy a complete kit. If you’re even more ambitious, mod the design and post it up for the community.

Read more.

Parallax is now selling Quadcopters. That’s pretty cool, and if you watch the video you get an tour of their building ELEV-8 Quadcopter Kit.

The ELEV-8 quadcopter is a flying robotic platform that is lifted and propelled by four fixed rotors. There are no fixed wings; all of the lift is created from the rotors. Unlike standard helicopters a quadcopter uses fixed-pitch blades, whose rotor pitch does not vary as the blades rotate; control of vehicle motion is achieved by varying the relative speed of each rotor to change the thrust and torque produced by each.

The ELEV-8 quadcopter uses a HoverFly board with a Propeller multicore microprocessor to electronically control stabilization of the aircraft. The benefits to this system are a stable platform, with no mechanical linkages for a small maneuverable and agile aircraft.

The ELEV-8 quadcopter is an inexpensive way to get involved in the quadcopter arena. The kit includes; frame, mounting hardware, motors, speed controllers, propellers and the control board for flight stabilization. (the only thing you need to provide is the RC radio equipment, battery). We recommend a six channel RC radio.

The ELEV-8 platform is large enough for outdoor flight and has plenty of room for payload and attachments (up to 2 lbs).

Perfect for “drone journalism”.

Jeremy Blum, known to many for his Arduino tutorials, gave a talk at TEDx Cornell 2011 about applying the open-source model to society at large. He writes:

I was invited to be a speaker at Cornell’s Inaugural TEDx event. TED is a non-profit group dedicated to spreading ideas in the fields of Technology, Entertainment, and Design; TEDx is an independently organized event built on the proven TED conference framework. The theme of TEDx Cornell 2011 was “Rethinking our Society,” so naturally, my talk was titled “Open Source Society.” In it, I explain why people and businesses hate sharing, and what we can all learn from the success stories of open source hardware companies such as MakerBot and Sparkfun. In the background of the photo above, you’ll notice that I had a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic and Fab@Home 3D printers – I develop electronics for both platforms.

Great talk, Jeremy!

NEW PRODUCT – NeTV Starter Pack! Get your NeTV on with this full pack that includes everything you need to start!

This complete kit contains:

• NeTV PCB board and IR remote
• NeTV plastic enclosure kit: This is the plastic enclosure for an NeTV PCB. This lovely little box is made of two injection molded halves, a soft rubber anti-slip bottom, and a small baggie of screws. Assembly is simple and only takes a few minutes. Attach the NeTV using the short screws to the bottom plate. Remove the paper backing from the antenna and stick to the underside of the top piece, then fit the large top over it and snap in place. Screw in the 4 longer screws from the bottom. Finish by applying the rubber mat piece to the bottom to hide the screws. You’re done!
• 5V 1A USB power supply
• MicroUSB cable
• HDMI cable

NeTV is the first offering from the brand new Sutajio Ko-Usagi, the Open Source Hardware company led by “bunnie” Huang. bunnie is best known as the author of “Hacking the XBox” and was the lead hardware engineer of the chumby internet alarm clock. So, it is no surprise that his latest invention, conceived in chumby industries’ Singapore office and brought to you by Sutajio Ko-Usagi, is a fully open source HDTV peripheral which brings WiFi Internet
and Android mobile interfacing to any HDMI TV!

NeTV is available here in bare board form with an optional DIY plastics kit! This package does not have the enclosure fully assembled with the PCB, you will have to snap the NeTV into its case, a 5-10 minute task. This package contains the NeTV assembled and tested board, IR remote (to control the NeTV from your couch), a Micro-USB cable (to connect/power the NeTV), a 5V 1A USB power supply (to power the board), and an HDMI cable (to connect it to the HDTV)

NeTV enables overlaying your web content on existing HDMI video feeds, such as those from a BluRay player or cable box. Inside, it’s an Angstrom linux box running Webkit that features chroma-key video compositing. Out of the box, the reference firmware enables the overlay of Facebook and Twitter feeds, and SMSes from Android phones. The UI is written in Javascript/HTML, making it easy and fast to develop your custom application.

The system also features a convenient HTTP API which uses POST commands to issue events to the screen and control device behavior. This, combined with zeroconf discoverability via Bonjour, makes integrating NeTV with other networked devices (such as your smartphone or laptop) a snap.

FPGA geeks take note! NeTV does video compositing with an FPGA. The FPGA is managed using a convenient set of built-in command-line tools. You can modify the NeTV’s video processing capability using Xilinx’s free Webkit development environment. Or, you can repurpose the FPGA for entirely new functionality; the sky’s the limit!

Summary of development environment options for NeTV:

• UI & application development in Javascript/HTML running on Webkit
• Remote control using iOS/Android reference apps via HTTP API
• Command line and kernel development via downloadable gcc environment, or via cloud-based “pre-built” Amazon EC2 environment.
• Verilog/VHDL hardware development on FPGA via Xilinx Webpack tools
• Solder-and-screws hardware development enabled via open source hardware stack

Need more? Here’s a video with an overview:
http://kosagi.com/netv/netv_demo.html

Sign up to get an email the second it’s in stock and you’ll be able to purchase it immediately!

GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever – ITworld.

“Looking at the graph to which Aslett refers, you can see how that projection is a logical one to make. You can also see what developers are licensing their projects under instead: permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL group of licenses.”

“The analysis indicated that the previous dominance of strong copyleft licenses was achieved and maintained to a significant degree due to vendor-led open source projects, and that the ongoing shift away from projects controlled by a single vendor toward community projects was in part driving a shift towards more permissive non-copyleft licenses.”

Making Gadgets Great @ Popular Science. Interview with Joi Ito, new director of the MIT Media Lab…

MJ: OK, I can see that with software, but what about when you’re actually building stuff?

JI: We’ve got Fab Lab downstairs. We can build little micro-size robots, we can build cars. The fact that we can go to the Fab Lab and just build things suddenly does to hardware what open source did to software.

MJ: Won’t there still be a significantly greater barrier to creating it physically than there is virtually?

JI: Today maybe, but it will continue to improve with open-source hardware, where you can download files and modify them and you don’t need to design every piece of what you’re doing. And then, with 3-D printers becoming cheaper and higher-quality, you’ll very quickly be able to print your prototype.

littleBits starter kits v0.2, Ayah writes -

After we sold out the first run, this just in, just in the nick of time for the holidays! We’re happy to announce the arrival of the leaner, meaner (and cheaper!) littleBits starter kit v0.2! littleBits is a kit of modular electronics that snap together with magnets for prototyping and play.

Starting NOW, you can now get your hands on the kit that was acquired by MoMA, won two MAKE’s Editor’s Choice award, and was featured on BBC, Inc and NYTimes and all in a span of 6 months.

So for those who are missing the perfect design-geek toy on their christmas shopping list, here’s a treat for you. Small pre-assembled circuits that snap together with magnets, no soldering, no wiring, no programming — just snap and play. Whether you want to make an interactive Christmas tree, a buzzing greeting card or just provide your kids with the gift of magic, we know littleBits is perfect for kids, geeky parents, and curious designers.

The starter kit has everything you need to get hooked: lights, sensors, vibration motor, wire, and from there you can grow the library…
We have a limited number of kits available, Improvements from v0.1 include better magnetic connectors, new custom batteries and screwdrivers, and nifty holiday packaging. But most important, we have reduced the price by 30%, we want to make littleBits accessible to all those that want the power of an engineer, without the steep learning curve (or breaking the bank!).

Tetrafol, Sound Object by monome + machineproject + Fol Chen is an Adafruit Waveshield and then some! “the tetrafol circuit is basically an arduino and waveshield combined, with the unneeded bits removed and an accelerometer added. it’s surface-mount to be small.”

What went into the design? The construction of the thing?

the final circuit board is an arduino, [Lady Ada - Limor Fried] waveshield, and accelerometer smashed together and made very small. i really just put existing technologies together– i can’t take a lot of credit here.

the industrial design was more fun. we didn’t want to use plastic so we experimented with felt and wood. coming up with a size, shape, and feel were the main goals- to create something that was pleasant to hold and sturdy enough to be tossed in the air.

Passing the torch! – Open Hardware Summit, Alicia & Ayah write -

After two amazing and inspiring iterations (2011 and 2010), we are excited to announce we are passing the Open Hardware Summit torch!

We had an amazing two years: we collectively created the first OSHW definition (which has been adopted by CERN), communally created a logo for our movement, grew into a community that supports each other on forums, mailing lists and sponsorships, launched the first Open Hardware Scholarship, turned a conference goodie bag into something you would wrestle over, and created a geek red carpet that would have the Oscar’s drooling!

It was inspiring serving such an impassioned community, and we will both continue to serve in our own ways. The Open Hardware Summit is a mission-driven conference. It’s non-profit, and a labour of love. Our aim is to continually involve more and more of the community. In that effort we are announcing Catarina Mota and Dustyn Roberts as the two new co-chairs for the 2012 Open Hardware Summit.

With Catarina’s expertise in Open Materials, and Dustyn’s work in open mechanisms and robotics, each will bring a unique new dimension to the term “Open Hardware” and together broaden the relevance and reach of our movement and summit.

Thank you all for the support, we cannot stress enough that this is your movement, and everyone here has helped make it happen. The support for the Summit, from helping hands to donations, made it possible. Please continue to support the movement as it goes forward.

Put your hands together for Catarina and Dustyn!

Check out our full post here: http://www.openhardwaresummit.org/2011/12/12/passing-the-torch/

Cheers,
Alicia & Ayah

We can’t think of 2 better people to continue making the Open Hardware Summit THE best event for open-source hardware makers. Congrats to Catarina and Dustyn!

Coobro Geo Kit @ coobrolabs.com. Tyler writes -

The Coobro Geo is an easy to assemble GPS navigation kit.  Upload coordinates, turn it on, and the Coobro Geo will help you navigate to any destination on earth by using LEDs to show you the correct direction and distance remaining.  Before you leave on your quest, press and hold the breadcrumbs button and the Coobro Geo will remember your location and help you navigate back.  Store up to five pre-entered destination coordinates and five breadcrumbs, or modify the open source code and store as many coordinates as you want.

Use the Coobro Geo to help you find geocaches, store and navigate between hot fishing spots, complete a scavenger hunt, or simply help you find your car after a hike. Open Source Hardware: This kit is 100% open source hardware.  We provide the Eagle Cad design files, schematics, and software for your hacking pleasure.

Tyler was on our show and tell and has a 10% off code for adafruit folks – 10% off the Coobro Geo Kit use code adafruit. We love this kit! You can get the kit here…

Robotic Open Platform via Erin…

Robotic Open Platform (ROP) aims to make hardware designs of robots available under an Open Hardware license  to the entire robotic community. It provides CAD drawings, electric schemes and the required documentation to build their own robot. In the near future, standard electromechanic interfaces between the various robot components will be presented to enable the possibility to combine hardware components of various groups into one robot. By making the robots modular, users are encouraged to develop their own components that can be shared with the community.

In software, the Robot Operating System (ROS) is nowadays acknowledged as a standard software platform and is used by numerous (research) institutions. This open source software is available to everyone and by sharing knowledge with the community there is no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’, hence drastically speeding up development. Similarly, Robotic Open Platform (ROP) functions as a platform to share hardware designs available to all research groups within the community.

Ocean Robotics Director Personal Assistant at Protei / Adafruit Jobs Board.

Ocean robotics project leader Cesar Harada is looking for a personal assistant in London to develop Protei, a revolutionary sailing technology for ocean cleaning and open source sailing science. You would assist Harada manage an international team of about 30 scientists, engineers and designers in the early stage of an ocean technology Open Hardware start up and Non-profit organisation.

The work would range from business development to team management and from grant writing to assisting in the production of prototypes. You may have the opportunity to travel and install exhibitions, to test prototypes in the water and do PR work.

Read more!

The Fritzmas challenge – send in your projects! @ Fritzing. Andre writes -

Hi everyone,

It’s that time of the year again, and we would like to take the opportunity to re-cap what the last year has brought. So here’s the Fritzmas challenge 2011: You show us what you did, and we give you what we did.

How you can win
Take a look at what you’ve built with Fritzing this year, and snap a couple of photos/screenshots. If you think it’s an interesting concept, a technical masterpiece, or just fun, we want to see it all.  

Then either upload it to our projects gallery or mail them to info (ät) fritzing.org. (Also, you must agree that we may publish what you send us (if you prefer, anonymized).
Deadline is Sunday, December 18th.

Read more!

Drone Journalism via Twitter…

With the FAA set to open the nation’s airways to civilian unmanned aircraft, the potential uses for drones outside of the military are starting to open up. And that raises a question: Could you do journalism from a drone?

That’s a question we want to try and answer at the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications. We’ve just started the lab and will have our first drone to start testing soon. 

So what is drone journalism? Here’s a first crack at trying to define it: Drone journalism is the use of unmanned aircraft to gather photos, video and data for reporting. Between inexpensive RC aircraft with high-definition video cameras mounted to them to sophisticated autonomous aircraft with high-resolution imaging hardware onboard, the applications for reporting on disasters, mass protests and other news events with a large geographic extent are wide open. 

You’re already starting to see applications. In Poland, a man mounted a camera to a RC helicopter and gathered images of a protest.

The College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln established the Drone Journalism Lab in November 2011 as part of a broad digital journalism and innovation strategy. Journalism is evolving rapidly, and journalism education must evolve with it, teaching new tools and storytelling strategies while remaining true to the core principles and ethics of journalism. The lab was started by Professor Matt Waite as a way to explore how drones could be used for reporting.

In the lab, students and faculty will build drone platforms, use them in the field and research the ethical, legal and regulatory issues involved in using pilotless aircraft to do journalism.

Journalists are increasingly faced with two problems: a growing appetite for unique online video in an environment of decreased budgets; and restricted or obstructed access to stories ranging from disaster coverage to Occupy Wall Street protests. The technology behind autonomous and remotely piloted vehicles is rapidly moving from military applications to the point where private citizens can own and operate their own drone. At the same time, high definition and 3D video cameras are getting smaller, cheaper and lighter. Paired with global position devices, they make ideal additions to an airborne platform.

In short, drones are an ideal platform for journalism.

Chris Anderson is the editor in chief of WIRED Magazine and is co-founder of DIY drones a very successful open-source hardware company.

We have a special note about the new GitHub Download button in the forums! Having trouble finding the “Download” button? The GitHub download button is not on the upper right corner of the screen anymore. In the new screen layout, there is a “zip” button on the upper left for downloads.

New York City’s R train is the Silicon Subway, connecting high-tech startups to their workers @ NY Daily News. Includes open-source hardware 3D printer company, MakerBot!

The center of power in California’s Silicon Valley, the soul of the high-tech industry, is a sloping street that’s home to dozens of venture capital firms seeking wealth in the digital revolution.

New York has its own version of Sand Hill Road: A subway line that powers the city’s burgeoning e-scene.
A comprehensive Daily News analysis shows that the R line acts as the spine that connects the home bases of many of the city’s best-funded tech start-ups and the investors that bankroll them.

It’s New York’s Silicon Subway.

While much of the spotlight has focused on Internet giants that have set up shop in the city — Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook — The News examined the far more pervasive presence of homegrown e-commerce ventures.

WIRED Store.

DRONE MEET UP
Wednesday, December 7
6:00pm – 7:00pm
 
WIRED Editor in Chief Chris Anderson will demo projects from DIY Drones.
 
To attend, RSVP to: rsvpstore@wired.com

Open source gift guide and giveaway: Our answer to Cyber Monday @ opensource.com.

It’s the season for a lot of us to go shopping–and you might as well celebrate the spirit of open source in your gift-giving. We’ve got a few suggestions to help you out with that. And since it’s always nice to get something for yourself, we also have three great giveaways from open source hardware company AdaFruit.

MakerBot open source toy kits for your 3D printer via BB.

Great post “Open Source (Almost) Everything” – by Tom Preston-Werner Co-founder GitHub. What they’re doing, why and what license they use.

Getting Started with Parallax. This is a really impressive wiki filled with examples, code and more. Parallax is hands down one of the best “documenters” of learning electronics – they’re also including Arduino code examples too…

Welcome to the Parallax KickStart wiki! Here you’ll find dozens of programming examples to help you jump start your use of Parallax sensors and accessories sold through retail stores such as RadioShack, Microcenter, and Fry’s Electronics.

These KickStarts give you hands-on help for connecting R/C servos, GPS modules, accelerometers, digital compasses, ultrasonic distance sensors, XBee wireless radios, and more to three of the world’s most popular microcontrollers: the BASIC Stamp 2, Parallax Propeller, and Arduino.

KickStarts are basic, no-frills coding samples, made so you can get started, fast. Each example takes no more than a few minutes to set up and try.

Many of the Parallax sensors and accessories offer enhanced features and functionality not covered in the example code. So when you’re ready to move on and explore more, follow the links at the bottom of each KickStart example page for additional info.

KickStarts provide working code and connection diagrams for the Parallax Propeller QuickStart, BASIC Stamp 2 HomeWork Board, and Arduino Uno. 

In most cases, the programming code will also work for variations of these microcontroller development boards, such as the BASIC Stamp Board of Education. Adapt the wiring connections as needed.

Visit.

Makerbot is on the cover TimeOut New York magazine and our Adafruit iCufflinks are in the gift guide inside. Is this the first time open source hardware has hit the cover of a magazine?