One more time !! PinguinoVE

I like to hear about the Pinguino community.... And the Venezuelian community of Pinguino is still very active. PinguinoVE has been created at the beginning of this project, using Pinguino to teach home made digital electronic. All the guys working on this project are proud to see what Pinguino is used for and I like to present again this great team.


The last event where PinguinoVE was presented in Venezuela is the national congress of free software. During 3 months, in 11 cities, the PinguinoVE team insured presentation and workshop. More than 30 people for each workshop and 400 people for each presentation. The main question was 'What is Pinguino ?' and how can it be used to expand knowledge. The audience was composed of university students,teachers, geeks, government representatives.



And, as usual, Richard Stallman was there.


PinguinoVE website is the main place to see the work of this community.
More photos here.

Thanks Alexis, Jhuliana, Joan and all the team !!
We keep in touch.....

Maddog in Campus Party Valencia

Maddog was here yesterday to celebrate the commemoration of 20 years of Linux. Of course we were there and we took a photo to celebrate with him and all the Campuseros this birthday.

Campus Party Workshop

Hi Guys



Pinguino workshop is more and more active. We are working on communication with sensors with Pinguino32. Infra-red communication is OK, we can now transmit messages with an infra-red led and receive them with a TSOP module. We are going to share the code today on the blog.
Today is our last session, we prepared some code to connect Pinguino32 each other, with IR, Zigbee module and finally, the communication activity will be monitored through a Linksys router with OpenWRT. Benoit is working on a graphical application with processing to display the communication activity.



As usual, Boops is working hard, day and night..........

Campus Party Valencia

As usual, Campus Party is a great event !!
After a quick presentation of Pinguino, we started a "network with sensors" workshop. The goal is to establish communication with sensors beetween PIC32-PINGUINO boards. Light, laser, zigbee, serial and interfacing with a WRT54GL for link with the net.
Fortunately, Boops is with us. He designed a shield for Pinguino 32 with 4 IR LED as transmitter and 2 IR Demodulator as receiver.

As Pinguino IDE is still an experimental version, the first day has been devoted to installation ( windows and Linux ). The second day, we started to test IR transmission and reception. Today, we will design our 'sensor network' and establish a common protocol.
Benoit is writing a processing application to monitor communication of modules.

Campus Party is a good way to speak about this project, exchange idea, share knowledge and more......
Now I must go to listen and Android application development conference. Yet another interesting subject for Pinguino !!

PIC32-PINGUINO Power Supply

I want to build a Temperature sensor powered by a solar panel. I made some test to define the comsuption of Pinguino 32 in different configuration:

First configuration:
Pinguino 32 is powered by its power connector with a 9 Vdc power supply.

The current is about 80 mA on the power supply. Power input is 0,72 Watt.

Second configuration:
Pinguino 32 is powered by its LiPo charger connector ( as it could be with a battery ).



Now the current is about 90 mA. Power input is about 0,324 Watt.
All the tests were done with a clock frequency of 80 Mhz. Then I decided to swith the clock frequency to 40 Mhz and now the current is about 60 mA with 3,6V ( 0,216 Watts ).

Now, just have to find the good solar panel.........

Yet another Pinguino robot

This robot is controlled with Pinguino. I like this design and it seems to work as Theo Jansen Robots.



Great work, this blog need a visit !!
You can find there a lot of ressources for Pinguino.

Temperature Sensor

I built this very simple temperature sensor with a DS18B20. It is connected on a PIC32-PINGUINO and powered from the data line.


The DS18B20 library is very simple to use, just one line to check the temperature on the sensor:

#define ONEWIREBUS 9 // define the pin connected to the 18B20+ Dline

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(8,OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(8,HIGH); // pin 8 is used to power the 18B20 ( +Vcc )
pinMode(10,OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(10,LOW); // pin 10 is used to power the 18B20 ( GND )
}

void loop()
{
TEMPERATURE t;

if (DS18B20.read(ONEWIREBUS, SKIPROM, RES9BIT, &t))
{
if (t.sign) Serial.printf("-");
else Serial.printf("+");
Serial.printf("%d",t.integer);
Serial.printf(".%d",t.fraction);
Serial.printf("\n\r");
}
}

Now it's time to connect the DS18B20 and the zigbee shield to have a wireless temperature sensor !!

back view

Front view

ZIGBEE for PIC32

Pinguino32 uses a MRF24J40MA radio module to communicate with another Pinguino32 !!

This shield uses the UEXT connector of PIC32-PINGUINO and PIC32-PINGUINO-OTG. A very simple library is used to communicate with the module. You need only to initialise the module in the setup()

ZIG.init(channel,PAN_ID,Short_Address);

then to send data, you must use the ZIG.send instruction as described below:

ZIG.send(Dest_Address,"TOTO",4);

each module must be configured with:
- radio channel ( between 11 and 26 )
- PAN ID ( personnal area network identification between 0 and 65535 )
- address ( between 0 and 65535 ).

to receive data from another module, you must use this instruction:

length=ZIG.read(rxdata);

A simple example has been added to the example folder of revision 147 of Pinguino32X.


Have fun
JP

Pinguino32X windows

Hi Guys

Now Pinguino32X is available for windows. We worked on a lot of improvement for this release. most of the extended functions for 8 bits systems are documented on the pinguino wiki ( wiki.pinguino.cc ). For 32 bits Pinguino, this first version support our Pinguino32 compiler built from GCC4.5.2 and newlib.

You can download Pinguino32X windows here.

For 32 bits boards, our 32 bits compiler can be downloaded here.

Most of the code already existing for 8 bit Pinguino can be used on 32 bits ( Serial, CDC, I/O, analog etc... ) with much more power of course ( Pinguino32 is a 80 MIPS machine !! ).

We are waiting your opinion on this new release.

Have fun
JP

SOLUTIONS LINUX/PINGUINO32X

Hi Guys,

The last 3 month were dedicated to Pinguino32X development. It's time now to publish the first version of the IDE. What is new in this release ? I didn't write a complete list and we still need to define all the changes. For 8 bits boards, Pinguino is now almost compatible with Arduino language, most of the new features are already detailed in the pinguino wiki ( http://wiki.pinguino.cc ).
The major improvement of this release is the support of 32 bits board. You can now use Pinguino on a 80MIPS system. The compiler for this release is available in a separate package. Built from GCC 4.5.2, it is a standard MIPS C compiler. The development team is already working on the C++ version of this compiler with newlib libraries.
Support for some commercial 32 bits board is available:
- PIC32-PINGUINO from OLIMEX
- EMPEROR460 and EMPEROR795 from EDTP

This board should be available soon, the end user price is around 30€.

I will be in Paris tomorrow at Solution Linux event to show the new board and his development environment. I will present this board on the FEDORA stand, the good news is that Pinguino should be incorporated in a next release of the FEDORA EL package ( EL is Electronic ) and I'm very pleased to publish the new version for this event.

At this moment, Pinguino32X is only available for Linux:
download the new IDE here:
http://code.google.com/p/pinguino32/downloads/list
download the Pinguino 32 bits compiler here:
http://www.hackinglab.org/pinguino/download/compiler32bits/
Follow this link to configure the IDE for 32 bits board:
http://code.google.com/p/pinguino32/wiki/Pinguino32Xconfigurationandinstallation

Have fun
Jean-Pierre

Main developpers of Pinguino32X:
Regis Blanchot
Marcus Fazzi
Jesus Carmona Esteban