BUG Community

BUG comes with an avahi-daemon installed.  We used to use a jslp-based implementation to have the SDK auto-detect the presence of a BUG on the same LAN (and even for the virtual-BUG itself).  We've since changed to using the more widely supported avahi/mDNS/zeroconf implementation.  SDK-side, it's based on JmDNS, BUG-side it's plain old avahi, with a special service definition.Anyway, what I like about having avahi-daemon and some stock service definitions on BUG is that in...

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I had the opportunity to work on a nasty little defect from home this afternoon.  Some background: Originally we used the AvetanaBT implementation for java-level API hooks into bluez for bluetooth programming. It has served our needs well, and was built on top of phoneME /JavaME's javax.microedition.io libraries.   We're moving to openjdk-6 No javax.microedition.io in a J2SE compatible jvm/classpath environment Need to abandon avetanaBT or re-implement javax.microedition.io.* on our own (ick) I investigated a (more...

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Bug Labs is excited to announce the Open Hardware Summit in conjunction with MAKE, and Creative Commons, and a little help from our friends at NYSCI, littleBits and Eyebeam! The Open Hardware Summit will be a venue to present, promote and discuss the undergoing open source hardware movement. The summit will focus on hardware as a system, involving conversations on software, manufacturing, legal, and other factors surrounding open source hardware. It is taking place on...

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I get to dip my toes into the middleware pool again.  Fun fun fun!  Apache Mina looks like an interesting and lightweight server platform.  Also XMPP seems cool, even though XML is SO 2005.  May as well call it CSV at this point.  But only after 14 or so nested directories I get to some client code that tests Vyspers's PubSub support.  Really, is all this nesting necessary?  Is there some bonus pool in the...

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I've been a member of last.fm for a while now, since before they offered a music-streaming service (I think), back when they were audioscrobbler.  They still offer scrobbling services, which track your listening habits and allow you to go social on it.  I've even got the Scrobbl iphone app.Anyway, I primarily use last.fm for their (IMHO) better-than-pandora stations.  They don't do commercials, they don't have a rate-limit for fast forwarding.  I listen to Rachmaninoff radio...

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I've been spending some spare time trying to get the BUG as a wifi AP.  I'd pretty much given up on libertas_tf because it was specific to the Marvell Libertas 8388 USB 802.11b/g cards (as I understand it), and the 88W8388 used in the OLPC XO-1.  Anyway, it looks like the OLPC XO-1.5 will be using the 88W8686 Marvell wifi chipset, which could have some sweet windfall for BUG users.  Have a look here:http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@lists.laptop.org/msg22226.htmlandhttp://wiki.laptop.org/go/Thinfirm_1.5Looks super...

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I've decided to use our community blog for some observations I come across during development here at BUG, so expect to see a lot of quick posts from me in the future. Anyway, this post was interesting.  http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/category/drivers/ I came across while looking around for some documentation for CnS on Sierra devices, and whether there was some groundwork done by the FOSS community.

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Check out AutoBUG! The AutoBUG combines the BUG's hardware and connectivity (GPS, GSM, accelerometer, etc.) with data from a car via its CAN BUS. This system turns the car into a hotspot node on a network. The current iteration of this project should run on any GEN 2 Prius, which is one of the most fun and hackable cars around. See Brian's wiki info for some advice on how this project could be modified to...

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BUGduino prototypes have arrived at our office! Behold all its prototypable glory: When our most excellent EE, Dave Riess, started at Bug he was looking for an easier way to drive motors through the BUGbase. Driving motors with BUG took an additional microcontroller, such as an Arduino strapped to a breadboard and ziptied to a BUG for handling Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). With some help from the community members who use both Arduino and BUG,...

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Recently while wrangling with an internal project that required some basic location functionality, I became pretty intimate with the BUG location API.  While the basics of retrieving location information from the GPS device is pretty straightforward using the existing API, other use cases are not so easy.  Additionally, the API seems to leak more NMEA complexity that is really necessary.  So, I decided to make it better. This is when I discovered openlapi, a FOSS...

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