David's blog

Tux Droid at Europython 2007

David Bourgeois — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:25:33 +0200

Vilnius, here we go. Tux was proud to meet some old guys along the bridge getting to Vilnius "Old town".

I was really impressed by the quantity of churches over there. We did a quick tour of Vilnius in half a day but if you want to visit all of these churches, it will take a couple of days.

My talk was programmed on Monday morning at noon time and my slides were done just on time. I spent part of the night finishing up some interactive sequences I had with Tux during my talk. The presentation went well and people were quite curious about seeing Tux in real. I got some good feedback after the talk and some people had different interests around tux. We setup a table in the afternoon to show them and the 12 Tuxs we could take with us on the plane were adopted very quickly.

You can find most of my slides here.

On Tuesday, as we were supposed to have a table there to show tux during the day, but still wanted to see the presentations, I wrote a script during one of the many talks of Arlo Belshee (sorry for that ;-) so that we could leave Tux on a table with a computer and he'll do the presentation. He used a couple of my slides and explained all his functionalities by himself. That was great to see, and great for us as we didn't have to stay nearby all the time.

As I wrote that script in a hurry, it's pretty lame but you can still find it together with the slides on the script forum. I'm going to clean it a bit and extend it with some more functions and information, but that's already fun to look at. I'll post a video of that.

Finally, thanks to all the organizers of Europython, here you can see Laura Creighton and Aiste Kesminaite that somehow enjoyed the presence of Tux over there ( a glass of wine helps of course ;-).

Development progress

David Bourgeois — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:36:58 +0200

Tuxsetup

A new tuxsetup has been released, yes it's not final yet but it's out there for a week and we didn't get much bug reports on that one. Rémi [1], neimad, doegox and some others did a wonderful job at fixing bugs, improving stability, security and adding some functionalities to the daemon. Rémi also improved the API a lot. It seems we have something that can be used :-), it's quite stable and nearly all functions of tux are covered by the API. Now we really need to get some nice scripts and applications. The graphical interface (tuxgi/gtdi) has been reworked already, and now that the daemons are automatically launched by udev when fux is plugged, it's pretty easy to use it. Just plug the dongle, turn tux on and type 'tuxgi'.

Wiki

The wiki has been reorganized a bit and slightly skinned to better fit with the community portal. I think it's now ready to share it with more people. I added a link from the developer corner. It doesn't use ldap yet so you'll have to create a new account to participate.

The wiki was used from the beginning but it wasn't very clear whether it wouldn't conflict with the main community portal. After some time, it appeared that it's a very good place for community members and specially developers to share ideas, links, tests, reviews and anything they're doing that might be of some help to others. It's easy, we have history, can easily reorganize things, etc. Well, that's what a wiki is for :-)

Firmware

I'm also going to use the wiki from now on for my own developments on tux's firmware in order to share what's going on but also to get feedback from you. And also if you want to join me in the dark side of the hardware/firmware, you're welcome :-)

And while I'll be working on the firmware, I'm going to add doxygen tags for it. The topics are:

Standalone behavior - description of the standalone behavior that should be integrated into Tux.
Remote mode - control your tux with the remote only, no computer here.
Light sensor - schema, measurement and linearization of the light measurement.
Tux ID - adding an identification code in tux firmware.
Sleep mode - adding a sleep mode in tux to increase battery life.

Widgets

I was just saying that the daemon and API were so much improved that we could finally use it. Rémi now works on a widget manager and a few widgets dedicated to tux.

What are tux widgets?

'Tux Widgets' is a new development in progress in order to easily manage multiple lightweight applications for tux from a central point. Widgets will offer a lot of nice little functionalities to tux that you can add, enable, disable and configure to your taste. Widgets examples could be: wheather forecast, email notification, alarm clock, news reader, audio player, presentation heper, etc.

Why widgets?

Small python scripts are easily done and there's only one small step towards bigger scripts or small applications. Packaging these into widgets would offer an easy access of your scripts to any end user. Widgets should be easy to build and easy to install. That way anybody can quickly peronalize a set of behaviors for Tux.

I added all I know on this topic on the wiki, there's also a list of all the widgets that are going to be developed first, have a look by yourself at http://wiki.tuxisalive.com/index.php/Tux's_Widgets. All comments are welcome, that will help us develop applications that better suit your needs.

That's it for now, going back at work.

Cheers, David

[1]	Rémi is the main programmer of KySoH/C2ME if you didn't know yet

Tux Droid...a smart companion?

Sebastien Domingues — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:07:42 +0200

We truly believe that computing must be fun, easy and accessible to everybody. Are you proud of your mouse or your keyboard? Cool, so are we...(even if the only mouse we really fell in love with when we were young was...Minnie). But wouldn't it be cool to have a peripheral device for your computer that is just more than a peripheral... A device that can bring fun, emotions and even be functional. Let's not even call it a device anymore. We want a companion, smart and funny...a companion you can communicate through, play, program, have fun with and laugh everyday. And if people ask us: "Is it useful?" Hmmm...Maybe not but that's why we absolutely need one.

In the era of Internet, in a world of computers, in a web of communities, at the border of real and virtual, we really wanted to launch a smart companion Who will bring Fun And Freedom. And depending of your background or your personality, you can envision Tux droid in different dimensions:

- Tux droid is just a robot. Yes indeed, we can see him as a robot flapping the wings, dancing around, talking etc...Why not? You can develop some new firmware and train you robotic skills.

- Tux droid is a Human Machine Interface (HMI). Yes, also. Remote control, TTS, actuators and sensors can be used to interface with your computer. Check what Tola is thinking about it.

- Tux droid as a PC friend. Tux is more than a HMI. Yes, we know, some people will tell us than nothing is better than a real human and warm friendship and we fully agree. But isn't it cool to bring emotions and make tux sociable and intelligent...in brief...alive. We can start by naming Tux droid. like Thomas already did. You can program simple scripts and Tux will be your alarm clock, your game buddy, a chatbot, a teacher (connected with Gcompris).

- Tux droid as a Web buddy. Of course, Tux can be your internet companion. By using the TTS he can feed you with news or information (RSS feed). You can broadcast your internet radio. What about a bid alert on EBay?

- A communication media: Tux droid is a friend with friends. We couldn't imagine a companion without the communication aspects: a community of Tux connected to a server, Tux as a VoIP phone, Tux-chat (a buddy who alerts you if somebody wants to chat and mimics all emoticons).

Well, some of you will think..."Then, sky is the limit". Yes maybe. We believe so. And as somebody famous once said: "I have a dream". Then we all have dreams. And we are more than happy to share this one with you.

Seb and Thierry

New releases

David Bourgeois — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:40:23 +0100

New versions of the daemon, python api and gtdi (graphical interface) have been released today.

This daemon release together with the dongle firmware upgrade are fixing the USB communication bug so now you should get it working on all kernels. You should upgrade the firmware to use this version, just follow the howto: "Updating the firmware".

Major code cleanup has been done to meet the new style guidelines.

Here are the changelogs:

Tux Daemon 0.2.0-alpha2:

  * USB communication now uses interrupt transfers.
  * Raises an ERROR when connecting to the old firmware.
  * Cleaned the code to follow the new guidelines at
    http://www.tuxisalive.com/documentation/how-to/guidelines-for-creating-and-packaging-an-application
    and improve readbility and debugging.
  * Bug fixes.

Python API 0.1.1:

  * Added a limitation of the wav file to store the sounds in the local 
    flash to 70 seconds and avoid the crash when overfilling the flash.
  * Added new functions and events.
  * Minor modifications.

GTDI 0.2.0:

  * Complete rework of the interface and new functionalities

Thanks to all of you who already started digging into the code and helped to clean it. Next step will be to add functionalities and we're slowly getting organized now to do so.

Support

David Bourgeois — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:38:49 +0100

When we started the project, quite a long time ago, maybe 2 years, I setup a mailing list on the kysoh mail server but as I didn't have complete access to it, I couldn't get the archives easily. One year ago I created the tux-droid project on sourceforge, which has been idle since then, but I now decided to move the mailing list there. So you'll be able to search the archives as soon as there will be some posts ;-) I added the information about this on the 'Getting started' page. So for all of you who prefer emails to the forum for support or development, join us there.

There's also the #tuxdroid channel on irc.freenode.net which has been virgin for a while, but since a few weeks a few enthousiasts are joining now and then. I'll try to be connected during the day at least (GMT+1).

I also added on the same page some information and the link to the subversion repository. Subversion (also called svn) is an open-source revision control system and we use it for all the sources of Tux Droid firmware, daemons, api and applications. The repository is now moving to the same server as the website. The main benefit is that you'll be able to access svn with the same account as the website as we're using LDAP for authentication. The plan is to create a 'devel' group which members will be granted write access to most parts of the website in order to contribute to it. You'll be able to add documentation (FAQ, howto, tutorial, etc.) or add and manage your project in the developer corner, or simply contribute to the code which is already there. To help you keeping on top of what's happening from day to day, you can subscribe to our new automated check-ins list. Every commit on the svn repository is reported on the list.

Finally, some of you already received their Tux today, more are on the way. The fun should start, you have some great ideas and I'm eager to see what you'll end up doing with your Tux. I should definitely know shortly :-)

The software is there

David Bourgeois — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:25:39 +0100

The subversion repository has been cleaned, old outdated code have been removed, it's now better organised. I created tags for the daemon, the Python API and a couple of applications we already have and released the packages in the developer corner.

I made a very quick draft of what you have to do to get everything installed. That's certainly incomplete but I guess that those of you who have already a tux and were at FOSDEM shouldn't be stopped by such things :-) We're going to update that next week anyway.

The daemon is still in alpha as there are going to be problems when spreading it around the globe. Well, as of writing this, there's just been a post on the forum about an issue I've already been bitten with when updating my kernel. As the software is released now, I may have a bit of time to deal with that too.

If you install everything, it would be nice to report things you had to do and that would be of interest to other users. Use the forum or leave a comment on the install page and we'll integrate that in the installation procedure.

I would also ask more advanced users to leave advices about packaging an application. Right now we decided to put everything in /opt/tuxdroid though that's not the most common use in Linux but that's how our programmer ended up when copying the Acapela TTS wizard. The python API certainly would benefit from some kind of packaging. I'm going to look into distutils but any advice would be more than welcome.

I also spent some time to setup a mailing list at sourceforge to receive all commit messages made on our repository. I then decided to move the user mailing list there too as this will be more convenient for you and you'll get archives.
To subscribe, visit https://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=163550

See you there then.

FOSDEM 2007

David Bourgeois — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:46:11 +0100

So I gave a presentation about "Tux Droid, a Python-Fueled robot". You can check the link to get the summary.

The python dev-room was really crowded the whole day, maybe because there were only 31 seats there ;-) but certainly as much people were standing along the walls, even some were outside the room trying to catch something and others simply had to turn away.

That's a success for Python and hopefully the AFPY (Association Francophone Python) will get a bigger room next year.

FOSDEM is really a great event, if you missed it, there are some videos of the main tracks on their website.

I made a document with my presentation and will publish it as soon as I have some time to finish it. I have been very busy cleaning up the daemon, API and applications this week in order to make some release that are more urgent now that some people got a Tux Droid.

I've been talking about Tux Droid and Python though my Python knowledge is rather limited so I focused on the electronics and what we can do with Tux, though I still gave a few words around Python and didn't get any bad remark ;-). I made a small dialog with Tux to show it could really be alive and that was quite impressive.

You'll get it all soon but for now you can just have a look at the pictures of Tux I did for my presentation and pictures of the packaging.

Thanks to the AFPY for the invitation. I really enjoyed spending some time with you guys!

Firmware released

David Bourgeois — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:55:13 +0100

The firmware codes of the 2 main CPU of Tux Droid (tuxcore and tuxaudio) have been released.

We made a lot of effort to get the firmware stable so that at least we can work on the software side to get something good there too. At the same time svn will probably continue to evolve so that people interested in testing the latests additions can always get the new hex files. Some functionalities are still missing but that's not something I consider as really important right now (see the TODO files in the sources).

The firmware sources are available at
http://svn.tuxisalive.com/firmware/tuxcore and http://svn.tuxisalive.com/firmware/tuxaudio

The latests hex files will always be at
http://svn.tuxisalive.com/firmware/hex

what the heck are you doing?

David Bourgeois — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:54:49 +0100

My currents tasks are to release the firmware of the 2 main CPU's of Tux Droid and tuxup (the tux updater application) so that when you guys will get your brand new Tux Droid, you'll be able to update it with the latests firmware (that of course have much less bugs that the old ones, but much more than the forthcoming ones ;-). I'm nearly done with the firmware and a first version of tuxup should follow soon.

Then I'm planning a major update of the documentation. As I have to do a presentation about Tux Droid and python at the FOSDEM next weekend, I'll do that during this week and will try to publish it here too. I'll probably delve into the new version of the daemon and python libs at the same time.

There's also a few firmware enhancements that I would like to complete not too far from here, jumping into mind now:

sleep mode to save battery life;
configuration from the computer of various options of the standalone behavior embedded in Tux Droid;
improve the RC5 infrared code and fix the greeting event so that when 2 tux see each other they send themselves some greetings;
write a universal IR decoder function so that all remotes should be able to be used with Tux.

And at that point I think much time will have passed so that priorities will have to be revisited anyway.

whoami

David Bourgeois — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:42:18 +0100

whoami usually returns root, david or jaguarondi (which is the totem I was given when I was cooking for the girl scouts during summer camps, I was a terrible cook by the way). I am an Electrical Engineer and live in Belgium. And yes, here in Belgium even engineers drink beer, we all like it it seems.

I currently work for the Belgian company C2ME where I spend most of my time developing the Tux Droid Open Source robot of Kysoh.

I'm involved in the hardware and software design, mainly programming microcontrollers. I'm really focused on the firmware of the 8bits AVR of Tud Droid. My part is handling the sensors and actuators, and some communication between different parts. I worked neither on the RF nor the USB main codes. Though I have parts in all of them for the bootloading capability that I handled completely, from the computer side application to the bootloader code in all CPU's.

I had to do some programming on Linux. Mainly some basic C in tuxup (tux updater) or the daemon. I'm doing my first steps in an object oriented language, learning python at the moment. I did an early version of the daemon and python client which has been replaced by a new extended one developed by Rémi and that should be available soon.

It happens that I also sometimes play in a band. Well, this band is really 'just for fun' and is some example of the Belgian humor somehow.