SFDKL The Key take away

While we didn't do a lot during Software Freedom Day, we do have a interesting informal discussion on how things works in Malaysia. When Ashik and Rajiv is asking how the open source community is like in Malaysia. To make it short, it is real sad situation.

Apparently in Kerala, schools is required to teach open source, along with others. There is a active community, with some of the community involve in Open Source Related business, too do their part. For example a computer distributor that with request from user willing to ubuntu on the computer with reduced price. Will charge for proprietary OS. And they actually have a install fest.

For Malaysia, the case is different, school don't teach. And people can't see the viability of Open Source Software related business here and the govt just paying lip service to Open Source. Among other problem.

Short take away, we have a long way to go. But from the discussion, it seems that, the best way to promote open source is to start a business with it, and make money, and make it a case study.

BTW: Thanks for hackerspacekl for the space

SFDKL The end

Software Freedom Day was held in PJ, Malaysia Last week at Hackerspacekl

The event itself draws a small crowd, I wouldn't call it a party, but it is a start(of a new thing I hope).

The guys that comes much later

While things don't goes as planned, and the LAN party didn't happen, video screening starts much later. And we have a Coffee session and Lunch Session, so we ends up with a very informal discussion. Especially with 2 very interesting gentlemen from India working in Malaysia, which also involved a lot in Open Source Community in their home town.

Rajiv and Ashik from India

The session starts with the screening of Code Rush, after lunch

Code Rush, video Screening

Then introduction of the unix-g33kz session on hackerspacekl

Then we ends with another round of coffee session.

Software Freedom Day, how to go

To go to hackerspacekl, the precise address is

21B, Jalan SS21/1A,

Damansara Utama,

47400 Petaling Jaya,

Selangor, Malaysia

It is at uptown damansara near TM point, you can see the entrance at the shop under a big Antique Shop Sign.


The number to call if you need direction is 017 626 6011

#sfdkl status on game survey

Alright guys/gals, Software Freedom Day is tomorrow!!!

A little update

The result of the game survey, suggest that we should have a multiplayer round of hedgewars
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmN4VC_DvFzBdHZzZkdwR0psSy0tMTItNGRsMDg2YlE&hl=en#gid=0

Want to know what is it about go to this side,
http://www.hedgewars.org/

It works major platform, and quite well on eeepc(which I own)

#sfdkl status redux

This is schedule for the Day, the planned talk don't goes as plan, it is replaced by Lightning Talk and video screening. I still hoping to have a gathering of foss geeks in KL.... 

A little explanation on what is Lightning Talk. Lightning talk is a 5 minute presentation volunteered by attendee on topic related to the event. So I hope to hear on foss related story that you have, or free culture, or open hardware stuff, from all of you guys during SFDKL. Though I doubt that 30 minute is enough for a lightning talk

• 10:00 AM : Welcome + Lightning Talk
• 11:00 AM : Screening of Revolution OS / Patent Absurdity/Code Rush
• 12:30 PM : Lunch and mingle around aka networking
• 13:30 PM : Unix G33kz
• 15:30 PM : Frag Fest

I hope to see all of you guys there!!!!

When Python talk to Arduino

Yesterday I show a code where when we send a 't' via serial connection, the LED will blink while the arduino board, send back a series of string via serial, the code below is what I used to run on arduino, to test with the python code.
link


In the arduino development environment, there is a serial monitor that do the the testing.

Since it is just a standard serial interface, so one can just do it anyway they want. Here I show how to do it via python. First what we need, is the pyserial library, you can install it using pip or easy_install or grab it from pyserial site

To install, just use to following command. if you need more detail, read the docs, because I use python 2.7 it just works for me,

pip pyserial

or

easy_install pyserial

To use it, with the arduino code from the top of the page just, do the following
link


The line s=serial.Serial(2) points to com3 on windows, on linux it should be s=serial.Serial('/dev/ttyUSB0'), or other port that shown by the arduino serial monitor. Pyserial actually have a few options on the Serial object, but I found that for arduino, the default is adequate.

And this is how to use arduino to interface to your computer using python. enjiy

Confession of a arduino newbie

So one of the side effect of hanging around with hackerspacekl too much is, one begin to develop feeling toward hacking hardware... Which in one of my post shows their project creating their own arduino severino.

I got myself freeduino thanks to Kakeman, our resident hardware guru in hackerspacekl. It is not the latest, but it is good enough. After following the tutorial, I begin to feel to blink a LED, which built into the board
link.



Then I play around with the serial library,
link


In the end of the day it is fun, much before I continue, I need to find time to get a breadboard and more components, like LED,transistors, resistors etc, to make more stuff. Think i am going to play with this for a long time to come

Software Freedom Day KL status

It is a while since I actually started Software Freedom Day in KL. Since I am like swarmed with job. So finally get a few thing done
A bit of a status report for Software Freedom Day KL 2010

What we have:

• 17 attendee registered
• A space, in hackerspacekl
• A switch for the LAN party
• A site at https://sites.google.com/site/sfdkl2010/
• And aircond(ok...hackerspacekl have it for sometime)

What we don't have,

• Speakers, for the sessions
• Helpers to help, not that the event need many people

So what next, if we have speaker, we just continue as planned, else, we might reschedule the whole thing it depends on how.