Marc's Public Blog - Linux Hacking


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This page has a few of my blog entries about linux, but my main linux page is here
Picture of Linus

Here is a list of older linux event reports I made before my blog was started, then the rest are below
1996/11/18-21:Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1996 (photos only). I've been going since then to help at the linux pavillion.
1997/11/18-21: Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1997 (photos only)
1998/05/28-30: Linuxexpo 1998 (photos only)
1998/11/16-20: Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1998 (full report)
1998/11/11: Silicon Valley Tea Party (report with pictures)
1999/02/15: Windows Refund Day (report with pictures)
1999/03/20: SVLUG KTEH night (photos only)
1999/03/01-04: LinuxWorld Expo Winter 99 (complete report with many pictures)
1999/03/31: Mozilla Party one year anniversary (photos only)
1999/05/18-22: Linuxexpo 1999 (complete report with many pictures)
1999/06/07: June 99 Balug meeting with Linus
1999/08/09-12: LinuxWorld Expo Summer 99 (complete report with many pictures)
1999/11/15-19: Linux Business Show at Comdex Fall 1999 (full report with pictures)
2000/08/14-17: LinuxWorld Expo Summer 2000 (complete report with many pictures)
2001/01/17-20: Linux.conf.au/LCA 2001 (complete report with pictures)
2001/07/25-28: OLS 2001 (photos only)
2001/08/25: Linux 10th Anniversary (report with pictures)
2001/09/27-30: LinuxWorld Expo Summer 2001 report with pictures)
2001/11/05-10: ALS 2001 (photos only)
2002/06/26-29: OLS 2002 (photos only)
2003/01/20-25: LCA 2003 (photos only)
2003/07/23-26: OLS 2003 (photos only)
2004/01/12-17: LCA 2004 (photos only)
2004/07/21-24: OLS 2004 (photos only)
2005/04/18-23: LCA 2005 (photos only)
2006/01/24-28: LCA 2006 (photos only)
2007/01/17-21: LCA 2007 (photos only)

Here is a list of all the talks I've given:

And below are my blog posts:

Table of Content for linux:

More pages: July 2002 February 2004 March 2004 November 2004 April 2005 August 2005 January 2006 July 2006 August 2007 November 2007 January 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 May 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 March 2010 April 2010 June 2010 August 2010 October 2010 January 2011 July 2011 August 2011 December 2011 January 2012 March 2012 May 2012 August 2012 December 2012 January 2013 March 2013 May 2013 September 2013 November 2013 January 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 October 2014 January 2015 March 2015 May 2015 January 2016 February 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 October 2016 January 2017 September 2017 January 2018 March 2018 December 2018 January 2019 January 2020 May 2020 January 2021 September 2021 March 2023 April 2023 December 2023 June 2024



2017/01/16 IoTuz Driver for our ESP32 board built at Open Hardware Miniconf at Linux.Conf.au 2017
π 2017-01-16 01:01 in Arduino, Linux
I went to meet the Open Hardware Miniconf team to hang out the previous day and see them at work finishing the last boards:


last minute hardware patching
last minute hardware patching


The IoTuz board was a challenge compared to previous years. It was based on the still new ESP32 and had very little example code. Most of the hardware had never been exercised since the board had been designed, and with a few other people I took the task to heart. Within the week, I was able to get the SPI touch screen working at the same time than the LCD (which required cable select switching via I/O expander lines. It took longer to get the two APA106 (neopixel-like) LEDs to work:

I had the first etch-a-sketch working :)
I had the first etch-a-sketch working :)

So, that all in January. But IoTuz was the gift that kept on giving. It had all those I/O bits that didn't work at all and no one had ever used. Hell, some of them had no existing drivers at all (Neopixel no support under arduino IDE, IO expander needed some access functions, No support for the IR receiver, touch screen needed a few hacks, joystick needed some code to support the huge dead zone in the center), while some other hardware worked out of the box with existing drivers (temp/humidity and accelerometer). The rotary encoder also needed custom ESP32 interrupt code to work properly (nothing too fancy, but there was no existing driver to use).

So, I embarqued into a mega library/object to support most of the hardware and ended up with almost 1000 lines of code for my IoTuz library, and another thousand lines or so for the main example code (examples/fulldemo) and that does not include 3rd party code of existing demos I was able to re-use and port to IoTuz.

In the end, that took about 100 hours of work since I had to write/port drivers as I went along, and learn how some of that hardware was even supposed to work :) (ok, non trivial time was also spent finding and chasing platform bugs which have now been fixed, as well as merging driver code with upstream maintainers).

Here is a quick video summary (longer videos at the bottom):

And here is the result (thanks to https://github.com/marcmerlin/IoTuz 's examples/fulldemo)

I made an adjustable touch menu system
I made an adjustable touch menu system


drawing circles with the accelerometer by rotating the board
drawing circles with the accelerometer by rotating the board

touch color selector
touch color selector

hardware scroll of bitmap using the rotary encoder
hardware scroll of bitmap using the rotary encoder



Just like the joystick not being very precise or centered right, the touchscreen isn't quite the same for everyone, but especially in my case I broke my touchscreen, had to buy another one and that one was wired reversed, so I designed a screen touch screen calibrator which auto adjusts and supports touch screens that are inversed like mine:


Enough bla-blah, show me the code: https://github.com/marcmerlin/IoTuz

And here are some video clips:

Hardware Intro

IoTuz Controls

IoTuz Infrared Support

IoTuz Demos

IoTuz Breakout and Tetris

Again, here's the code: https://github.com/marcmerlin/IoTuz

2017/01/17 Linux.conf.au 2017, Hobart
π 2017-01-17 01:01 in Linux
As another full circle LCA, this one came back to Hobart, Tasmania (our last time was in 2009|/perso/linux/post_2009-01-21_Linux_conf_au-2009-in-Tasmania.html].



As every year, a nice collection of talks












and of course great parties too:






And afer a week, it was over, 'till next year:



See more images for Linux.conf.au 2017, Hobart

More pages: July 2002 February 2004 March 2004 November 2004 April 2005 August 2005 January 2006 July 2006 August 2007 November 2007 January 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 May 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 March 2010 April 2010 June 2010 August 2010 October 2010 January 2011 July 2011 August 2011 December 2011 January 2012 March 2012 May 2012 August 2012 December 2012 January 2013 March 2013 May 2013 September 2013 November 2013 January 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 October 2014 January 2015 March 2015 May 2015 January 2016 February 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 October 2016 January 2017 September 2017 January 2018 March 2018 December 2018 January 2019 January 2020 May 2020 January 2021 September 2021 March 2023 April 2023 December 2023 June 2024

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