Black Swift - at Embedded World Conference
Hi, Habr!
The fact that Black Swift was successfully financed by Kickstarter is no longer news - after all, we have already successfully financed 200+%, we completed the first stage (all the backers of the CS will get beautiful plastic cases for the boards), and finish today at 17:00 MSK (if there is still less time on the clock, you have a chance to join the ranks of the aforementioned lucky ones).
But I want to start to turn the page a little and talk about something else. In the last note in our blog, I specifically mentioned that, in my deep conviction, for the successful operation of the project, it is not the investors that everyone is talking about that are important, but the partners that are talked about much less often.
')
This is a demo board that we have been preparing for Imagination Technologies (owner of MIPS Technologies, developer of what processor architecture) for the last two weeks - ImgTec wants to show it at the Embedded World Conference in Germany starting next week as an example of a ready-made module for IoT devices. And no one will convince me that an investor who gives money could provide our presence there - at least for a reasonable amount, and a reasonable amount at our stage does not include a trip to Germany for a couple of days. Partner? It's free for him, in any case he participates - for us, the cost comes down to dropping everything and urgently making some visual demonstration. At the same time, the long-term consequences of such participation can be very, very interesting, and we are extremely grateful to ImgTec for such attention to our project.
From these two weeks, by the way, 4 days were spent waiting for Chip-e-Deepa, which, due to re-grading in stock, took one 9-ruble diode for a 5-ruble order from another store. A beautiful picture: two boxes are on the issue, one is full, the second is a tiny SMA-diode that is lost at the bottom. We are not mad, it was just funny. Well, plus any delays that the boards are ready, but it’s possible to meet and transfer them only tomorrow, we didn’t have time until 16:00 on Friday - the order will be processed on Monday, and so on. That is, I would not say that the team was sitting and working hard - rather, it turned out to be a phased work with minor delays in the process.
The board is able to show the basic capabilities that Black Swift implements here at this time - literally in a matter of days and through the efforts of a couple of people.
We were asked a lot of times - what can you do on Black Swift? So, it seems to me that such a demo payment is a good answer to it, in fact, it has all the things needed to create some kind of IoT artifact (yes even connect the refrigerator to the Internet, if you need it), while developing and the first prototype needs a very modest time. And the result is not Arduino, which doesn’t know about anything, not ESP8266, which, for all its cheapness, is unlikely to allow you to create a web interface with PHP, sockets, women and gambling - but a device with functionality that fully complies with modern understanding. smart things. "
Yes, Black Swift has limitations - there is no work in hard real time, there is no hardware PWM, there is no ADC. But, as you can see, even they are overcome in easy and diverse ways.
I think I answered the question. :) Or, at least, set the course for constructive discussions - excuse me, what happened in passing, but it was painful, in my opinion, we had a good example. Then we promise more specifics, a lot of documentation, source codes and detailed examples of what OpenWRT described very few people to us (for example, even cry, laugh, but a simple example of working with SPI in full duplex mode, which could be understood and repeated I am new to programming, I didn’t find it for OpenWRT - although there’s just something like a dozen lines of code, plus or minus).
Yes, and the fee from the photo is now going to the USA.
The fact that Black Swift was successfully financed by Kickstarter is no longer news - after all, we have already successfully financed 200+%, we completed the first stage (all the backers of the CS will get beautiful plastic cases for the boards), and finish today at 17:00 MSK (if there is still less time on the clock, you have a chance to join the ranks of the aforementioned lucky ones).
But I want to start to turn the page a little and talk about something else. In the last note in our blog, I specifically mentioned that, in my deep conviction, for the successful operation of the project, it is not the investors that everyone is talking about that are important, but the partners that are talked about much less often.
')
This is a demo board that we have been preparing for Imagination Technologies (owner of MIPS Technologies, developer of what processor architecture) for the last two weeks - ImgTec wants to show it at the Embedded World Conference in Germany starting next week as an example of a ready-made module for IoT devices. And no one will convince me that an investor who gives money could provide our presence there - at least for a reasonable amount, and a reasonable amount at our stage does not include a trip to Germany for a couple of days. Partner? It's free for him, in any case he participates - for us, the cost comes down to dropping everything and urgently making some visual demonstration. At the same time, the long-term consequences of such participation can be very, very interesting, and we are extremely grateful to ImgTec for such attention to our project.
From these two weeks, by the way, 4 days were spent waiting for Chip-e-Deepa, which, due to re-grading in stock, took one 9-ruble diode for a 5-ruble order from another store. A beautiful picture: two boxes are on the issue, one is full, the second is a tiny SMA-diode that is lost at the bottom. We are not mad, it was just funny. Well, plus any delays that the boards are ready, but it’s possible to meet and transfer them only tomorrow, we didn’t have time until 16:00 on Friday - the order will be processed on Monday, and so on. That is, I would not say that the team was sitting and working hard - rather, it turned out to be a phased work with minor delays in the process.
The board is able to show the basic capabilities that Black Swift implements here at this time - literally in a matter of days and through the efforts of a couple of people.
- Standard GPIO: LEDs, buttons, relays. The LEDs made software PWM brightness control.
- Ethernet and USB ports are hardware supported in Black Swift itself, and only connectors and a small passive harness are brought onto the mainboard
- Screen 2x16 characters (WH1602A, HD44780-compatible) - connected to the GPIO and managed by our userspace-utility (there is nothing particularly complicated in it, we will then post all these offal)
- DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, also connected to GPIO
- Peripheral microcontroller (ATMega1284P) connected via SPI - it can be programmed directly from the Black Swift console and communicate both ways from there
- Current consumption sensor connected to the above-mentioned ATMEG's ADC, with which Black Swift collects these numbers
- A web interface and a smartphone application that allows you to control the LEDs and relays, and also show the temperature, humidity and current consumed by the board - that is, there are jQuery inside there with AJAX requests, and PHP, and two-way communication with the software running on Black Swift UNIX socket
We were asked a lot of times - what can you do on Black Swift? So, it seems to me that such a demo payment is a good answer to it, in fact, it has all the things needed to create some kind of IoT artifact (yes even connect the refrigerator to the Internet, if you need it), while developing and the first prototype needs a very modest time. And the result is not Arduino, which doesn’t know about anything, not ESP8266, which, for all its cheapness, is unlikely to allow you to create a web interface with PHP, sockets, women and gambling - but a device with functionality that fully complies with modern understanding. smart things. "
Yes, Black Swift has limitations - there is no work in hard real time, there is no hardware PWM, there is no ADC. But, as you can see, even they are overcome in easy and diverse ways.
I think I answered the question. :) Or, at least, set the course for constructive discussions - excuse me, what happened in passing, but it was painful, in my opinion, we had a good example. Then we promise more specifics, a lot of documentation, source codes and detailed examples of what OpenWRT described very few people to us (for example, even cry, laugh, but a simple example of working with SPI in full duplex mode, which could be understood and repeated I am new to programming, I didn’t find it for OpenWRT - although there’s just something like a dozen lines of code, plus or minus).
Yes, and the fee from the photo is now going to the USA.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/250819/
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