Defrag: Open Source Hardware

corey    Computers     bug labs, defragcon, hardware, mashup, open source

I don’t know how many folks out there are hackers/mashup folks, but I was at Defrag earlier this week and saw a talk about an ‘open’ hardware platform being developed.

The idea is that there’s a base unit running Linux+Java with built-in Wifi, etc with modules you can plug in. The modules can be a GPS unit, a camera, a touch LCD screen, pretty much anything. This thing is the ultimate Lego Mindstorm.

Check it out here, at Bug Labs.

The idea is that you can take the base unit and plug in whatever combination of modules you need to create your own special device. Using the Linux OS plus the built-in Wifi, you can then create applications and internet services based off of it. They even have an API Framework that already knows how to talk to all of the devices, so you aren’t doing any special programming for them. For example, you could plug in a motion detector and a camera, and set it up so that it’ll take a picture whenever there is motion and then ftp/post/whatever that picture somewhere.

Just thought it was a cool thing to point out.

(Another cool talk at Defrag was about visualizing data (particularly social networking type data) and how the speaker had worked with data from DARPA based on the America’s Army game; trying to find what a signature for a competent/well coordinated fire team looked like).

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