Please join us at our next meeting for a slide/video evening armed with your photos and videos from the last year. Holidays, shows, random days out all welcome at what is usually a very enjoyable evening!
Our last meeting saw a return to these topics with an update on Arduino in Peter's case and the Raspberry Pi from John.
Peter started and apologised that he hadn't made too much progress on Arduino since our last evening on the subject, but had received a relay shield as a present which he handed round for us to look at. This add on board contained a number of relays able to individually switch up to 70W. to be used for controlling external devices such as servos, motors etc.
Peter has been investigating combined gyro and accelerometer packages from a US company called Invensense. MPU6050 6 axis chip was the model Peter was looking at for under £30 available with a breakout board aiding connection to the Arduino itself.
The Arduino and one of these chips form part of Peter's ongoing project for mapping his local bowling green. This led to much discussion on how it could be done including use of differential GPS.
John took over at this point, describing his interests in the Raspberry Pi to get a mobile RISC OS device. He has shown us his Raspberry Pi with Motorola Lapdock combination before, and has used it extensively on trips both in the UK and abroad. While it gathers some interest at airport security it hasn't caused him too much trouble.
John uses his Pi both with Raspbian Linux and RISC OS. In Linux, the Pi will work with a standard USB WiFi Dongle, however this is not available to RISCOS due to lack of a wireless network stack and drivers. At home John wished to be able to use WiFi and purchased a small TP Link branded wireless router which can connect a device with ethernet port such as a Pi to a wireless network. This can be configured via a browser and works very well throughout the home
http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/cat-9_TL-WR702N.html
Next John provided an update on the !RiscOSM mapping software for RISC OS, which gave us a chance to use our HDMI to VGA adaptor for the first time allowing us to connect the HDMI only Raspberry Pi to our projector.
In the early days John stored his apps and data on USB stick as the SD card filesystem could corrupt quite easily, but after a number of updates to RISC OS this now seems quite stable and he has switched to keeping all his commonly used applications on the SD Card, using USB stick for his data such as photos, documents etc.
Back to RiscOSM, the maps are stored in data files that have been downloaded from OpenStreetMaps and processed for use in the application. These can be purchased pre-processed from Sine Nomine, and for those with time and data bandwidth on their hands who wish to try it the converter tool is available called OSMConvert but be warned the downloads from OpenStreetMaps are large.
Once RiscOSM is opened with a map (such as UK) you can search by street, latitude/longitude etc. and for anyone who has seen OpenStreetMap maps before all the detail and ability to zoom is available and very impressive to see.
A track can be drawn by dropping points on the map, and these can be exported as GPX for use in a walkers GPS such as Garmin. Likewise GPX tracks from a walkers GPS can be imported into RiscOSM and show routes taken, which John showed us using some files from his Garmin GPS on a holiday in Italy.
If you have images that contain location information, for example those taken on a phone or a camera with built in GPS, you can drag photos onto the map in RiscOSM and it will drop pins on the map linking to the photos which is a clever feature.
We rounded out the evening with a discussion of the differences between RISC OS 5 and 6 and a quick look round the Raspbian Linux operating system that John dual boots on his Pi.
Sheila and I recently attended the funeral of Sarah Dodson, Gerald's wife, on October 23rd, who had died on October 8th after a long illness. The funeral was held at St. Andrew's Parish Church in Hatfield Peverell with Peter representing ICENI since he was the only member of ICENI able to attend. I gave Gerald the card we had signed at the last meeting and had a chat to Daniel as well.
It was a very moving ceremony with eulogies from her children, brother and cousins and friends. It was very well attended with over 100 mourners. After the funeral we entered the adjoining Parish Hall for refreshments in which there was an exhibition of family photographs and many of her paintings. I found the paintings very moving and felt it was like looking into her soul. As I have found at most funerals you discover something interesting about a person that you never knew. I never knew she painted such brilliant pictures, they were absolutely wonderful and I'm sure the family will treasure them.
We also met Dan Glading and Dick and Betty from the EAUG.
Peter
Please note we have had to rejig the programme again as Michael is not in a position to give his CAT5 talk yet.
There were a few other topics considered for example software used by Radio Amateurs, Model Railways and Machine language translation. All of these need a bit more research before being included.
| ICENI Future programme 2015/2016 | ||
| November 18th | Slide / Video Evening | All |
| December 16th | Gadgets and Party Evening | All |
| 2016 | ||
| January 20th | Winter Social Evening - Venue TBA | All |
| February 17th | Free Software | All |
| March 16th | Accounting Software | Peter et al |
| April 20th | AGM +MS Office 2016 and OpenOffice/Libre Office |
All |
| May 18th | Programming | All |
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE , for a map and other details please see the website.
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Membership fee currently £10, visitors free.
We are continuing our publicity for EAUG events , however their website has not been updated for a year now. So if you wish to know information please phone one of their contacts.
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall, on the second Tuesday of the month
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
http://www.eaug.org.uk/mtg.htm
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.eaug.org.uk or 'phone one of the contacts on
http://www.eaug.org.uk/ppl.htm
Drinks usually available.
See the Membership page of the website for more information:
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
However many household insurance policies will include cover away from home often with no increase in premium. (Ed.)
Our website URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website. If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.