*insert Imperial March here*

[maradydd]

Good hacking night last night. D came over so that we could hack on owen, my little NSLU2 box that's been on the shelf for, oh, a few years. After a few false starts (involving things like having to remember passwords I haven't used since 2005), we threw together a quick LAN off my laptop, got owen on that network, and successfully logged in. We then figured out that trying to configure a bridge between eth0 and ra0 was more trouble than it was worth, so no updating owen straight from the package server for now. I'll need to get the switch set up before I can actually drop owen on the main network, and I don't have the furniture for that right now, but owen clearly still works like a charm and now speaks DHCP, so overall I'll call that a win.

Our eventual goal is to set up pokylinux, as a "just to see if we can, since there's not a pokylinux build for this particular hardware yet" project, which will probably involve doing some compilation on the box itself. That's going to be slightly hilarious; I haven't done a multi-day toolchain build since, oh, 2001 or thereabouts. Good times.

Laterish today I'm going to pop round to the electronics store that also sells RC cars, planes and helicopters to see what my battery options are; I assume it's easier these days to supply 5V/500mA off something rechargeable than it was four years ago. (I need to be gainfully employed before I can actually buy one, as I expect sticker shock, but this is how budgets are made.)

I also dug up the little USB-to-Roomba-serial-interface circuit I was assembling some time back, and found the ostensibly Linux-compatible Bluetooth and 802.11g dongles that have been waiting ever so patiently. Yep, that's right -- after far too long on the shelf, the Evil Robot Vacuum Cleaner Army project is rolling once more.

Comments

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks for the link, that just solved a problem I was wondering how to fix. namely, installing Linux onto a laptop with of all things a touch-pad 'off' button for wifi card that isn't supported. [i.e the touch-button isn't recognised, and defaults to off]

And I for one applaud your Evil Genius at building a Evil Robot Vacuum Cleaner Army.

[praecorloth.livejournal.com]

I think I need to party with you sometime. I rarely get to do fun shit like this.

[ben.livejournal.com]

I don't understand how a person with your outstanding skills could be without gainful employment making huge bank. Where ARE you living now?

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

So, the problem is that I'm supposed to be re-starting my PhD, but my department doesn't have funding for me. enochsmiles' department may have some, and his advisor is willing to co-advise me -- but that didn't get arranged until a couple of weeks ago, and he left for several weeks of travel immediately afterward, thus is not available to discuss funding until the end of next week.

I've been looking for contract gigs, but my connexions for that kinda suck. If you've got any suggestions I'm all ears.