xi is the lightweight platform for my projects. Current embedded projects based on xi include: a home firewall/gateway (tsunami), a home entertainment center computer (pvr), and a mobile/car computer. It is also serves as the platform for my CompactFlash-based laptop and telephony server. I hope to get a lot of miles out of this project.
More specifically, xi is a platform built on Linux, BusyBox, and Ruby. It defines and implements the xi package format (.xip), smart services, and xiconf - the configuration store/daemon. XIP files are cramfs filesystem images with an XML manifest file. The are mounted using the loopback device and are linked into the root filesystem at runtime. Smart services are additions to existing services and respond to configuration changes automatically. Xiconf is used to store configuration settings and notify applications and services of changes. This allow seperation from the configuration interface (which xi does not define).
Tsunami is a xi powered internet gateway for homes. It aims to take advantage of that old computer that is "too slow" or "too old" for anything useful. It can also run on some more specialized embedded pc hardware such as the Magnia SG20 or Soekris 4801. It has a web interface and can be extended at runtime.
The next project in the queue is an entertainment center PC. This xi-based project uses: directfb, gdk/gtk, gstreamer, alsa/jackd, v4l2, and many different codecs (avifile, ffmpeg, win32, etc.) It is also an experiment in TV based user interfaces and using that interface in providing all sorts of information for the home. One such service plugin is caller id notification.
The Sony Vaio N505VE my ultra-lightweight laptop that I have modified and am running Linux on. It is not fast by todays standards (a Celeron 333 w/128MB RAM), but is great for surfing the web and SSHing into the odd linux box. The modification I made, besides adding an extra 64MB RAM, was to replace the noisy, annoying 6GB hard drive with CompactFlash. The result? A dead silent machine. I am currently working on installing a xi based system on him. Trying to keep things read-only and lean-and-mean has made for some interesting challenges. More details on this to come later...
geeknightout.com
A few years ago, a friend and I started what we (our wives) call "Geek Night Out". It was an excuse for us to get together once a week and do all kinds of "geeky" things. A typical geek night out could include eating at our favorite thai or sushi place, watching some anime (esp. Cowboy Bebop), working on one of our projects, or anything else we can think of.
"Q" - the Digital Picture Frame (DPF)
My friend wanted to build a digital picture frame and asked me to help him. He got an old laptop off ebay for like $10. When it arrived we found out just how old it was. It is a 486SX with a 1MB C&T65530 video card and an 8-bit, 640x480 LCD screen. (The first time we tried to run linux, we forgot to add FPU emulation support - oops!) It didn't come with a battery or powersupply and the hard drive didn't work. We were planning on using CompactFlash (CF) for the hard drive, so that didn't matter. We got a universal power supply from RadioShack and found out it used the "Q"-sized plug (hence the name). The only graphical mode we could access was through svgalib with the C&T driver. (Not my first choice, actually my last.) To make things worse, it only came with 4MB RAM and upgrades are expensive. We found a great shadowbox frame at SuperTarget (my favorite store) and, with a little Dremmeling, everything fit beautifully. There is only a little tweaking left to do and then we can start on our next one. :-)