Recently I've received my brand new SheevaPlug Development Kit. What is this exactly? Basically, it's a plug computer that runs on a low-power ARM (I think) CPU, has 512MB RAM, 512 flash, USB 2.0 and GigaBit. It only lacks a video/sound out (hopefully just to trigger creativity from all of us ;).

It has already a kickass community doing a lot of experimenting with it: media servers, backup servers, or even home automation stuff. I fell in love with it - its potential -, and its price ($99 + dementia-rated customs overheads in Portugal. tip: around the same amount of extra taxes. ouch).

I have read a lot about what can (not) be done with a plug computer, and I'm eager to start working with it. But first things first. The development environment has been created mostly for linux. And I'm running OS X. Thus I've downloaded VirtualBox and I'm currently in the process of installing Ubuntu on it, just to have a proper development environment kicking.

The next post about SheevaPlug will talk about the installation process of the development kit and getting something visible to boot.

I have a need to express myself. Lately I've been interested in exploring the DIY culture. That is, "Do it yourself". With so many things explored on the Web, lots and lots of ideas have sprout out of my mind. Some already implemented, others only on the paper, and others still kept in the back of my head.

So, I like computers, music, and I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty with software/hardware (especially a mix of both). Thus, these ideas express my thinking and eagerness of really doing something myself, just for the kicks. As technological progress has been keeping its pace, we're not stuck with HAM Radio stuff. Moore's law is a blessing in the 21st century DIY movement too. Smaller hardware + better software = faster prototyping. Welcome to the new old school DIY.

Enough talk. Here's what I've been up to as of now (July 18th 2009):

• Software-based sound generation machines:
  
  
  
• an interactive tweet (as in bird chirp) generator, a beep pattern creator (kind of a drum machine, but with beeps), and a pretty configurable noisebox, all implemented in Processing;


• an iPhone accelerometer-based theremin.

An arduino Mega is already waiting for some junk to be plugged, in order to transform the sound generation machines into something more physical.

Just got a SheevaPlug to hack some media server things, as well as some home automation stuff.

Hacking a bit with javascript something that could remotely resemble with Demoscene things.

experimenting with multi-touch + processing.js (yes, javascript) interactive art on the iPhone.

Since I'm lazy, none of these projects have been made publicly available, yet. Ping me if you feel like contributing to some (or all) of these ideas, even if they stay at the vaporware level :)

Stay tuned, 'cause I'll be posting about these projects (whenever I feel like blogging). And that's all for a 1:48am Saturday rant.

P.S. sorry for not posting for so long, but you can keep the pace of my musings on my twitter account