I setup some mirrors over the weekend of the SVN/downloads on buglabs.net.

New York mirror
Texas mirror
California mirror

\cmw

I decided to port Quake to the Bugbase. The quickest method was using QuakeSDL which turned out to be pretty straight forward (with some quick eh nasty hacks). The next issue was that i don't have a joystick and I really wanted to play using a real dpad instead of the touch screen (touch screen does work but isn't multitouch). The only thing i could find around the house was my xbox 360 Rockband guitar.

So it was on like donkey kong. It seemed like a goog idea... Quake + Rockband guitar. Thats like a whole new way to rock out. I was also able to get sound working via the on board piezo speaker which actually worked pretty well. After discovering that sdlquake doesn't support joysticks, i spent some time hacking up a quick and dirty joystick plugin for the Guitar and compiled xpad with the updated vid/pid to match. I uploaded some videos of the BugBase running Quake...

My Youtube movies
- Playing Quake on the Bug
- Multi screen Quake on the Bug


Downloads
- Quake for Bugbase (By default you can control using the nav joystick on the bug)
- Xpad kernel driver for 2.6.27 (BugBase R1.4)

Instructions
- Download the binary

So I had some time last weekend to patch U-boot to run on the BugBase. I have some SD/MMC patches which will hopefully once they are bug free (no pun intended) allow you to boot your kernel from SD instead of flashing to the nor.

Check out my U-boot tutorial here

\cmw

I needed to be able to use serial before it got level shifted on the VH module. A lot of the parallax and other devices i have use 5v ttl and that means that i can't plug them directly into the Von Hippel. The other thing was i wanted a way to program my ATMega chips and perhaps put some PWM ports directly on the module.

So i made a Bug Module. Take a look at the video of the first Homebrew Bug Module

It includes the following:
- 2x PWM ports
- 5v TTL serial
- 4x LED's connected to 0->3 GPIO ports
- 10 Pin ISP connector for programming AVR's
- Bread board for easy development.

\cmw

So i was working on another project that required something similar to PWM and i ended up getting it working so tried it out on a servo and after some slight adjustments it works pretty well. I still wouldn't recommend it over a PIC/AVR but its fun to see anyway. Check out the video here

To get it working just connect the servo pins to GND, +5v, GPIO 0 and run the following application. I will post the source code once i clean it up a bit.

Software PWM
- Binary
- Source (Coming Soon)

\cmw

So it's a gloomy day in the big apple and I thought it would cheer everyone up if i played some Christmas music. The only problem is that we don't have speakers in any of our machines. But wait :) The bug has an onboard speaker... So i compiled mpg123 and grabbed a royalty free version of Jingle Bells off Google and what do you know.. It's starting to sound a lot like Christmas!

Play it yourself.. Since it's Christmas I included the Jingle Bells mp3 in the download.

Mpg123
- Binary

To install just transfer the binary to the bug and type the following
cd /
tar -xjvf /home/root/mpg-bugr14.tar.bz2
modprobe bug_audio
mpg123 -a /dev/audio /home/root/Jingle_Bells.mp3

It should look something like this

\cmw

Playing with the Led's connected to the GPIO/IOX ports on the Von Hippel module using C was fun. It reminded me why I love exploring new gadgets. Take a look at my simple example here

Don't forget to get your Bug before Christmas :) Only at www.buglabs.net

I loved the bug so much i just had to create a new site. In the coming weeks i hope to show you the ins and outs of the Bug and the Bug modules. Since i'm more of a low level guy don't expect to much java. I will be focusing on low level development including using the Von Hippel break out board to control robots and program different IC's.

Stay tuned and get ready for some fun Buggy fun.

\cmw