ok, having learned my lesson from yesterday, here's a kind of an
open-ended offer for local linux folks who have spare time and want to
get started on embedded linux, get a board out of it and possibly earn
some $$$ at the same time.
over the holidays, i'm going to be doing a massive rewrite/upgrade
of some linux/embedded linux/kernel programming/device driver
curriculum. at the same time, i'm sitting here with a pile of dev
kits i've collected over the years and, rather than just trying to
sell them off, here's my plan.
it would be nice if the newer curriculum is general enough to teach
off of a number of different platforms based on what the client wants
(ARM, PowerPC, FPGA-based, etc). but that would take a ridiculous
amount of time documenting how some representative dev kit for each
architecture is initialized, how one installs the bootloader,
configures and builds the kernel, and so on. and here's where you
come in.
i'd like to outsource a lot of that to local folks who have the time
and want to do just that for a particular board that i'll supply.
given a list of dev kits that i'll finalize shortly, you pick one that
appeals to you, i supply the hardware and we can discuss how much time
and effort you're willing to invest in documenting everything there is
to know in terms of taking an empty board and slowly building it up to
run linux.
this doesn't necessarily require any original research. for dev
kits that are already well-supported for linux, the work might just
involve linking to the appropriate web pages that describe how it's
done, and saying, "yup, i verified that those instructions work just
fine." it might involve downloading and testing software that claims
to run on the kit, and i would probably have a list of things i want
checked out for each kit.
in essence, for each kit/architecture i want to support in a
teaching environment, i want someone to document and verify what it
takes to begin with an empty board and, slowly but surely, configure
and install linux and anything else i decide is important to me. in
some cases, i might also supply additional peripherals such as LCD
touchscreens if i want that to be part of the verification. possibly
a debugger if i want someone to document how to use something like the
flyswatter 2 JTAG debugger for certain boards. you get the idea --
the list of requirements can definitely change over time as i get new
ideas. and what's in it for you?
i did this a couple times back in K-W and the people who offered to
help did it simply in exchange for me buying them the respective dev
kit and letting them keep it, but these days, that's almost certainly
not enough of an incentive.
so we could simply negotiate. let me know how much time you can
invest, and how you want to be compensated and we can take it from
there. there's no hard and fast deadlines here, but i do want to get
a few people who, say, have time over the holidays to at least make a
dent in the TO DO list. this is something that can be done entirely
from home and i'd expect regular reports on what's been done so i can
update all of the final documentation on my end. you don't need to
wordsmith anything meticulously, that's my job -- i just want the
instructions.
at the moment, looking around, i have the following dev kits, some
of which i'm not sure about just yet:
* beagleboard and beagleboard XM (definitely)
* pandaboard and pandaboard ES (definitely)
* craneboard (eh, not sure about that, maybe too much overlap
with the above)
* beaglebone (possibly, if just for the sake of having decent
documentation for it)
i also have the following, totally not sure what to do about these:
* altera cyclone III (FPGA) starter board
* freescale zoom coldfire development kit
and i've yet to select a powerpc dev kit -- still checking those out.
in any event, that's the deal. obviously, there's lots of flex here
but you should have the general idea. let me know if you're
interested. i'm sure there's lots i've forgotten to explain so ask
questions.
rday
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Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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