Open Hardware | blog.fossasia.org

Join Codeheat Contest 2021/22 in Memory of Areeb Jamal

Post author:FOSSASIA Team
Post published:November 16, 2021
Post category:CodeHeat FOSSASIA
Post comments:0 Comments

Join the Codeheat Coding Contest 2021/22 in memory of Areeb Jamal and become a codehero. The contest runs until May 2022.

Contributors in the community know Areeb since he started as a FOSSASIA intern. Areeb had become the chief technologist in the organization where he has mentored hundreds of young developers in coding programs. Areeb passed away during the pandemic in India because of a lack of oxygen. He was a wonderful person. All he wanted was to share his knowledge and support others. He will be forever in our hearts and we will always remember him as a genius, kind and generous person. Please watch this video here to learn more about Areeb’s life.

During the contest mentors support contributors on gitter channels and in our monthly “Ask Me Anything” events you can talk to team members.

Codeheat Contest Details

In the contest we will announce winners every two months. All participants with a minimum of five merged PRs in the entire contest time can receive a digital certifcate of participation. Winners will also receive a prize of appreciation.

All issues with the label “codeheat” in any project of FOSSASIA can be taken up in the contest. There are many participating projects, but we have two lead projects. The Open Event Project and the Pocket Science Lab are our focus.

Codeheat Focus Projects

1. The first focus project this year is the Open Event project running the eventyay website. It enables users to run onsite and virtual events entirely with Open Source. Technologies used are Python and Javascript. Please check out the frontend and backend repositories.

2. The second focus project is the Pocket Science Lab project that is now coming with support for Circuitpython and a new hardware version. We are looking for developers who are interested in contributing to the desktop app using web technologies and Electron as well as Android and firmware developers.

Upcoming Codeheat Events

Codeheat “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday, 24 November, 2021 8:00 PM (IST)

Codeheat “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday 15 December 2021 8:00 PM (IST)

Codeheat “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday 19 January 2022 8:00 PM (IST)

Codeheat “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday 16 February 2022 8:00 PM (IST)

Codeheat “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday 16 March 2022 8:00 PM (IST)

Codeheat “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday 20 April 2022 8:00 PM (IST)

Codeheat “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday 18 May 2022 8:00 PM (IST)

Links

Website: codeheat.org

Codeheat Twitter: twitter.com/codeheat_

FOSSASIA Twitter: twitter.com/fossasia

Codeheat Facebook: facebook.com/codeheat.org

FOSSASIA Virtual Summit 2021 Schedule and Highlights

Post author:FOSSASIA Team
Post published:March 8, 2021
Post category:Event Event Management FOSSASIA Open Event
Post comments:0 Comments

We are very happy to share with you the schedule of the FOSSASIA Virtual Summit 2021!

190+ speakers from 42 countries and 6 continents are joining us.
We are covering a diverse range of topics at the event such as Quantum computing, machine learning, open robotics, CAD and hardware development, search, databases, Covid-19 and open health, Blockchain, digital privacy, microservices, cloud, Kubernetes, kernel development, licensing and many more.
More than 180 sessions, talks, panels and workshops are taking place online.
Plus, trainers conduct 28 hours of hands-on onsite sessions at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Singapore.

Get your free ticket here!

The summit will spread out over the week of March 13-21 and will run on our open source virtual event platform eventyay.

In the virtual exhibition you can meet our sponsors and partners like Microsoft, Oracle, MySQL, OpenTAP Keysight, Linux Professional Institute, Elasticsearch, OpnTec, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, FreeBSD, UI-licious, Lifelong Learning Institute Singapore and the UNESCO.

And you can get together with developers and contributors from Free and Open Source projects, makerspaces, developer clubs and university IT groups. At summit hubs across Asia we are connecting to participants online and locally.

FOSSASIA Summit Highlights

5 keynotes from Hong Phuc Dang (Founder, FOSSASIA) and Mario Behling (Co-Founder FOSSASIA, CEO OpnTec), Frank Karlitschek (CEO, Nextcloud), Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux Kernel Maintainer), Brian Behlendorf (Executive Director, Hyperledger) and Bunnie Huang (CEO, Precursor)
150+ sessions covering tech areas of Quantum computing, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, pocket science, open robotics, FreeCAD, hardware development, search, databases, Debian packaging, Covid-19, Hyperledger, Open Source event solutions, digital privacy, microservices, cloud, Kubernetes, and Linux Kernel development.
30+ hands-on workshops focusing on getting started with Python, creating MySQL shell utilities and custom plugins, setting up PostgreSQL databases, creating test automation, machine learning, and science measurements.
Panel discussions about Open Source licensing vs. available source licenses, firmware development, digital sovereignty, Blockchain and diversity in tech.
Virtual exhibition with video rooms and exhibitor tours where participants can connect with companies and active tech communities from across Asia.

FOSSASIA Summit Exhibition and Hubs

Apart from company partners you can meet communities, students and developers from Asia and around the world in our virtual exhibition. Groups include OpenFIESTA Tsinghua University, Shenzhen DIY Community, Open Source Hong Kong, OpenStack Indonesia, Mozilla Philippines, Ubuntu Korea, FOSS Myanmar, KDE, BuildingBloCS Singapore, SUTD, Python Software Foundation, LibreOffice, KiwiTCMS, Nextcloud Sourcefabric, LambdaChip, and more.

Hubs bring attendees together locally or online. Participating hubs include the International Organisation of Software Developers, Open Source Club at Saintgits Engineering College Kerala, Biohacking Space Peshawar Pakistan, Society for Data Science at BIT Mesra India, Mar Athanasius College of Engineering India, Developer Student Community in BHILAI Institute of Technology Durg and Team Aveon Racing of BIT Mesra India.

FOSSASIA Summit Daily Focus Topics

Each day has different focus topics and tracks.

Sat, 13 Mar: Robotics, Open Hardware, Pocket Science Lab, Python/Web development, Digital Sovereignty

Sun, 14 Mar: Open Hardware, open science, lightning talks, Python/Web development

Mon, 15 Mar: Blockchain, hardware, design, learn how to solder

Tue, 16 Mar: DevOps, cloud, containers, Kernel & Platform, Quantum computers, Kubernetes

Wed, 17 Mar: Databases, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Monitoring

Thu, 18 Mar: Security, Privacy, Digital Sovereignty, IoT, cloud, Blockchain, Open Source voice assistants

Fri, 19 Mar: Artificial Intelligence, PyTorch, Visdom, search, scikit, NLP

Sat, 20 Mar: DevOps, Python bot programming, Container Regisitries, OSS Licenses vs. available source, FOSS Community in Asia, OpenStreetMap, Python/Web development

Sun, 21 Mar: Lightning talks, Open Health, Covid-19 apps around the world, Fdroid, platform, smart devices

Opening Local HTML Files in PSLab Android App

Post author:viveksb007
Post published:July 27, 2017
Post category:Android FOSSASIA GSoC Pocket Science Lab
Post comments:0 Comments

The PSLab Android App allows users to perform experiments using the PSLab device. The experience to perform an experiment should resemble the generic way to perform the experiment. So we associated an Experiment Doc file which the user can refer to while performing experiment. Just like a regular lab manual, the experiment doc contains the AIM, THEORY & FORMULAS, SCHEMATIC, OUTPUT, etc. In the PSLab Desktop App, since there was already a provision for using HTML docs and so I avoided reinventing the wheel and used those html files as it is.

The problem we faced was how to open a bunch of HTML files with their corresponding CSS, JS files in Android’s webView.

There are two ways it can be done:

Host the experiment docs on a server and make a request from the android app for the specific experiment doc like Diode I-V, Zener I-V, etc.
Put the folder containing all html, CSS, js files in assets folder and request for the HTML doc files locally.

The PSLab developer team went with the second option as the availability of Internet is necessary for the performing experiment if we follow the first option and so to avoid this dependence on the Internet, we went with the second option and stored HTML docs locally in assets folder.

Implementation

Put the folder containing all the HTML, CSS, JS files in the assets folder in your android project. In this case the folder is DOC_HTML.
Define the WebView in xml and take the webView’s reference in your activity/fragment
In xml

<WebView
   android:id="@+id/perform_experiment_wv"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="match_parent" />

In activity/fragment

webView = (WebView) view.findViewById(R.id.perform_experiment_wv);

Load the url in webView in the format as shown below

webView.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/DOC_HTML/apps/" + htmlFile);

“file:///” acts as resource identifier, so “file:///android_asset/” actually points to “pslab-android/app/src/main/assets/”.
From the assets directory, we can a provide route to any HTML file. Here I put all HTML files in apps folder and used the string variable “htmlFile” to point to the specific html file.

Similarly html files stored in the external storage can also be accessed but there are some cases you need to handle. For example,if external storage is mounted, you can’t request the html file from external storage.

To request html files from external storage, make sure that you have the following permission in your AndroidManifest.xml

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />

String baseDir = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath();

Relative to baseDir you can specify the path from your html files, like

baseDir + “DOC_HTML/apps” + htmlFile

Conclusion

Putting HTML files in the assets folder and requesting it by webView’s loadURL() method is the best but there are various drawbacks of using this method like the increase in size of the apk. In our case, the normal apk size was 3MB but after adding the html doc folder it increased to 7MB. It increased by almost an additional size of the html folder added in assets. As it’s written, in the android’s project overview guide, the assets folder contains files that should be compiled into an .apk file as-is.

Resources

FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Singapore – Call for Speakers

Post author:Hong Phuc
Post published:September 28, 2016
Post category:Event FOSSASIA
Post comments:0 Comments

The FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit is Asia’s leading Open Technology conference for developers, startups, and IT professionals. In 2017 the event will take place from March 17th – 19th at the Science Centre Singapore.

During three days, thousands of developers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs and artists get together to showcase latest technologies, communicate, exchange ideas, learn from each other, and collaborate. Topics range from information technology and Open Source software development to hardware and maker projects, open design tools, machine learning, DevOps, knowledge tools, and citizen science.

For our 2017 feature event we are looking for speaker submissions for the following tracks:

* Open Source Software
* Design, Art & Culture,
* Internet, Society & Politics,
* Hardware & Making,
* Health and Technology
* Science
* Kernel Track and
* Startup and Business Development

Apart from the conference program, the FOSSASIA Summit offers an exhibition space for company and project stands and areas for community assemblies, and developer meetings.

Submission Guidelines

Please propose your session as early as possible and include a description of your session proposal that is as complete as possible. The description is of particular importance for the selection. Once accepted, speakers will receive a code for a speakers ticket. Please indicate on the submissions form if you would like to apply for a sponsored community ticket.

Submission Link: 2017.fossasia.org/speaker-registration

Dates & deadlines

Please send us your proposal as soon as possible via the FOSSASIA Summit speaker registration.

December 20th, 2016: Deadline for submissions
January 18th, 2017: Notification of acceptance
March 17th – 19th, 2017: FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit

Sessions and Tracks

Talks and Workshops
Talk slots are 20 minutes long plus 5-10 minutes for questions and answers. You can also sign up for either a 1-hour long or a 2-hours workshop. Longer sessions are possible in principle. Please tell us the proposed length of your session at the time of submission.

Lightning talks
You have some interesting ideas but do not want to submit a full talk? We suggest you go for a lightning talk which is a 5 minutes slot to present your idea or project. You are welcome to continue the discussion in break out areas. There are tables and chairs to serve your get-togethers.

Stands and assemblies
We offer spaces in our exhibition area for companies, community projects, installations, workshops, team gatherings and other fun activities. We are curious to know what you would like to make, bring or show. Please add details in the submission form.

Developer Rooms/Track Hosts
Get in touch early if you plan to organize a developer room at the event. FOSSASIA is also looking for team members who are interested to co-host and moderate tracks. Please sign up to become a host here.

Publication

Audio and video recordings of the lectures will be published in various formats under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This license allows commercial use by media institutions as part of their reporting. If you do not wish for material from your lecture to be published or streamed, please let us know in your submission.

Sponsorship & Contact

If you would like to sponsor FOSSASIA or have any questions, please contact us via office@fossasia.org

Links

FOSSASIA Summit 2017: 2017.fossasia.org

FOSSASIA Summit 2016 Event: Wrap-Up

FOSSASIA Photos: flickr.com/photos/fossasia/

FOSSASIA Videos: Youtube FOSSASIA

FOSSASIA on Twitter: twitter.com/fossasia

FOSSASIA Coding Contest: codeheat.org

FOSSASIA Summit 2016 Science Centre Singapore – Wrap Up

Post author:Hong Phuc
Post published:June 5, 2016
Post category:Event FOSSASIA loklak

FOSSASIA 2016 took place from 18th -20th March in Singapore. Hong Phuc Dang, Mario Behling, Harish Pillay, and Roland Turner were leading the organization efforts for the 2016 summit supported by many volunteers, speakers and the community. With a good mix of 37 nationalities, we are proud to be one of most international developer events in Asia.

We would like to especialy thank our host venue and the wonderful team of the Science Centre Singapore, our partner UNESCO Youth Mobile and our sponsors Red Hat, Google, GitHub, MySQL, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, gandi.net, General Assembly and the Internet Society Singapore for their support and participation. Thanks to everyone who helped to make FOSSASIA 2016 in Singapore possible!

FOSSASIA 2016 Group Photo at Science Centre Singapore by Michael Cannon

FOSSASIA’16 NUMBERS & FACTS

We reached the number of 2,917 attendees over 3 days including 230 speakers and 72 volunteers.
With a good mix of 37 nationalities, we are proud to be one of most international developer events in Asia.
There were 201 scheduled sessions and lightning talks, and more 50 exhibitors.
This was the first year we organised Tech Kids program with 14 hands-on workshops that covered Mobile Development, Electronics, Digital Fabrication, Pocket Science and 3D Modeling.
Dozens of talks are already available as videos. Thousands of photos have been uploaded to social networks. 1500+ tweets with the FOSSASIA hashtag were posted during the event.
A trend analysis of FOSSASIA shows that web technologies, data analytics and Internet of Things have a huge momentum. The attention of developers is also increasingly turning to open hardware.

Opening HallMario Behling the superman behind our programCat Allman

Happy Volunteers

Day 1 Opening of FOSSASIA

The first day started at the OpenTech and IoT track with a warm welcome message from Mr. Lim Tit Meng, the director of Science Centre, follow by some of our keynotes including Cat Allman with her inspiring story on Science & Education Program at Google; Harish Pillay with his intriguing title ‘A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To The Science Centre’ revealing the history of Internet and Open Source; Bernard Leong caught a huge attention on ‘Rethinking Drone Delivery with Open Source’; and Davide Storti introduced the exciting MobileYouth Program at UNESCO. The day continued with many other interesting talks/discussions and five other tracks were opened that afternoon of the same day namely Tech Kids, Hardware and IoT, DevOps, Big Data, Internet Society and Community.

More Photos: [Photo 1], [Photo 2], [Photo 3] – Tech Kids Track

Day 2 Intensive day of workshops and more discussion

Stephanie Taylor opened the second day of FOSSASIA with her informative presentation on Google Summer of Code Program and Google Code-In. Many GSoC and GCI students from Asia attended this year FOSSASIA. The day continued with series of workshops and discussions on Hardware, IoT, and DevOps. Four new tracks were added into the program including OpenTech Workshop, Python, WebTech and Databases.

Popular DevOps Track

Harish Pillay proudly presenting his first computer

Day 3 Hack Sunday and the closing notes

At the last day, we opened another three new tracks: Privacy and Security, Linux and MiniDebConf, Design VR and 3D. More hacking activities took place on Sunday. Participants formed in-depth discussion groups.

People gathering at the closing

Exhibition

More than 50 project booths and hand-on demos were set up in the Science Centre’s public space where participants could hang out, chat, discuss, share, learn, and hack.

Nanyang Polytechnic teacher and students presenting their Student Enrich ProgramExhibition hallUNESCO YouthMobile InitiativeSnapshot of Red Hat booth – Developers ChatGitHub corner

FOSSASIA – a place of friendship and joy.

As always thanks to our photographer Michael Cannon and his team for capturing some of the very best moment of us. You can search for more photos by typing #fossasia on Twitter or Flickr. If you also want to share some photos you took during FOSSASIA with us, please get in touch with me hp@fossasia.org

Excited developers from across Asia

Baby Py with her parents at the social event

What’s next in 2016?

FOSSASIA will again participate at Google Summer of Code
Call for collaboration: We welcome new contributors to FOSSASIA current projects
A number of new releases of FOSSASIA software projects and our event planning applications are planned. Please check out http://github.com/fossasia and http://github.com/loklak
Many people in the FOSSASIA community organize developer meetups throughout the year. Please join our meetups in Singapore, in Dubai and many other cities in Asia.