Hello everyone,
As usual, while you’re all off earning some extra cash or having a well-earned rest for the summer, we’ll be here improving the teaching systems infrastructure and lab machines ready for the next academic year. This means that from time to time certain systems will be unavailable as we’re upgrading them – details will be posted on the systems notice board.
Upgrades and suchlike
Here’s some of the stuff we’ve got planned:
- Linuxproj is getting an upgrade (we’ve got a nice beefy machine racked up and ready to go pretty soon now!)
- The undergrad login server (uglogin) will be upgraded and moved to a virtual machine – this will give it improved resilience and lower power usage
- The lab monitoring system will be improved – the plasma display map will become more readable, and we will be able to get better usage stats
- The UG print server hardware will be upgraded, and we’re planning some improvements to the software
- CSLib are migrating their various servers to less ancient hardware
- We’ve ordered some new chairs to replace the ones that are really showing their age
STACS Overflow
We’ve also got a new system that’s been kindly set up for us by Dave Challis (ECS webmaster) – STACS Overflow. This is a question-and-answer site much like Stack Overflow which many of you have probably seen; it’s a place where you can ask and answer questions about programming, hardware, electronics, debugging, software advice, etc. We’ve had a few people trying it out and asking questions already; we may even be opening it up to other departments later in the year!
Toys^WTeaching equipment
Some of you have already seen the two quadrotor helicopters (ARDrones) we’ve got in the STACS office; we’ve also got a pair of Microsoft Kinects and a few keen individuals have been having a go with the OpenNI software under Linux. With a little help from Dave Tarrant, some of our students have even linked the two together and caused terror in the breakout zone with handwave-controlled robotic flying machines! If anyone would like to help improve the software and get it packaged up (or invent new and exciting uses for a scarily advanced computer vision system), give us a shout.
There’s also a shiny new (surprisingly small) 3D video camera available for loan from stores, and rumour has it there will be some extra stuff turning up there soon – watch this space…