Competition 2009-1 Entries

How To Add Your Entry
Please use the the following entry as an example for writing your own and add new entries to the bottom of the list. Note that we will contact you via the bug tracker email you use to register for uploads access in the event of you winning a prize so don't post your contact details here!

Your Name - My Project
Target Platform(s): LS-Pro, N1200, NSA-220

Download URL: http://downloads.nas-central.com/users/me/stuff.tgz

Installation/Usage Guide: http://www.nas-central.com/wiki/Your_Guide

Here is a description of my project, the more information the better. It does x y and z and brings me ice cream over internet protocol with cheese. I used a hammer, openembedded and an army of hippies in a sweatshop to put together this firmware. Before I couldn't send a programmed killing machine after my enemies but because of this, now I can!

Ramuk, Alpha 220 LED Sign
Target Platform(s): Any Debianizable LS

Installation/Usage Guide: http://buffalo.nas-central.org/wiki/Alpha_220_LED_Sign

This project allows you to use any debianizable linkstation (or linux box for that matter) to download newsfeeds, stock quotes, weather or any other pertinent information (maybe sports scores?) and display it on an Alpha LED Sign. Which is the type of message display sign you might see in a storefront. It uses the Serial port that is already on the main board and a level shifter to bring down the signals for the sign. The sign connects via an RJ12 jack so it also requires assembling an interface for the sign as well.


 * Interface Sign to Serial Port Interface
 * Wake up the sign and display something on it
 * Stock Ticker
 * Make it Wireless

Davygravy, OsKuroBox (LateNight CritterCamPlus)
OsKuro/Oscuro - spanish, for "Dark"

Target Platform(s): Any LS*, with OpenEmbedded or Debian; any supported foonas target platform. This should be possible in just about any Linux distro that will run on the LS or even on NAS device running Linux with USB. A faster cpu and w/ hardware FPU are preferable.

Installation/Usage Guide: http://buffalo.nas-central.org/wiki/OsKuroBox - CritterCamPlus

Description: The OsKuroBox is a LinkStation/KuroBox/NAS with NightVision Motion Detection and Sound Detection/Recording. Initially, my project was to take a LinkStation and outfit it so it can take night-time still snapshots and even movie clips of whatever wanders by the animal feeders in our back yard. Eventually I added in sound detection and some network connectivity capabilities. Here's what it does:
 * night-time & daylight snapshots and movies, triggered by motion detection
 * daylight time-lapse movies of the feeding area
 * records sounds at feeding area and backyard area
 * optional selective sound detection/silence trimming
 * webserver for Motion's control webif and minimal real-time-image webcam (LAN only)
 * Avahi (Bonjour) to advertise (to LAN) these two web services provided by Motion
 * webserver for a gallery page (internet access for outside world)   <<====>>  visit the Gallery Page - under construction, available sporadically as weather, time and energy permit
 * dyndns.org client for DNS to accomodate internet access of above item
 * cron-based scheduling, rotation and cleanout of the image files
 * optional USB wireless capability (so no ethernet cable is needed)
 * optional weatherproof housing for components (it rains and snows out there)

fvdw, rewrite and upgrade firmware spd8020 Philips
Target Platform(s): LS-LGL, spd8020, ARM9

Download URL: http://downloads.buffalo.nas-central.org/Users/fvdw/spd8020-fvdw4-2-06032009.tgz

This tar ball contains a readme text file with tips and notes, useful to read before making the upgrade of the firmware. The second file with extension 'bin' is the firmware and this file you must upload using the webgui of the SPD8020. This 'bin' file is in fact a compressed tar ball containing 4 files. You can uncompress it. On of the files, the biggest ones is a disc image of the system partition of the SPD8020. This contains the actual firmware. If you want to view the content you can mount this image in Linux using the loop device or even in windows using an appropriate program like explore2fs. All source codes used in this project you can find in http://downloads.buffalo.nas-central.org/Users/fvdw/

Installation/Usage Guide:http://www.nas-central.org/wiki/Philips-SPD8020

Remark: the new image can be installed using the standard firmware upgrade option in the webgui

Description: The standard firmware as supplied by Philips has very limited features only one big public share and no possibility to create users or set permission per share and per user. This project concerns an upgrade of the standard firmware of Philips with following features:
 * create/delete shares
 * create/delete users and assign read/write rights per user per share
 * extend features of the ftp server
 * added twonky media server
 * added oxylbox media server
 * added firefly media server
 * added nfs server
 * recompiled kernel (required for several features mentioned)
 * recompiled PHP version to add session support
 * recompiled apache to enable mod_rewrite support
 * help function added including content
 * fixed several severe bugs in the original firmware
 * complete update, partly rewrite and writing new modules of the php/xml based webgui interface to make use of the new features

There are three forums where the development of this new firmware is discussed, the references to these forums can be found in the Installation/Usage guide (follow link provided above). Some information on how this project was initiated and developed over time. The project started on the Buffalo Nas central forum. In this forum there is a topic dedicated for this device and until 1 july 2009 it contained 238 replies and almost 3000 views. It all started after reading posts of other members including myself being frustrated about the limitations of the standard firmware. After gathering some info on the internet I managed to access the system partitions and started to make an upgrade and offering this to other users. You can follow the progress in development of the new firmware nicely on the Buffalo forum. Because of upload limitations of this forum I had to chose another forum, the convopit forum, to make it available for everybody who wanted it. In addition a link was provided on the Nas portal forum to make more users aware of the upgrade. Over time 6 versions were released in period of about 6 months ending up in the latest version until today 4.2. In preparation is version 5.0 that will include a torrent client and some features in the PHP version (adding support for GD, JPEG en PNG as well as basic webcam support)

Some numbers. On Nas portal forum a special SPD8020 sub forum was opened after a while because of popularity of the topic home made firmware for the SPD8020. Until 1 of july it grew to 43 topics with 343 replies and a total number of hits higher then 30.000. On Buffalo Nas hacking forum the topic contains 238 replies and almost 3000 views. On the convopit forum we have 322 replies with 2357 views. There are currently more then 600 users of this home made firmware if we take the number of downloads taken from the convopit forum as reference.

It was really a challenge for me to do this project as when I started with it my knowledge of linux and PHP/XML was almost zero. But looking to all the positive responses I got and the end result I can be satisfied to my opinion, it was worth it.

Bbradley - Linux Kernel for Thecus N1200
Target Platform(s): Thecus N1200

Download URL: http://downloads.buffalo.nas-central.org/Users/bbradley/n1200-kernel/

 git repository: http://git.foonas.org/?p=kernel-n1200.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/for-mainline

Download/Build Instructions: http://thecus.nas-central.org/wiki/N1200_Linux_Kernel_Support

Recompile Kernel for Gentoo: http://thecus.nas-central.org/wiki/N1200_How_To_Recompile_Kernel_In_Gentoo

This project adds support for the Thecus N1200 to the Linux Kernel. This includes core support (1000Mbit ethernet port, four 100Mbit ethernet ports, mini PCI slot, flash, watchdog, i2c RTC, i2c fan controller, DMA engine, USB, SATA and several of the LEDs). There is also a board control PIC connected to I2C and a driver for this was written. This supports the buzzer, two remaining LEDs and allows the board to poweroff. Buttons are still unsupported because the gpiokeys driver can't be used with the MPC8347 but most of the framework to complete this is already in the PIC driver. Patches have been posted to the powerpc list for mainline inclusion: Core N1200 Support and Driver for the PIC

The Thecus N1200 for this project was provided by foonas.org. timtimred also put a lot of effort into supporting this device by working on the kernel, getting foonas, gentoo and ubuntu to work on it, and writing documentation.

Bbradley - qcontrol
Target Platform(s): QNAP TS109/TS209/TS119/TS219/TS409, HP MV2120

Download URL: http://downloads.buffalo.nas-central.org/Users/bbradley/qcontrol/

 Google code project and wiki: http://code.google.com/p/qcontrol/

TS109/TS209 build/install/usage instructions: http://qnap.nas-central.org/index.php/PIC_Control_Software

Many NAS devices have LEDs, buttons, a fan, etc. which are controlled either by a PIC/AVR on the board or GPIOs. Generally a new application is written for every board but qcontrol was written to be flexible and to make it easy to support new devices. qcontrol is written in C and has support for the PICs on many QNAP devices, the Linux LED device class and evdev. The Lua scripting language is used to configure qcontrol. This makes it easy to configure the device and to allow the end user to easily decide what should happen when a button is pressed or how fast the fan should run at certain temperatures.

qcontrol has been packaged in Debian Lenny by Frans Pop and Gentoo by Raúl Porcel. Several patches have been provided by Martin Michlmayr. qcontrol existed before this competition opened but the latest SVN version has many improvements such as a daemon mode for the server, support for more devices, much better error handling and syslog support.