OStatic

Contest Winners Rig Up Wacky Linux Implementations

Plat'Home, a Japanese Linux company, is announcing today the winners of its "Will Linux Work?" contest. Launched a month ago, the contest challenged users to come up with interesting, challenging technology solutions leveraging Linux. Full results of the contest including quotes from the winning contestants are found here. Here are some of the more imaginative winning solutions.

There were four overall winners in the contest, each with very different solutions. This one is my personal favorite among the winning applications, from Plat'Home's summary:

"Smith needed someone to guard his chickens, someone reliable enough to stay up all night, someone smart enough to tell the difference between a chicken and a raccoon, and someone to close the door at the right time. His system utilizes an inexpensive webcam with IR capability to see in the dark, along with a computer vision library to count the chickens. To determine when dusk occurs, the server will run simple network time protocol (SNTP) and query another server to determine when sundown occurs each day. A stepper motor controller and power supply from a document scanner are used to open and close the coop door."

I bet some farmers out there might like the complete specs on the chicken guage. Among the other winning entries, Steve Castelloti has been living aboard a trimaran (similar to a catamaran) for the past two years. He wanted a simple way to monitor and track events aboard the boat. Using a software package repository that Plat'Home offers, he downloaded software components to a computer and connected both a 1TB external hard drive and an iPod as a USB storage device.

Unusual implementations of Linux and open source are always interesting to consider, and we've covered a few of them on OStatic. For some good examples, see our post on open source robots, our collection of Rube Goldberg-worthy open source projects, and our story on the Linux clarinet (shown here). It plays Flight of the Bumblebee.

• linux

by an anonymous user on Oct. 21, 2008

People have way too much time on their hands!!

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by D J on Oct. 22, 2008

"Smith needed someone to guard his chickens, someone reliable enough to stay up all night, someone smart enough to tell the difference between a chicken and a raccoon, and someone to close the door at the right time."

Smith - next time think about investing in a timer...

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by an anonymous user on Oct. 22, 2008

"Steve Castelloti has been living aboard a trimaran" - WTF is a trimaran??? and WTF is this dude living on it??? I can understand taking a weekend cruise aboard your trimaran but living on it AND he wants "a simple way to monitor and track events aboard the boat."!!

I don't mean to burst your bubble Steve but ain't nothing happening on that boat and you'd be a happier man if you don't "monitor and track"

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