It’s that time again, time to start gathering project ideas and possible mentors for Google Summer of Code. This year, you can be a student even if you aren’t enrolled in school! That’s got me thinking about the key areas we need to help advance education around open source embedded systems.

One of the early Beagle community development focuses was software defined radio (SDR). With updates to available CBRS bands, enabling personally unlicensed 5G small cell creation, and unlicensed radio frequency (sub-GHz) low-power wireless networks like IEEE 802.15.4, LoRa, and Wi-SUN, and many new silicon solutions, there are many opportunities to work on open source SDR technology and the integration of those into open source software networking stacks.

Of course, other popular topics in computer science today, like AI and blockchain, are areas that have unique applications and challenges in embedded systems. Other big topics in my mind around open source embedded systems today are RISC-V and FPGA. I think Beagle has a role to play in each of these areas.

Got feedback on how important these topics are to open source embedded systems, thoughts on projects that could be tackled, or opinions on topics that should be more important? I’ve started a thread on the forum to carry on this discussion at https://forum.old.beagleboard.org.