I am Sidd's blog

So we did our presentation and it all seemed to work rather well. Alas we didn't have time to prepare for the presentation as I would have liked. The slides were fine, but we didn't prepare for who talks about what, when enough. Here's a link to the presentation: http://goo.gl/gNmtdQ The demo went rather well. Everything functioned as expected. The cards scanned and as if by magic, the respective names appeared and disappeared on the 'Fountain Zone' on the website. The appropriate LEDs also lit up on the model to signify the location of the cardholder's friends around the park. As this was a more of a 'proof of concept' project there are plenty of ideas we didn't apply that would be great for actual implementation. Instead of having to scan RFID cards in set locations, we could use active RFID or iBeacons. This kind of technology allows tracking to be performed without the need to manually scan in and out, as you can be location tracked in ...

So we were tasked to come up with a business idea for Venture Culture. I generally consider myself to be pretty okay at coming up with ideas, but in this case it was a business idea. Trying to come up with a cool idea that's a viable, profitable business is pretty tough. Normal my projects are pretty much entirely oriented around fun and creativity - without profit or any kind of financial gain in mind. The ideas will be taken forward to the class, and a small handful of the favorite ideas will be chosen to go forward. This will then lead onto the chosen ideas to effectively become group projects that will be developed into a viable business plan over the year. I immediately thought of my final year project - mostly because I had been working on this for the last couple of months, and it was pretty prominent in my mind. I was really hesitant on using this as there'd be a conflict of interests, and obviously the FYP has to be an individual project. It was time to put the bra...

After borrowing the appropriate kit from DAT we set after creating the technical side of the system. We used the following components in the process: Arduino with wifly sheild Parallax RFID reader 2x RFID cards The first thing to get working was the RFID reader. Using the reader's Arduino library I managed to get the reader reading the two RFID cards reliably and wrote an identification script. This script named the two cards and handled check-ins and check-outs, along with letting the person who scanned the card know if their 'friend' is also checked in. I added in a couple LEDs for visual feedback. Here's a demo of it in action:  Once this was done it was time to begin connecting the wifi. After many, many technical issues with the wifly shield I decided to try an ethernet shield instead, which worked great. Much testing was done to test the connectivity's robustness. However for reasons I couldn't figure out the connectivity was lost after s...

So after further discussion we're all pretty happy with the idea. We've started getting together a solid list of stuff together, doing a bit of research we've decided on using Beaumont Park as a suitable space for our project. Julia and Matt went down to Beaumont Park and took a couple of pictures, which Julia photoshopped into mockups of the space.

We brainstormed about aiding OAPs in methods of transport, help in the care home or socializing. We ended up settling on socializing as that is one of the most important aspects of our lives, and one of the moral boosting, uplifting aspects of growing old. Having & making friends and engaging in the community. After much discussion we came up with the idea of creating a public space in which there are different areas. Each of these areas has a distinctive digital presence. Users can visit the park and using their unique RFID enabled object they can 'check in' to these defined areas in the park. It gets stored in a database that you've checked into one of the areas. The idea's shaping up to be slightly similar to Foursquare, but on a small scale, and without the fiddly smartphone interface.

So we were given our project brief today. It's a joint project with the Spatial Design course at the university. We're tasked to create a space incorporating the 'Internet of things' ideology. The space must for the benefit and take into account the needs of OAPs. Primarily thinking about our own needs, were we 50 years older. After meeting our designers we initiated the brainstorming process thinking about what we would like in life 50 years on. we came up with a plethora of ideas, but most of them vague and not entirely fitting the brief.