27 Monday Jul 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
I read an article in Mashable this week about preventing drunk driving. It basically starts to work as a breath analyzer. If it detects that your alcohol level is beyond allowed/safe limit, it will not allow you to turn on the car. I think this will prevent a lot of “I can drive, I’m not drunk scenario”.
20 Monday Jul 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
Nepal is a country with the highest peak in the world, Mt. Everest (also called Sagarmatha) which is 8,848m above sea level. Besides Everest there are numerous other mountains in Nepal. Mountain climbing, thus is one of the most popular extreme adventures in Nepal. It mainly attracts highly experienced mountaineers as well as capable climbers willing to hire professional guides. Due to extreme conditions, I’m sure one will have to train really hard to be able to attempt the adventure.
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest
For the wearable project, I would like to build a device that can either be a band that you can wrap in your wrist/ankle or some garment that you can wear while training or climbing. Ideally, this device should be able to monitor Altitude, Pressure, Oxygen level, Ambient and Body temperature and similar essential data that plays vital role in high altitude mountain climbing. I am not yet sure what are the most important data to consider while training/mountain climbing but based on some articles I have read, these are the vital ones. Measuring these data will be helpful to monitor and customize the training.
I think Adafruit’s 10-DOF IMU Breakout – L3GD20H + LSM303 + BMP180 being all-in-one sensor will be perfect for this project. This is a combination of 3 different breakouts L3GD20H, LSM303, BMP180 with following quick stats:
If GPS is also needed for this project, Flora Wearable Ultimate GPS Module will also be helpful.
20 Monday Jul 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
When I look at baby monitors in stores like Babies R’ Us, I think to myself – Is this the best we can do? It basically just streams live video/audio from the camera which is often placed around crib and parents monitor that from some other room (If they hear or see anything in that tiny monitor). It is fine to some extent but fails to address some important issues. What if the baby quietly gets out of the crib and rolls on the floor? What if the baby’s body temperature rises when he/she is asleep? What if the baby starts to breath fast?
While doing the research regarding wearable technology, I came up with some innovative ideas that address such kind of issue. My idea is thus to create a baby monitor made of very soft material which you can strap on the baby’s ankle. It will not only monitor ambient temperature, body temperature, heart rate, oxygen level but also track the baby’s movement and sends alerts to the monitor screen and phone(s) when any unusual data is read.
13 Monday Jul 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
While working on the project HID using Arduino, I did some research about various uses of IR sensor. So I came up with an idea to build a custom remote that will have multi level functions. Extending the basic remote functionality, I think it would be great if a remote has some basic top level selections such as “Presentation”, “Movie”, “Study”, etc. and once pressing that button, other buttons will serve that specific purpose. For example if you are in “Presentation” mode, you can wave your hands (vibration sensor or tilt sensor) to go to next/previous slide, mute/unmute sound, etc.
So basically this product will serve as a remote control for your computer.
Image Source: http://www.adafruit.com/product/389
08 Wednesday Jul 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
I am not yet completely sure about the possibilities and restrictions of the Arduino Leonardo and various sensors. So I have listed multiple proposals. I also wanted to use sound sensor in some way but with limited amount of time, I was not able to research enough on that topic.
As my first proposal, I’d like to build a remote controlled Arduino HID that will act as multimedia remote for my computer. Ideally it should be able to change the brightness, volume, previous/next songs, pause/play songs, etc in my computer.
Based on my research so far, it looks like I’ll be able to use TV remote as infrared transmitter and IR sensor (http://www.adafruit.com/products/157) as infrared receiver. Based on HEX values of individual buttons of the TV remote, I then will be able to assign them to do specific tasks in my Arduino build. In addition to that, it can modify the processing sketch to make things change in the screen based on buttons that you press in your remote.
Image Source: http://www.adafruit.com/products/157
Using the fast vibration sensor (http://www.adafruit.com/product/1766) , that will be easily triggered, I’m thinking about making a wand-like HID that will use hand wave gesture to control the output. For example, it can be used to mute/unmute the computer, stop/resume or modify processing animation, etc.
If this sensor can be combined with other sensors like push button sensor, the functionality of the wand can be expanded furthermore.
Image Source: http://www.adafruit.com/product/1766
In place of fast vibration sensor, I can also use Tilt ball switch or Tilt sensor (http://www.adafruit.com/products/173) so that the wand can use a single sensor and yet will be able to send multiple signals and perform multiple tasks.
Image Source: http://www.adafruit.com/products/173
06 Monday Jul 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
A wearable band that will alert you when you go over the speed limit. By adjusting a second parameter, the limit can be adjusted by some +ve /-ve value based on the condition of the road. For example in normal conditions, people tend to drive 5-10+ of the limit which I think is considered fine.
In my experience so far, lots of people just don’t care about speed limits. I have seen and heard about people driving at around 60+ when the speed limit is 25. The speed limit is there for some reason and it always bothers me why lots of people don’t care about it. So this band will alert people on multiple levels starting from below speed limit to ideal limit to over speed limit. It will take the speed limit value of the current road and adjust accordingly.
05 Sunday Jul 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
This Arduino project takes ambient light and based on certain pre-set value, turns on or off the LED light.
int led = 13;
int sensorPin = A0;
void setup() {
// initialize digital pin 13 as an output.
pinMode( led, OUTPUT );
Serial.begin( 9600 ); //default speed; you can change it if you need to
}
void loop() {
int sensorValue = analogRead( sensorPin ); //analogRead returns integer value
Serial.println( sensorValue );
if (sensorValue > 70){
digitalWrite(led, LOW);
}
else{
digitalWrite(led, HIGH);
}
}
28 Sunday Jun 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
Nepal was hit by 7.8 magnitude earthquake on 25 April, 2015 followed by hundreds of aftershocks. More than 8,800 people died and around 23,000 injured. The government was not able to provide immediate rescue because of ineffective information flow and miscommunication. The situation was chaotic and lots of rumors were mushrooming all over media and social media. Those who had idea were looking at USGS website for latest updates while others were just praying and hoping nothing happens.
I think it would be a good idea to have some visual that will show earthquake details like Epicenter, Magnitude, Radius, etc. That way, government will be able to pin-point hard hit areas and prioritize the relief effort accordingly. The huge display that will take the recent (or real-time) data from either USGS or regional earthquake measuring department and have all the data visualized in a central display. This device will not only visualize the data but take input from super user so that updates can be done. For example if rescue team has been sent to a particular location, it can be marked. Also, this visualization can be broadcasted to public so that everyone is aware of what is happening.
One of the annoying problems in Nepal was there were 100s of volunteer groups, both national and international, who wanted to help in rescue operation but with lack of information, in some places there were multiple teams and in some places none.
28 Sunday Jun 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
PImage img;
void setup() {
colorMode(HSB, 360, 255, 255);
img = loadImage(“image.jpg”);
size(img.width, img.height);
img.loadPixels();
for (int x =0; x <img.width; x++) {
for (int y=0; y <img.height; y++) {
int i= y * img.width + x;
color c = img.pixels[i];
//println(hue(c));
float c_hue = hue (c) – 180;
//println(c_hue);
if (c_hue <0) {
c_hue= c_hue +360;
}
color c_inverted = color ( c_hue, saturation(c), brightness(c));
img.pixels[i] = c_inverted;
}
}
image(img, 0, 0);
}
Original: http://www.celebrityplus.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/marilyn-monroe-cosmetic-surgery.jpg
PImage img;
void setup() {
colorMode( HSB, 360, 255, 255 );
img = loadImage(“image.jpg”);
size( img.width, img.height );
img.loadPixels();
for ( int x = 0; x < img.width; x++ ) {
for ( int y = 0; y < img.height; y++ ) {
int i = y * img.width + x;
float bright = map( brightness(img.pixels[i]), 80, 220, 0, 255);
img.pixels [i]= color( hue(img.pixels[i]), saturation(img.pixels[i]), bright);
}
}
image(img, 0, 0);
}
Original: http://monkmanphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Monkman_MABKS_D30112.jpg
PImage img;
void setup() {
//colorMode(HSB, 360, 255, 255);
img = loadImage(“image.jpg”);
size(img.width, img.height);
img.loadPixels();
/***** ORIGINAL *****/
color navy = color(18, 75, 147);
color crimson = color(222, 63, 63);
color skyblue= color ( 121, 161, 227);
color cream = color( 250, 247, 232);
/***** MODIFIED *****/
/*color navy = color( 27, 42, 60 );
color crimson = color( 95, 156, 160 );
color skyblue= color ( 195, 150, 104);
color cream = color( 245, 195, 130);*/
for (int x =0; x <img.width; x++) {
for (int y=0; y <img.height; y++) {
int i= y * img.width + x;
float greyscale = (0.21 *red (img.pixels[i]) + 0.72 * green(img.pixels[i]) + 0.07 * blue(img.pixels[i]));
if (greyscale< 50 ) { img.pixels[i] = navy; } else if (greyscale > 50 && greyscale <120) { img.pixels[i] = crimson; } else if ( greyscale >120 && greyscale <170) { img.pixels[i] = skyblue; } else if (greyscale >170 && greyscale <255) {
img.pixels[i] = cream;
}
}
}
image(img, 0, 0);
textSize(32);
//textAlign(CENTER);
fill(255);
text (“Purple Haze”, 20, height – 20);
}
20 Saturday Jun 2015
Posted in Digital Innovation Design
Specially in multi-story and huge parking spaces, sometimes you have to spend hefty amount of time trying to find a vacant parking space driving back and forth. I was looking at some solutions to this problem; one like this:
My idea is to create a grid like light indicator that can show which parking space is available among hundreds of spaces. It can also be a screen display that shows the parking space map and indicates which space is available right now. Red light would indicate the space is taken while green indicates it is available. I think this can be achieved by either using cameras in the parking space or by sensing weight. This would solve the problem of having to spend gas and time finding available parking space in huge facility.
I also found one image in the internet which does something like this:
Pen and Paper 
