Weekend Update

Haven't posted for two days now. I was not sure what to post and I felt I was going into the domain of "too-much-talking-no-working". So I did some paper work, which I hope to put here in few days.

I also did some testing of the hardware I'm developing and will develop the PCB. Some more testing and power supply design validation today. I'm using a transformer-less supply and the capacitor I've bought is rather large to fit in the design and I need to look for alternatives, SMPS is too complicated and expensive. Anyways this will take form eventually and more details on the google-sites project site I've build. Link soon guys.

I finally got the note for the second song of "Poz" and it's coming along pretty OK. Hope to finish it by next week. The coming week will be rather free, so hope to make more music.

Have borrowed brother's Play-station Portable (PSP) and having fun with it, it's in exchange for my iPod.  Watched the movie "P.S. I love you" last night. Was fun.

More on the personal front, I've made a adsorption (mind it not absorbing) layer around me, so ideas and criticism from people don't penetrate right away. I keep them away from me and analyze when I have time, this reduces my frustrations from impulsive responses.

I'm working on my MS thesis, so I can build something useful in the 2 years.

Also working on the topic of "Points of failures in electronics", because I feel it's the prime most reason for people to hate or love things, especially electronic devices.

So loads on my plate for now. Technical posts will follow from tomorrow.

Traffic Equalizer

So I'm one of those people who get stuck in traffic jams be it morning or evening. Moreover I'm a student who doesn't want to spend a fortune (which our dear telecom companies charge) for wireless data to get real time traffic information from Google Maps Traffic Layer, so I can take an alternate route or re-schedule my day.

But Google Maps Traffic heavily relies on people connected to google maps to share their speed, which is averaged for the region to determine traffic flow. This makes it less useful, specially in cities with less mobile internet users.

Another thing to notice is that most rush hour jams are unpredictable. A broken car/truck/bus during that peak hour, adds 15 minutes to my 1 hour journey. But there are always alternate routes and I can only guess or rely on good people who report traffic news to radio jockeys, to tell me which route is chocked today. But I seldom find this information useful and rarely for the region I wish to know about. So it's a guesswork after all and if it's my lucky day I may reach in half my usual time...

So I decided that maybe we can put in some cleaver plan to help solve this problem? And I came up for a plan for Delhi, India. I'm not sure how much it fits other cities, but guess people will comment and tell me. The plan not only helps people take the less congested alternate route, but also helps de-congest the already congested route, by diverting traffic away from it.

The idea involves putting up small devices(refereed here as traffic blobs) with camera capabilities facing the road traffic mostly in places with more likely occurrence of bigger jams. The cameras take photos at say 10 minutes intervals and via a GPRS connection transmit it to a central station. The central station collects data from all such traffics blobs around the city and analyses it for traffic density. The analyzed data, a simple 10 scale traffic density, is then send to two portals. One the online web based portal, from where it can be collected by people sitting at home, or with gprs on-the-go. The other, (this is the part which helps people), is the data is sent back to the camera devices, in simple text form- location code+traffic density. This data is then mass sent to all car-devices(these are essentially the user-end interface, open-source hardware?). The data is sent via cheap RF link with a range of about 500 meters, so one can get data from, a traffic blob little closer to home, about traffic, a little closer to work, and vice versa. Each traffic blob, can have two cameras, so monitor the both ways traffic, thus further reducing cost.

The idea not only helps the common man, it helps the administration of the city to better the traffic conditions, by having fairly accurate traffic data throughout the day. It also directly handles the pollution problem and that of reducing use of fossil fuels. So it can be taken as a green project.

Business model? - Sell the kits (try keeping them open source). Make the website service paid. Make the car receiving service paid, by adding some form of encryption to mass transmitted traffic.

Some additional points:

  • The security of the devices is a concern. But sticking them to high poles, like street lights can be thought of.
  • Although the idea is mainly meant for people with many optional routes to take, it can also be used to plan for the day, by people who have to forcefully take that one congested route. If traffic density seems high, leave early and likes.
  • The traffic blobs' frequency to take photos can be changed by central station to produce more accurate data, at the cost of more wireless data transmission on the GPRS network, which is expensive.
  • Privacy of users, who's car's images are taken to estimate traffic data can be preserved by having fully automated central station. This I feel is also preserved by the low quality cameras that can be used in the traffic blobs, so only boundaries of cars are visible, with no way of identifying persons' / cars. The system can also be switched off during VIP an VVIP movements.
Will work on some artistic visualizations and some technical block diagrams and upload soon.

Thanks

iPod Touch- A good Hertzian space member?

Well, I've been reading about Hertzian space, thanks to Ladyada and the MIT Media Lab thesis there. I decided to put this to use and I realized that Apple products, do interact in the Hertzian space rather nicely, more details here.

Incidentally I just got dad a new iPod touch and have decided to test the theory that if it really is a good hertzian space product, it must be liked and used a lot. So rather than forcing dad to use it and explain the features over and over again, I've decided to let it build it's image itself.

Will keep you posted on this experiment.

Edits;

1: day 1, surprisingly dad carried it with him. :)
2: day 2, dad was checking his mails on the iPod, leaving the open laptop beside the iPod. But guess it's just the initial liking, let's see what happens on the longer run.

Designing for humans

In my four years of engineering and my 2 years since, I've realized that electronics is itself a complex thing, but a thing which everyone understands when inside a nut shell. Let me put it as a cake, which few can make, but everyone can describe (to a good extent) what theirs should taste like.  So I wish to start the cake shop.

I can assure you that people have great creative ideas to, either solve their problems or make lives simpler, using electronics. Although the ideas are basic in terms of the electronics complexity, they do require some electronics skill, which the layman neither does have, nor wants to gain (for plain fear of failure).  These ideas are as simple as timer of appliance, making doors, locks automated and so on.
Though some people do buy hobby kits and make some solutions to these problems on their own, the kits fail over time and cause discomfort and prevent further such building activities. This is another area of concern for electronics, i.e. rugged design, the first one being 'what to design and how?'. Electronics are easily prone to failure, keep them away from water, heat, dust... My aim is to address these two issues in my cake shop.

I wrote about open source hardware a few posts back, which is the essence of it all. I can't on my own develop even 1% of the hardware that is required by my fellow men and some self initiative on their part or my fellow electronic engineers is required. But I wish to make their task simpler, with the help of open source hardware. In the broad sense it works like this:
  1.  The good ideas of laymen are converted to electronics projects. 
  2. The design aspects are correctly studied and human-device interaction is given preference over variety and features. The second preference is given to stability of design and identification of possible failure areas, right in the design stage. Though this adds a considerable time to the design, it is essential to build the trust of people into the designs.
  3. Prototype of the project is developed. The prototype is given to the user conceptualizing the idea. 
  4. The idea (along with possible application areas) and the project is made open source under GPL and credited jointly with the person who first came up with the idea. This gives a sense of belonging and proud to the user and inspires him to promote the product himself. 
  5. The project is given a forum for user-to-user interaction to promote it ahead. And most importantly coming up with modification(or modification thoughts) and alternate uses, again going by the theory that people are more creative than the electronic makers. 
Another thought is giving users some thoughts on already existing open source hardware and allowing them to change is to their specific needs and/or region. This promotes the other open source hardwares and allows spread of ideas.

I'm currently working on a project which is on the same lines, and hope to soon setup a site to get all the data in some place.

Ah! if you ask the question- what if people steal the ideas and make those products and make lot of money?
WELL, it's good. That's open source is all about right? But yes, new ideas keep coming in and still the part of building custom solutions and coming up with new solutions remains with-in our hands.

Well, please do share your thoughts on this. Both laymen and geeks are most welcome to share their thoughts and criticizes the above thoughts.

Some new ideas on electronics design-Barat Lights


I do wish to address the end user, looking at a requirement at their end, rather than forming a idea of a product myself.


To start with I'm looking at providing simple solutions to common problems, but what is important here is that the end user is the main person to be addressed. Technology and electronics take the back seat and are a platform to help the end user. Rather than telling the end user to use(or even enjoy) a technology, I tend to focus on what he really wants.

I'll be looking at people giving me some insight into this form of product design and development.



I start here with what I felt was a very simple way to help. I was in a marriage function two days back, more specifically in the "Barat". It's hard to miss the men carrying sort of light towers on their shoulders. It's a fascinating thing and is such a essential part of each "Barat". There is always a huge truck at the back of the Barat which carries the generator. Since all the towers are connected via a cable, they need to more in sync, and more often than not, there is unnecessary pulling at the cables. Add to it the fact that the AC wires carrying 230 volts are hanging and people are touching them and dancing near them.

The solution I find fit would be replacing a few things in the setup. The prime most end user (the guy owning the Barat equipment) requirement is cost. I'm not sure why some of these measures have not yet been taken, but i'll talk to few of Barat-lights providers and find out. The two cost factors are short term i.e. investment and long term i.e. recurring savings benefits. Minimizing the investment and maximizing short term gain, would make it lucrative for these people as they can't be made to see too much in the future (mainly due to lack of good education).

The options for making the light system better are as follows:
  • Replacing the incandescent light bulb with LED lamps - This would essentially reduce the size (power and physical) of the generator set being carried. Another point here is the colour, cause people are used to the yellow tint of the light bulbs, and most high power LEDs are white. But new designs have a yellow "warm" tint also, though I'm yet to explore these LEDs.
  • If the above point is true, the generator set can be replaced by a inverter with battery - This option requires a huge initial investment and may not be financially possible for the Barat-lights owner. Moreover the battery has a huge recurring cost, which could bring down the income of the owner. This options is viable if the owner is starting new and/or is looking to replace an old generator set.
  • Another option would be re-developing the whole system all together. This would be an ideal system, with least initial investment and large long term gains - This system would replace the whole system to be battery powered, as LEDs run on DC anyways. The batteries can be in the towers or there can be a big battery at the end carried by a last man. This allows the men to be still connected together via wires ( let's not break the tradition). Moreover a bigger battery means less long term battery replacing battery cost. Since the LEDs are running directly via battery, no DC-AC-DC conversion loses occur, these occur in the inverter option above.
A small setup demonstrating the above options and solid proof of savings is the next obvious step, before the Bharat-lights providers can adopt any of the above systems. Another important thing to consider would be demonstration of how easy it is to shift to the new system(s) and how little the essential things(front-ends) change.

Let me work to getting something out of this idea.

Edit :1 : One of my close friends, pointed out that he has already seen such a thing being implemented and was too kind to even send me some pictures, find them below. I'm getting more information from him and will keep you updated, especially about the generator at the back, which i think is the worst part of it all.






















Edit: 2: Well the generator is still there. Bump. So we still have work to do?  There is also an arrangement to easily change the dead LEDs as easily as light bulbs.

Poz-The music album

Hey guys and gals,

I decided that I have just one life and I need to do all that is essential. Making music is most essential and since I missed a chance during my B.Tech, i need to do it now.

I've started working on the album titled "Poz" and the first small jingle has come out. The second song is in the making.

Link soon...

Hope you guys like it...

Enjoy!

P.S.: In the air of open-source, the album is free to distribute and edit. :)

Edit: Link to first song... Total Today

Little shakira


Was in a party last night and met this sweet little girl, with an uncanny resemblence to Shakira. I felt that shakira must have looked like this in her childhood. Maybe we can let Shakira answer that? Till then you can have a look at the photo and decide.

There are also a video which show that vigor to dance too . :)





God bless her...

My thoughts on open hardware

Open hardware is a upcoming thought and the need of the future. What it basically means is that people make hardware and open the design to the world to make and modify. This essentially brings the excellent electronic designs by the great designers in the electronics industry and allow kids and amateurs to make fun and useful things, with basic electronic knowledge.

Unlike open source software, open source hardware can be converted to a easy business model. "Good" open source software generally try to add a paid "support component" to earn some cash. In case of open source hardware the business model is selling fabricated and semi-fabricated (fabricated PCBs with components to the soldered) models of the design can be sold by the designer, for people who do not wish to go into the hassle of buying components and making the whole thing. This is easy to do and the popularity of the designer(s) can grow overnight depending on how the design clicks to the users.

Various design steps need to be taken to make the products attractive and useful to the user. I'll discuss such things in some upcoming posts.

A good example of such a model is www.ladyada.net and the commercial site www.adafruit.com.

I wish to send a message to my fellow electronics designers to pursue such goals to help society in a unique way by bringing in great ideas and products.