Week 10 (7/27/2012) Summer 2012

Week 10 (7/27/2012) Summer 2012

Summer Semester is slowly winding down. In two weeks the summer semester will be over. Projects are coming along well.

This week we had three talks.

1. Stephen Silber rpimobile http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-mobile/

 

 2. Thomas King SMS Vending Machine http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sms-sending-vending-machine/

3. Jorel Lalicki, Tim Cantwell LaunchPad Tutorial http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/in-depth-tutorial-of-embedded-electronics-using-the-ti-msp-launchpad/

 

Stephen had made an excellent progress. He is well on to releasing his app before the end of the summer. He has been getting feedback from various sources including here

Thomas's first prototype has been installed in Ghana and the prototype has been working flawlessly (Thomas got a text message when some one purchased!). Since then Thomas has made substantial improvements in power consumption (10 fold decrease from 56 mA to 5.6mA by changing into a sleep mode from a busy wait loop). Thomas is waiting to hear more feedback when the team returns from Ghana.

Jorel and Tim have made an excellent progress What is more impressive is that they have also posted their talk slides! Please see them here. Jorel and Tim are also planning to start a company - please wait to hear further details. I am looking forward to getting some experience with their products!

Again I had a great time listening to a set of  great set of talks and a great set of questions 

Week 8 Talk Videos (Summer 2012)

Week 8 Talk Videos (Summer 2012)

Thanks to Jorel we have week 8 talk videos are available. http://youtube.com/rcosrpi1 is RCOS channel

1. Ed Leslie  Fenestra http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/fenestra/

2. Alex Freska - Flowur http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/flowur/

3. Jeongmin Lee  DataCubeBrowser

4. Jorel Lalicki; Tim Cantwell  TILaunchpad Tutorial http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/in-depth-tutorial-of-embedded-electronics-using-the-ti-msp-launchpad/

Week 9 (7/20/2012) Summer 2012

Week 9 (7/20/2012) Summer 2012

Cause - 7-18-2012

Effect 7-19-2012

Thanks to Asher, we had a successful hackathon on Wednesday (7/18/2012). The turnout was good, the food was better and the progress on the projects are the best - what more can I say.
Proof of the effect of the hackathon is shown above. (I am a firm believer of law of causality!) - this progress would not have been possible without a hackathon.

I have to thank mentors Jorel, Asher and Zach. They make my life extremely simple. With mentors like them RCOS can go a long way!

We had our usual talks this Friday (7/20/ 2012).

1. Priti,Kumar Rebecca Ehrhardt and Chelsea Poirier-Lightning Round http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/lightning-round/

2. Colin Neville Looking for a team http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/looking-for-team/

3. Austin McGuire, and Kegham Khosdeghian milkyway@home

Priti, Rebecca and Chelsea have made phenomenal progress (not as ambitious as they originally planned) - never the less looks pretty impressive to me. They have implemented around 20 games (mostly based on history) - they even showed their demo - I need some time to play that game. All in all a quite impressive task.

Colin has been making a steady progress on Looking for a team. What is impressive was that he was able to take the suggestions presented during his first talk. Colin showed a demo of his system. (it is a preliminary version) - Colin is planning to improve his system (make it robust) and take feeds from github, linkedin and facebook to make the ratings reliable.

Austin and Kegham have been working on Milkyway@home project. Both of them are making an excellent proress. One is working on N-body simulation and the other is working on separation. Please see this website to know what is going on with this project http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/

Fabulous talks and a worthwhile afternoon to spend.

Videos of Talks presented during 6th Week

Bobby Zheng Chrnoicle http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/chronicle/






Ian Ooi Big http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/big/



Silber RPIMobile http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-mobile/



Sheena McNeil koob kooc (Reverse of Cook Book) http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/koobkooc-a-reverse-cookbook/




King SMSVending Machine http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sms-sending-vending-machine/
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Week 8 (7/13/2012) Summer 2012

Week 8 (7/13/2012) Summer 2012

Thanks to Dr. Goldschmidt for holding the fort last week.  RCOS projects are progressing along fine. Most of the projects are going to their original plans. Thanks to Asher Glick (mentor), RCOS will be having a Hackathon on (7/18/2012) to move the rest of the projects along.

This week we had four talks.

1. Ed Leslie - Fenestra http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/fenestra/

2. Alex Freska  and Ian Le - Flowur http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/flowur/

3. Jeongmin Lee  - DataCubeBrowser

4. Jorel Lalicki; Tim Cantwell - TILaunchpad Tutorial http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/in-depth-tutorial-of-embedded-electronics-using-the-ti-msp-launchpad/

Ed's project is on building a lightweight window manager for X windows. This window manager will be specifically be useful for programmers. Ed has implemented a skeleton of that window manager and gave a demo of his project.

Alex and Ian talked about GlowUR -a flow chart making program. They are re-implementing in Javascript and in HTML 5 (they had originally implemented in Flash) They are making a slow but a steady progress.

Jeongmin is planning to apply his datacube browser to  disease tracking  ( using twitter feeds). He is making a very good progress and we hope to see the results.

Jorel and Tim have been making an excellent progress. Unfortunately they could not show their demo because of a mishap just minutes before their talk. They will post a link to their talk slides in their
blog.

As usual students asked many interesting questions and suggestions. I feel fortunate to be associated with RCOS.

Videos of Talks given during Week 6 Summer 2012

Videos of Talks given during Week 6 Spring 2012

Thanks to Dave G for "pinch hitting" me during last Friday meeting. Thanks to Jorel we have all videos up to week 6 uploaded to youtube. rcos channel is http://youtube.com/rcosrpi1 .

1. Dr. Louis Ibanez (kitware) - (Guest Speaker) Who writes Linux Kernel

2. Jim Kalfas - Olympus  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/olympus/

3. Dan Vegeto and Rob Hoolinger -collective congress  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/collective-congress/

4. Jeongmin Lee  Datacube Browser http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/datacube-browser/

5. Steve Klenkar Open Legislation http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/openlegislation/

6. Kevin Baker Rensselaer Frequency ID http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rensselaer-phrequency-identification/

Week 7 (7/6/2012) Summer 2012

Week 7 (7/6/2012) Summer 2012

Standing in for Moorthy is tough to do!  :-)   We had five talks today showcasing a wide variety of projects.

1. Bobby Zheng SAGE http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sage-senate-address-geo-coding-engine/

2. Ian Ooi Big http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/big/

3. Stephen Silber RPI Mobile http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-mobile/

4. Sheena McNeil koobkooc Reverse cookbook http://rcos.rpi.edu/user/140/

5. Thomas King SMS Vending Machine http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sms-sending-vending-machine/

Bobby Zheng described SAGE (Senate Address Geo-coding Engine) developed and used by the New York State Senate (in part led by fellow alum Ken Zalewski!).  Overall, the new contributions here will be getting this existing open source system to work with new census data and improved shapefiles that define all of the districts within New York State.

Ian Ooi talked about big, a configuration generator to help manage configurations/installations of Linux (by generating bash shell scripts).  Oftentimes, it's easier to just reinstall the OS, so this tool helps save/restore OS configurations.  Ian is working on expanding this to other shell languages and operating systems (beyond bash and Debian); he's also aiming to support multiple stored configurations.

Stephen Silber showed us RPI Mobile, which is an impressive (and successful) attempt at centralizing much of the data feeds and RPI-specific information available from a wide variety of sources.  Part of the success is the consolidation of multiple data feeds (e.g. calendars, events) into a centralized form.  Stephen is primarily working on incorporating other feeds and information, including dining hall menus, WRPI streams, interactive campus maps, etc.

Sheena McNeil discussed her reverse cookbook project, koobkooc (which is surprisingly difficult to type fast!).  Given a list of ingredients you have and want to use, koobkooc shows you what dishes you can make.

Thomas King presented the SMS Vending Machine project, a project in which vending machines send TXT messages when items are sold out.  Further, he described its current implementation in Ghana to sell condoms and hopefully decrease the prevalence of HIV/AIDS.  Given these successes, the goal is to make these implementations more energy efficient (and better handle wavering cell service).

It was a pleasure to sit in for Moorthy.  I got to "plug" the new CSCI-1100 course to be taught solely using Python!  Please send real-world example ideas (including URLs to datasets?) to me at goldschmidt@gmail.com -- thanks all!

Week 6 (6/29/2012) Summer 2012

Week 6 (6/29/2012) Summer 2012

We are roughly at the half way point in our calendar year and middle of summer semester. We hada very hectic week with six scintillating talks.

1. Dr. Luis Ibanez (kitware) - (Guest Speaker) Who writes Linux Kernel

2. Jim Kalfas - Olympus  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/olympus/

3. Dan Vegeto and Rob Hoolinger -collective congress  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/collective-congress/

4. Jeongmin Lee  Datacube Browserhttp://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/datacube-browser/

5. Steve Klenkar Open Legislationhttp://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/openlegislation/

6. Kevin Baker Rensselaer Frequency IDhttp://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rensselaer-phrequency-identification/

Luis gave an inspiring talk about the community aspect in Linux Kernel Development. He emphasized how the kernel development is not monopolized by any company or any one. He also made a point that all projects have the potential to be much bigger than originally planned.

Jim is continuing last summer's project of Asher and Gabe in getting the front end working for server management.(Backend was completed by Asher and Gabe). Jim is using HTML 5, Javascript to accomplish his front end and webinterface.

Dan and Rob presented their project on Collective Congress (continuation of Dan's Spring Project). This project has come a long way. Rob is integrating the data with googleappengine and Dan is working on the front end. They even had a nice demo in which the group voted whether the keep the laptop open or not during RCOS meeting (as a side note, since the question was not formed well, I do NOT know what the students voted for).

Jeonming has been working on the datacube browser - providing different types of visualizations on RDF marked input. Jeoming also showed a cool demo. He is continuing his work with more data and a wide variety o data (including csv data)

Steve is working with NY State Legislation project. Steve is going to provide a better user interface both for expert users and for novices. He plans to have additional visualizations with calender events, bill proceess graph among other things.

Kevin is working on RFID reader chip. He has already designed and the hardware had come. Kevin is planning to test the chip as well as provide cases for both serial and parallel interface. The idea is to use the chip in place of iclicker and for taking attendances. Kevin also showed a very cool demo (and explained the principles of RFID reader). Kevin has also posted his talk slides (Hint to others - please post the slides).

I was very glad to see a number of questions and suggestions from the students. All of them are willing to help and share their knowledge. My only (a big) mistake was to schedule so many talks one day.

Video of Week 5 talks

Andrew Djinta

Brian - RQ



Ari - RNA Simulation with SimTK

Deon - Syllabuson Rails