Week 14 (11/25/2014) Fall semester 2014

This is ou thanksgiving week. So we had only meeting this Tuesday. The following groups presented their talks

1)  Brian Kelley, John Behnke, Zachary Minster, Aleksey Klimchenko -
Where R U? http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/where-r-u/ (mentor Jim
Boulter)

2) Branden Clark, Ze Qin, Toshi Piazza - Dynamorio
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/dr-memory/ (mentor Joshua Makinen)

3) Wyatt Kroemer, Drake Perrior-Small, John Drogo, Mason Cooper, Lavin
Aro CMS http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/aro-cms/ (mentor Kevin O'Connor)

4) Alex Freska and Logan Shire - React/Grapefruit - (mentor David Goldschmidt)

5) Dan Fang, ZeXin Wan - Smart Schedule
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/smart-schedule/ (mentor Moorthy)

Where  R U project is coming along well. They have not yet completed the project. Portions of it  are completed. They are building both IPhone and Android app for picking passengers for their rides. Thy also showed a demo. Their backend is also working.

Dynamorio poject involving fixing the various bugs.  They also showed a demo of the usefulness of DYnamorio in finding malwares. Their talk slides may be found here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1aqjUm3ul1psUOTqGqfvGg9PxXMJ2PVvst-9ZDp6uLXI/edit#slide=id.p . A demo of using their program to detet malwares may be found here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-QdHYf9NRFweEZfWXFBaVRvWlk/view (run time patching) - This is a tar gzipped file.

AroCMS has progressed further. They showed an alpha version of their program. They have api for various plug ins. They showed a cool demo. They used MEAN stak for their development. Most of it is in Javasript. I really hope that this project takes off.

Grapefruit/react project is going eally picking up steam. They have made a fast (reactive) GUI based on Javascript. - Most of the work is done in client side. Thei GUI also enables easier use of Grapefruit by the faculty members. Their project was liked by RedHat people and wanted them to showcase their project in SIGCSE conference.

Smart Schedule is more of a learning project. They are producing a calendar system for IPhone. They showed a demo. To make this project more interesting and different, they have to combine with weather indicator and availabilty indiator to predict about scheduling.  I doubt whether that will be done this semester or next.

There were many interesting questions as usual.  It was a time well spent and leanred a lot of new things. I wish I could retain most of the information! :(

Week 13 (11/18/2014 and 11/21/2014) Fall Semester 2014

 Week 13 (11/18/2014 and 11/21/2014) Fall Semester 2014

Grapefruit Poster

Where R U Poster

This week was yet another hectic week  RPIHack went last week very well (thanks to the excellent organization by Jazmine, Robert, Sebabtian and Jacob). It was well covered in the local media 

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Students-hackers-test-their-mettle-at-RPI-5895847.php
http://www.troyrecord.com/general-news/20141116/rpi-hosts-inaugural-hackathon-hackrpi
http://albany.twcnews.com/content/785858/students-from-60-colleges-participate-in-hackrpi-event/
http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S3621561.shtml

Poly covered it here http://poly.rpi.edu/2014/11/19/rpi_hosts_first_hackathon/

We had poster presentation on wednesday - Some of the photographs are above. The posters were well appreciated by every one I talked. All these things make me blush - too much self - aggrandizing~

On Tuesday we had the following talks followed by RPIHack project talks:

1) Dennis Fogerty, Austin Gulati - Whats that Sample -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/whats-that-sample/ (mentor Severin
Ibarluzea )
2) Evan Thompson, Alex Vargas, Phil LaGambino, Tausif Ahmed - Spoiler
- http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/spoiler/ (mentor Jim Boulter)
3)Jorel Lalicki - #jorelsphone

Dennis and Austin are working on to recognize the music by a small sample. They have not scraped the music (and hence not populated their database). They are using a music sampling software library (could not get a demo working becaise of the change in ssytem). Hope they are able to pull off their project and come to a good conclusion.

Spoiler group is coming along - have implemented a few of the steps - logging of the speed seems to work. Their App will be a welcome to parents and friends of teenage drivers and inexpereinced drivers.

Jorel gave a design description of his phone - It is ambitious and has tools to electrical lab equioments. He has enough processing power. He seems to think that there is not much power consumption.

After these, Tho and his group talked about theor RPIHack project http://buzz-off.me/  an answer to clickbait infacebook. This is a chrome extension software. Joshua and his group talked about hdb (hilly billy debugger) which is a front end of a compiler placing print statements. Logan and his partner talked about their prize winning project (Humanitarian side) on an anonymous chat tool for LGBT community. Ji Woong Baek talked about a simple serial interface to Aurdino (please see here http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/audino/ ). All of them learned a lot of new things in RPIHack and did contribute to open source projects.

On Friday (11/21/2014) we had the following talks.

1) Kevin Zheng Lights Out - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/lights-out/
(mentor Jim Bolter)

2) Peter Ryder, Blake Lingenau, Mike Macelletti -  Check Up -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/check-up/ (mentor Devon Bernard)

3)  Derek Meer and Michael Hosier - OpenWSN -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/openwsn/ (mentor Eric Oswald)

4) Dan Baek, Robert Hannum, Jacob Abramson - RPI Mobile Dining Hall
Menu- http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sodexo-menu-parser/ (mentor Dan
Baek)

5) Theodore Tenedorio, Tommy Fang - Pokemon RPI
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/pokemon-rpi/ (mentor Jim Bolter)

Kevin Zhang release his beta version of Lights out (Andriod APP) to switch off lights in the car when one has reached the destination. His app does not consume that much power and has a number of features.

Check Up project (which is a combination of task manager and performance monitor) has come a long way. They are writing the script in a version of python. They showed an awesome demo.

OpenWSN (open wireless sensor network) is progressing along - mostly by providing JSON interface and understanding the code. This group also contributed some visualization. They are planning to develop a hardware with an open protocol stack.

RPI Mobile dining hall menu parser, despite the setbacks, has been coming along well. Robert has been writing his parsing software.There was a good suggestion to make his parsing task simpler. Jacobg is progressing along with incorporating sodexo menu in RPIMobile. The GUI needs some work, code cleaning - but a great progress.

PokemanRPI has been along well with custom map editor and the game engine They have a new member in their project. They are planning to release a version by the end of the Fall semester.

What a fantastic week with an active participation by RCOS students.

week 12 (11/11/2014 and 11/14/2014) Fall Semester

RCOS group is going strong. We are all busy with courses, projects, grading and Hackathon. It is good to be busy doing something than being idle!

On Tuesday we had the following talks

1) Charlie Machalow - cDashboard -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/cdashboard/ (mentor Robert Rouhani)
2) Jim Boulter, Josh Makinen, Justin Etzine- MeNext -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/menext/ (mentor Jorel Lalicki)
3) Aaron Gunderson, Burke Livingston , Joseph Lee, John Yannou, Amy
Zhang, Parker Haynes, Nathan Bernard - Whiteboard-
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/4xb/ (mentor Eric Oswald)
4) Laurie Wu - Travel/Interests Site (mentor
DevonBernard)
5) Sophia D'Antoine, Brandon Clark -Security Course/Web

cDashBoard has many new features added including Battery life remaining, cMOte )(media controller), spotify integration, cRemainder, cReviewer and cNotifier - He also designed the system according to software enginering principles- Got new feature requests. It looks like cDashboard works under windows 10 too. The demo went very well - impressive software.

MeNext was demoed with webinput. It was very nice - ith students voting for the song. Jim said about his update being gone and he plans to work the iPhone thing work. Because of the sound system, they could not test their software in RPIHack. But their project is very ncie - nearly completed.

Whiteboard also showed offt their system (running under AWS). Their website is in  http://uniwhiteboard.com/ Please test it and provide a feedback http://goo.gl/Xa1F3K  Their talk slides are found in
http://slides.com/aarongunderson/whiteboard-nov-11#/

Laurie is stating a new project Spontaneous Travel Agent.  - providing safety zones, walkable places, restaurnts using social networks. The project is still in its infancy. Hopefully it will take on.

Sophia and Brendon talked about the new security course that was being offered. They showed the binary exploits. Their talk slides (very interesting three programs) canbe found here http://rcos.rpi.edu/project/dr-memory/post/presentation111114/
and https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jv7CZ4S29HG6QrgVmjXYZnOI5z_3VDr5GddekSz2FQU/edit

On Friday (11/14/2014) we had four talks.
1) Devon Bernard - Chrome Extensions & BrowserDB
2) Nicholas Pitt - OpenLab http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/openlab/
(mentor Aaron Gunderson)
3) Severin Ibarluzea, Kiana McNellis and Aaron Gunderson: New Attendence System

Devon gave a cool presentation of Chrome Extension for bookmark, nots and search management. BroswerDB is available in Chromestore https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/browserdb/bfobgfmimpgejgkoloppcoojoleolbll

Open Lab project is going on well. Because of the difficulty with Aurdino, this project is using cypress and proprietary sofwtare. It enhances openLab features. 

The new attendence system seems to be working well (People text a code to a specified telephone number) and the results are stored in google form. The codes chane every meeting. Their talk slides may be found here http://slides.com/severinibarluzea/deck--5#/

Most of the students are getting ready for RPIHack. As we speak that hackathon is coming to an end now. The organizers worked very hard on that.  You can hear the local news coverage here http://albany.twcnews.com/content/news/785858/students-from-60-colleges-participate-in-hackrpi-event/

Week 11 (11/4/2014 and 11/7/2014) Fall Semester 2014

We are in eleventh week in he Fall semester and the projects are picking up momentum. We already have had students giving their second talk.

on Tuesday we had the following presentations

1) Huiye, Xitu, Xinchi, Wei, Joseph, Yiding, Peiyan - ShengGuanTu
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sheng-guan-tu/

2)  Severin Ibarluzea and Joey Lee - Socket.io

3)  Keenan Sanchez, Hayley Schluter - FireDB
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/firedb1/

4)  Aesa Kamar - Functional Programming

ShenGuanTu game project is going well. They have posted their talk slides:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1D4aFm8oQdirPeOCee7THyRY8QHeBgPp8O1usXpkmO-c/edit?usp=sharing  They were unable to show a demo - They did a youtube video of their project.

Sevi and Joey gave a project presentation of socket.io which uses javascript - They showed how the client server works. They showed a traditional chat room - Then they showed off their distributed game and the students participaed with gusto. It was a very nice talk. Their slides will be found here http://slides.com/severinibarluzea/deck--4#/ and their repo is https://github.com/seveibar/networked-color-game

kennen and Hayley talked about their project on Webenable local database for ems services. They are building a system to streamline the recertification process. They have done a fair amount of work and they are progressing along well.

Asea gave a very nice presentation Functional programming (I have to miss as I have to be at Freshmen advising) I did read his slides thugh. Of course there is an advantage of no states - makingmultithread programming a lot easier.

on Friday we have the following talks:
1)Devon Bernard - OMail
2)Chris May, Paul Chiappetta and Brian O'Sullivan - DGAL
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/dgal1/ (mentor Austin Gulati)
3) Kevin Fung, Chris Brenon - Chlorine
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/chlorine-opencl/ (mentor Colin Rice) -
2nd Talk
4)Theo Browne -  Docktor -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/docktor-for-osx/ (mentor Jim Boulter) -
2nd Talk
5) Jonathan Wrona and Dan Lowe - IBEIS -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ibeis/ (mentor Zachary Jablons)

Devon gave his hackathon project omail - an outlook extension to sease in searching the attachment types andother tags This comes close to semantic searching the emails.

Chris and  Paul talked about DGAL - a genetic algorithms library. They gave a demo - a nice optimization package - very impressive for the amount of understanding required. Their talk slides may be found https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZlgZhIJ-COmuAYQhRkkgZYVACvuH8vKORP9OypNehzE/edit#slide=id.p

Kevin and Chris gave their second presentation of Chlorine - a library to make GPU programming much asier. Last time they showed a fractal demo. This time they could not show their ray tracing demo
They plan to receive their software at the end of the semester/

Theo gave his second talk on Doktor - docking system with a new improved Logo. He gave a nice demo. His software is almost ready. He isplanning to ship out his software by the end of the semester.

Jonathan and Dana talked about their project on IBEIS - an image processing siftware to identifying wild animals for preservation. They are developing an easier interface so that the core of the software could e used by field workers. Their talk slides may be found here http://slides.com/jonathanwrona/ibeis#/
  

Week 10 (10/28/2014 and 10/31/2014) Fall Semester 2014

We are already two thirds of way into the Fall Semester. Thnigs are moving along. On Tuesday we had four talks

1) Michael Zemsky - BountyBB http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/bandit/
(menor: Michael Zemsky- self mentored?)

2) Evan Thompson, Alex Vargas, Phil LaGambino, Tausif Ahmed - Spoiler-
 http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/spoiler/ (mentor Jim Boultier)

3) Lucien Christie-Dervaux, Leopold Joy, David Chen -  FoosRPI:
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/foosrpi/ (mentor Severin Ibarluzea)

 4) Nicholas Grippo,Sam Seng - Tag-It (Window-World)-
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/window-world/ (mentor Aaron Gunderson)

Mike is working on BountyBB - a distributed file/data sharing platform. He is building a middle layer. He is yet to decidewhat networks to choose. Also the encryption schemes have to be ironed out. 

Spoiler is an ioS and android app to monitor and log driving speeds. They have implemented speed measurement and the logging systems. They have designed the overall system. They have a lot to impleent before the system can be released. They are hopeful.

FoosRPI is a  project to keep track of the scores on the foos tables. They showed a nice demo of the system using ardunio. They are well on their way to completing this project It is very ncie to see freshmen accomplishing so much

Tag it is a social netwrk application where people can tag objects/images/photos/three d- things and make a graffitti . This is a slightly different version of their original project.  The project is still a way to go. But they are making an effort.

 Friday,(10/31/2014) we had a guest speaker  Prof. Philip Guo.

Prof. Philip Guo ( http://pgbovine.net/academic.htm )  gave an inspiring talk about his research (HCI) and choices for graduate studies.

As usual there were a lot of questions and interesting suggestions