Week 4 (6/15/2012) Summer 2012

Week 4 (6/15/2012) Summer 2012

RCOS is progressing along -  I spent most of this week fighting spam posts in http://rcos.rpi.edu
Luckily Nate and Ben came to my rescue.  With their excellent programming skills, we have stopped for the time being. We are also taking some more precautions to guard against the spam.

This week we had three talks.

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

2. Andrew Bolin Portsim http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/portsim/

3. Mike Agnew Ticket Terminal http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ticket-terminal/ 

Colin Neville is working on a system looking for a team - the back end uses a sql database and with the django front end and he does it using Python. Where as linked in is a general purpose system, looking for a team is more focussed on software project for small teams.

Andrew Bolin is working on a simulation bed for testing various algorithms (for portoflio) using real as well as simulated data. Hie is developing open source matlab codes that could be useful for other researchers. His talk slides are already up in his blog post

Mike Agnew has recase his project to BiZNet. He is developing open source tools using sql , jQuery to devlop software to help small businesses survive.

In all the talks students asked many interesting questions and suggestions. This particular aspect (that of asking questions and suggestions and readily sharing their knowledge) is the one that sustains my interest in this center.

Videos of Talks presented in Third Week of Summer 2012

Videos of Talks presented in Third Week of Summer 2012

Thanks to Jorel, we have the videos of talks presented during third week
Talk Video link is in http://www.youtube.com/rcosrpi1
1. Amelia on Circuit Box
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/circuitbox/

2. Jorel and Timothy on Launch pad
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/in-depth-tutorial-of-embedded-electronics-using-the-ti-msp-launchpad/
3. Zach on TouchofMath http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/touch-of-mathematics/

Talk Videos 2nd week Summer 2012

Thanks to Jorel we have all the talk videos of  the talks given during second week of Summer 2012.
(Please do not forget to check our youtube channel http://youtube.com/rcosrpi1 to listen to past talks )

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


2. Sean Chase on Blue Mesh   http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/bluemesh/


3. Asher Glick on Briefcase http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/briefcase/

Week 3 (6/8/2012) Summer 2012

Week 3 (6/8/2012) Summer 2012

Summer 2012 RCOS Group Photo 6/1/2012

We have an enthusiastic group of students and amazing group of mentors. One can see a regular update on blogs and repositories of various projects in Observatory http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ 

This week we had three students presentations:

1. Amelia P - Circuit box  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/circuitbox/

 2. Tim C, Jorel L -  ti- msp launchpad tutoria
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/in-depth-tutorial-of-embedded-electronics-using-the-ti-msp-launchpad/

 3. Zach C Touch of Math http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/touch-of-mathematics/

Amelia has been continuing her work on the circuit simulation. She has done a reasonable study of the existing open software solutions and their limitations. She is doing both the front end ( GUI ) as well as the backend of simulation. She is using Open GL for the GUI and C++ for the back end. She has more or less completed the backend for digital gates and she is concentrating on the GUI for the digital circuits. Once completed, she will move on Flip Flops and analog circuits. She has taken a big project and she is confident she can compete most of it (Since the entire project was started so that she can use a better circuit simulation and lay out tool, she has an incentive to finish it).

Tom C and Jorel talked about how to use their project on making educational tools on how to use inexpensive TI launchpad  Their project caught the attention of http://www.43oh.com/ and their project was featured here http://www.43oh.com/2012/06/rpis-embedded-control-course-with-the-launchpad/
Tom Started of the talk by giving a whirlwind tour of circuits and embedded hardware. He and Jorel were using a TI Launchpad to control the slides! That was their first demonstration educational
topic. Tom explained both the hardware and software (code is written in C) and some of the subtler features. You have to look at their repo to get a full picture of this http://code.google.com/p/embedded-electronics/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fserial_project

(This demo/lesson uses half duplex serial interface)

Jorel talked about the second tutorial on RGB control of LED's.  You can see the description here
http://code.google.com/p/embedded-electronics/source/browse/trunk/Project_Code/RGB_Tile/main.c
Jorel was able to use both hardware and software to show RGB control. Both the demo projects on embedded control were awesome!
They are using TI's IDE for development of their software..

Zach C is continuing his work with Touch Of Math (an educational tool for teaching Mathematics for elementary school children). Zach is coding everything in JavaScript (and Zach is our resident expert on JavaScript!). Zach was able to show a small demo of his current status. Zach has implemented the history feature (for the list of commands) and has Greek symbols for equations.

There were many interesting questions/suggestions from students.  It was a very enjoyable way to spend my lunch hour on Friday.

Week 2 (6/1/2012) Summer 2012

Week 2 (6/1/2012) Summer 2012

RCOS is on to good start.

This week we had three talks.

The speakers are
1) Priti K, Rebecca and Chelsea P  Lightning round  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/lightning-round/ 


2) Sean C on Blue Mesh http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/bluemesh/


3) Asher G  on Briefcase  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/briefcase/

Prithi, Rebecca and Chelsea talked about lightning round a fast paced educational game. The first version of this game http://pdi-studio5.wp.rpi.edu/files/2011/12/Rush_More.swf  was developed as a part of PDI 5 studio. This semester they are making this project more robust, cleaning the code and making games for more more diverse subjects.  Original code was written in flash. They explored converting into scratch (due to its portability to mobile platforms - app-inventor) but decided to stick with flash and further develop. They have divided the tasks and have a detailed plan to accomplish that. There were many interesting questions/suggestions.

Sean talked about Blue Mesh an ongoing RCOS project. With the infra structure in place, Sean wants to extend BlueMesh to other devices with BlueTooth- BlueMesh will enable a mesh network among these devices. Sean is confident of the scalability of his system (but still needs a lot of testing).  There were many interesting questions.

Asher talked about his ongoing project Briefcase. He gave a demonstration of his version 1 of his project (multiple . Asher has nearly completed the version2 of Briefcase. He has also implemented (or partially) a presentation and writing code (with code highlighting features). Asher also demonstrated how it is easy develop functions for cells (using  java script code)


It was great to hear excellent talks and to witness a great student participation (by sharing their wisdom  in asking questions and suggestions)

Week 1 (5/25/2012) Summer 2012

Week 1 (5/25/2012) Summer 2012

Thanks to our donor Mr. Sean O' Sullivan '85 RCOS URP projects for the summer 2012 has started with a bang. We have around 35 students working on various projects - highest among summer semester of past years. Being the memorial day weekend, many students took the Friday(or the week off)- Still we had a sizable attendance on Friday.  Saturday 26th May , RPI had its  commencement. Very pleased to see many former RCOS students walk across the stage to receive their diplomas. Hope these students will keep in touch with current and future RCOS students and provide guidance and suggestions.

This week we had three talks.

1) Asher Glick (lead Mentor)

2) Michael Agnew on Ticket Terminal  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ticket-terminal/

3) Moorthy

Asher gave an over view of Observatory and its various features Asher, being an expert at software version control GI, volunteered to help out with GIT and its nuances.

Micahel Agnew talked about his project Ticket Terminal (http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ticket-terminal/) his summer RCOS project. His project is to provide an open source platform (with  as many features as he could develop this summer) for buying and selling tickets. He has started his project - Plans to use jQuery and PHP and mySQL as his database.

I gave my usual talk requesting them to learn new technology and science and apply them to practical problems of social importance.  My slides may be found here.

Week 15 (5/4/2012) Spring Semester

Week 15 (5/4/2012) Spring Semester

Spring 2012 Last week Group Photo (5/4/2012)

Graduating Seniors And Helpful too

This is it - The last week of RCOS meeting for the Spring 2012 and last meeting for graduating seniors. We had a fantastic semester (I can repeat like a parrot saying that RCOS students are great and hope at least some one pay attention to the work being done by the students).

We had 5 students making a presentation this week

1) Dan Vegeto - Collective Congress http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/collective-congress/

2) Jorel Lalicki, Monica Kosciuk - PICTOSS http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/pictoss/

3)  Chris Gizara, Mike Heise, Frank Kotarski -UnMake http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/unmake/

4) Sunil Kunnakkat, Brian Barnes - Android Music Sampler http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/android-music-sampler/

5) Matthew McMullen, Amelia Peterson-  Open Circuit Sim http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/open-circuit-sim/

And the videos of talks are getting uploaded in youtube in our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/rcosrpi1  (Thank you  to Jorel)

Dan Vegeto was making a steady progress and he showed a demo of his voting system. He plans to work during the summer to finish off his project.

Jorel and Monica are making a steady progress with their PICTOSS system to produce gcode for their milling machine. Most of it is working (no optimization of g code and no scaling feature yet)
They plan to finish ther system before the beginning of summer.

Mike and Frank were able to accomplish a great deal with their Unmake system. They showed a demo of their system and they were able to make emacs  and vim in a few seconds. Their back-end is generating CMAKE and they have split up the analytic to make their system efficient. They plan to make further improvements over the summer.

Sunil and Brian are making a steady progress with Android Music Sampler. Their code has not yet been pushed. There were a lot of interesting suggestions from the audience about their project.

Matthew and Amelia talked about their progress with Open Circuit SIm -  Amelia is working on the back-end and Matthew is working with open GL for the front end - These two yet are yet to be connected. According it will be done soon. Matthew and Amelia also talked about their second project for fast rendering of game objects. They have a student collaborator from Temple University. It looks that the students are involved many more projects.

I am very impressed with the quality of the projects and dedication of the students. More importantly the students are willing to help out each other and are willing to help any open source project. I am really proud of this and I am privileged to be associated with them,