Had a Blast - Last Blog Post for a while Summer 2013 7-29-2013

When I joined RCOS 6 years ago, little did I know it will have such a profound effect on me. Being associated with such bright, helpful and motivated students was the highlight of my professional career (on n years) at RPI. The diversity, originality and creativity among students have to be seen to be believed.

The hackathon at The center of gravity was a blast. Here was a octocopter demo in Uncle Sam Garage

I could cite achievements and other noteworthy adaptation of our software in various places. If I were to do that, I would be yet another bean counter! The peer mentors, group decisions about etiquette, healthy competition among projects were some of the reasons RCOS made a difference in every one.

We all have to thank Mr. Sean O'Sullivan '85 for his generous donation that made all this possible. I am also thankful to Dr. Raj Raghuram, Dr. TV Raman and Dr. Robert Ingalls who encouraged me when I had doubts. Dr. Janaki Krishnamoorthy and Raju Krishnamoorthy kept me sane (or tried their best) when I was going the deep end. Support by the administrative staff is also highly appreciated.

Hope to return to see a better and improved RCOS in Fall 2014.

Memories! Memories!! Memories!!!

Week 15 (5/7/2013) and (5/10/2013) Spring Semester

Week 15 (5/7/2013) and (5/10/2013) Spring Semester

This is the last week of the semester. We had two meetings this week - on Tuesday and on Friday.

On Tuesday Rob Escriva '10 (and a current graduate student at Cornell University) talked about HyperDex  http://hyperdex.org/ and his Github repsotiry is in  https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex Hyperdex is a nosql key value store which supports atomic transactions, consistency, atomicity and durability. Rob gave a lucid presentation and topped with a demo. Rob also demonstrated the high performance of HyperDex on sample data sets and queries. Rob's talk was well attended and students asked a number of pertinent questions.

On Friday we had student presentations giving their second rounds of talks.

  

1) Jordan Yamada, Bharath Santhosh - Alfred - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/alfred/

2)  Andrew Karnani, Vera Axelrod , Colin Steifel - YAExS - Yet Another Exam Scheduler http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/yet-another-exam-scheduler-yaexs/

3) Alex Freska, Ian McLoughlin - Flowur http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/flowur/

4)  Joshua Makinen, Steven Hammar - Resistance Color Scanner - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/resistance-color-scanner/

5) Austin McGuire, Kevin Fung, Tianyi Chen, Daniel Fellzardo - Rate My Stream

http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rate-my-stream/

Jordan Bharath and Kyle talked about the current status of Alfred and their progress on it. One of the group members will be working during Summer to complete.

Andrew, Vera and Colin talked about their progress and problems in YAExS. One of the difficulties was with the library they used and the other was getting the relevant data.

Alex and Ian talked about Flowur. They had some minor problem with Layout. Alex is planning to work during summer to release a version. Ian will be working with RCOS on ThreeD layout.

Joshua and Steven talked about resistance color scanner. They spent time in learning development tools for Andoid. They also developed a prototype Python program to get the resistance color scanner working. They learnt about openCV (thanks to Bharath) and they plan to develop Android application during summer.

Austin, Kevin Daniel (and) Tianyi talked about RateMyStream project. Since they divided their project they resulted both useful ad hurt their progress. Resolving an authentication bug took some time. They learned a lot in doing this project.

We had a fantastic semester. I might have learned more than what students might have learned.

It was a great semester and a learning expereince.

Week 12 (4/16/2013) Spring 2013

Week 12 (4/16/2013) Spring 2013

With the Grand Marshal week behind, we are in the final stretch of the semester. We had our usual set of fine speakers.

1)  Stephen Silber and Steven Perkins RPIMoble  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-mobile/

2) Christian Johnson RPI Directory http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-directory-app/

3) Ethan Bond, Raymond Jacobson Instant Dropbox Syracuse Hackathon

4)  Diogo Moitinho de Almeida, Bharath Santosh, Zach Jablons,  Puckmen in Kaggle Compettion

5) Diogo Moitinho de Almeida, Bharath Santosh ProtoML http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/protoml/

6) Tim McMullen, Awesome Wav http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/awesome-wav/

Stephen and Steve talked about their ongoing RPIMobile project. They have been progressing along. With UPE's server, they are planning to have their version in AppStore. Recent improvements include a nice event notifier, and an improved campus map with pins. They showed a demo of their system.

Christian resolved/helped fix the bug with google app-engine API. RPIDirectory is functioning again. Christian has incorporated a cool PhotoMap feature. You can check out here in http://rpidirectory.appspot.com/photomap

Ethan and Raymond talked about their experiences in participating in a hackathon in Syracuse. They won the second prize and a raspberry pi.  Their project involved an implementation of a fast drop box like feature for sharing (one need not download drop box) and just share an url. They implemented the whole system in a day (using ruby on rails)

Diogo, Bharath and Zach talked about their experiences in kaggle http://www.kaggle.com/ competition (machine learning) recently. They have decided the blue book value of bulldozers based the past data. they talked about their different techniques, what caused problems, and about bad data. Despite all this, the team puckman finished 101th among 478 teams  

http://www.kaggle.com/c/bluebook-for-bulldozers/leaderboard  (They slipped from the previous position of 27)

Diogo, Bharath also talked about their RCOS project ProtoML - They used many of the features of PortoML for their Kaggles competition. They showed a demo of their system.

Tim talked about his successful efforts in covering his steganography program Awesome Wav to work using threads. He showed a demo of his system. Tim has to resort to using PThreads for threads. Tim elaborated  his difficulties with the file i/o and how he resolved most of them.

As usual there were many interesting questions and suggestions. It was a great learning expereience for me as usual. I will be missing this next two weeks.

Week 11 (4/9/2013) Spring 2013

Week 11 (4/9/2013) Spring 2013

Last week was an action packed week will be an understatement - With spring weather teasing us and end of the semester looming up on us,  our hands were full with activities. One of the high lights among many  was the use rpi-rfid reader http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rensselaer-phrequency-identification/  to take attendance.  And of course Alfred  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/alfred/ was on display during accepted students day. I will be remiss if I did not mention the cool rcos cube (image above) with rcos on sides and an open hardware and one software other two sides (Thanks Jorel for designing and making the cube). We have our usual talks by the students

1) Matt Zanchelli  Sonar http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sonar/

2) Mike Agnew - Schenectady Online Reservation System http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/reserveme/

3) Shawn Denbow, Brendan Clark Dr. Memory http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/dr-memory/

4) Austin Gulati - University Hacker Olympics

5) Chris Celi - Topsoil  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/topsoil/

6) Jorel Lalick, Monica Kosciuk, Justin Jones, Jonah Gruber, Brian Barnes OpenSourceSpectrometer http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/open-source-spectrometer/

Matt has been doing a lot of cool and interesting projects.  His muting system announcemnets (like email notification in Macs) is a very cool project. I will not be able to give adequate justification of his projects by writing tidbits.  He has posted his slides here - Please read it. It is awesome and  his demos were impressive.

Mike has been progressing with his PermitMe/ReserveMe . Mike has met with Schenectady municipal officials. Mike has a simple UI and he has been making use of twitter bootstrap.  Mike hopes to release his system before summer.

Shawn and Brendan have made a lot of progress with Dr. Memory. Shawn is working on system calls for win 32 and Brendan has been documenting the system calls.

Austin briefly talked about the advantages of participating Hacker Olympics (He participated last year). Hacker Olympics (local chapter) was held yesterday (April 13, 2013)

Chris has been making progress with his idea sharing/growing project. He has implemented most of his work (using Ruby on Rails)

Jorel, Jusin, Jonah, Brian and (Monica) talked about their Open Source Hardware/Software Spectrometer. They have made prototype using arduino. They were able to get good results so far. Many high schools are interested in their spectrometer.

It has been a tremendous educational experience for me  Both presentations and questions were excellent. It was a well spent Tuesday evening as usual.

 

Week 10 (4/2/2013) Spring 2013

Week 10 (4/2/2013)  Spring 2013

We have been progressing along and we are already on tenth week of the spring semester. It has also been very hectic - with the undergraduate symposium on Wednesday 4/3/2013. (we had 4 talks and 4 poster presentations from RCOS). 

We had two guest presentations and four students presentations.

1) Prof. Jason Kuruzovich (Guest speaker)

2)  Corey Leveen (Guest Speaker)

3) David Vorrick, Forest Trimble, Luke Champine, Sean Moran and Wyler McAninch-Ruenzi  Mkvsynth http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/mkvsynth/

4) Colin Rice - Bit Toll  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/bittoll/

5) Colin Kuebler - Koala http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/koala/

6) Tor Hagemann - libalexandria http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/libalexandria/

Jason talked about collaboration of RCOS and Servino center. Already many RCOS students participate with Servino center and the students.   He also encouraged RCOS students to participate in hackathon in Syracuse (NY) this Saturday. Also he was instrumental in adapting Observatory (dashboard software developed by former RCOS members Nate Stedman, Colin Sullivan and Tim Horton) for Foundry (Servino center). David Goldschmidt is on top of this collaborative effort.

Corey talked about his start up MuchMunch and pitched a CTO position for RCOS students.
You can see details about munch munch here  and its website is here

David, Forest, Luke, Sean and Wyler talked about their progress on video editor for linux operating systems. David has made progress on the back end.  The script end is going on well. The gui is also progressing well - They have almost demoed their system.

Colin R gave a scintillating practice talk (practice talk) for his UGRS presentation. Colin has progressed greatly and he gave a fantastic presentation. Colin R has used Haskell for implementation. He has almost completed his project.

Colin K has been working on web chat for programmers using Javascipt (and node.js) - He demoed his system. Colin will eventually integrate this in his Koala system. This will enable easier co-operation among novice/inexperienced programmers.

Tor talked about his libAlexandria project. Tor has more or less completed his libraries. Currently he has been hoping others will use his library for machine learning tasks.

As usual we had a fascinating session with lots of interesting participation/questions/suggestions from students. As usual I learned a lot.

Week 9 (3/29/2013) Spring 2013

Week 9 (3/29/2013) Spring 2013

Semester is going in full steam and the seniors are eager to graduate and the rest are thinking of their summer internship. As usual all of them want to finish their exams/projects and working hard towards that.

We have our usual talks. The following students presented their talks

1) Rachael Redner, Nick Timakondu and Asher  Glick Zadatak http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/zadatak-scheduler-app/

2) Scott Silber, Stephen Perkins RPI Mobile http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-mobile/


3) Alex Freska, (Ian Mcloughlin - where are you in Observatory dashboard) FlowUR  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/flowur/

4) Jordan Yamada and Bharath Santhosh Alfred http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/alfred

Rachael, Nick and Asher talked about Zadatak. Rachael is working on a new GUI for their application (in Android). She showed a nice demo of that. Nick is working on scheduling (back end) - He ran into some difficulties (algorithmic) and he has found a way to overcome. Asher is working on the interface between front and back ends. They expect an alpha release by the end of this semester.

Scott and Stephen talked about their RPI Mobile. They are progressing along well. They plan to include events. Steve is working on the server side (extending James McM's contribution).  UPE has promised to provide the servers for hosting their persistent data.

Alex and Ian talked about FlowUR. Their project is going smoothly. Alex s working on the algorithms for lay out. Ian is working on making this as a 3D appl.

Jordan and Bharath talked about Aflred, a beverage serving Robot. Jordan (and others) are working on the mechanical design and their implementation  They have completed the design in paper and they have started their implementation. They have thought through sensor problems and tires, breaks etc. Bharath is working on the software side (working with a tablet on Alfred). Alfred is supposed to be used on April 13th on accepted students day. Hopefully everything will work out.

Again an impressive talks and useful sharing of knowledge and suggestions made my day!

Week 8 (3/19/2013) Spring 2013

Week 8 (3/19/2013) Spring 2013

 Deers braving snow-storm in Troy

Despite the snow storms string Monday and lasting through mid Wednesday (3/21/2013-3/23/2013), RCOS meeting went as planned.  The attendance is pretty good and the presentations were awesome as usual. We had seven presentations this week:

1) Matt O'Brien-Archer'sFriend http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/archers-friend/

2) Austin McGuire, Daniel Felizardo, Tianyi Chen and Kevin Fung- Rate My Stream  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rate-my-stream/

3) Mike Agnew - Schenectady Online Reservation System (ReserveMe/PermitMe)  - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/reserveme/

4) Zachary Clapper Penguin Electronics Inventory Management System http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/penguin-electronics-inventory-management-system/

5) Varun Madiath - Haskell SSH Client  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/haskell-ssh-client/

6) Dan Vegeto, Jesse Freitas, Doug Norton and Eric Zang - Collective Congress  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/collective-congress/

7) Joshua Makinen and Stephen Hammer - Resistance Color Scanner http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/resistance-color-scanner/

Matt O has been progressing  along with his Archer's friend. He has been doing his implementations on Android 4.1 and up. He hopes to release his version of the software before the end of this semester.

Rate my stream team have been progressing along well. They even showed a demo of their system. They have even posted their slides in their blog! 

Mike A's progress with ReserveMe has been going well. He has met with Schenectady Council and they are satisfied with his project. His software is planning to be used this summer.

Zach's project has been hampered by the lack of progress in the back end of the system. Zach has been progressing along with GUI and his javascript code.

Varun and Bharath talked about ssh client library for Haskell.  They have implemented  handshaking protocol and showed a demo.

Collective Congress group is progressing along well. They have modularized their system and rewritten many of their original code. They hope to have an alpha version by the end of the semester.

Resistance color scanning is making a dent - They are trying to get the resistance (as an android) by scanning their color code - They are planning to good image processing library to improve their system -

It was a hectic Tuesday - but well attended and a lot accomplished.