Since the last post I’ve been doing some research into RFID, Arduino and other project related things. I’ve also been experimenting with the UP! 3D printer, making small interconnecting and moving parts so we have an understanding of the quality we can expect. These tests have gone quite well so far, I’ve been impressed with the quality of the work the printer has produced. Next week I’m going to try dying some of the parts to introduce some colour to the prints but I’ve also ordered some different colours of filament which should arrive soon. Other experiments are going to be embedding objects in prints, magnets for instance, and some small nuts and bolts for connecting parts together.
This week-end I’ve started to experiment with Arduino, this technology will enable us to produce working digital and interactive prototypes. I won’t go into detail but this is going to be a really interesting area for me to work in, not only on the project but in my own practice as well.
The first UP! / Arduino task was to make a little box to house the Arduino UNO board. It can be seen in the images below, it works well but one of my board securing posts is a little off line so the board is only secured by 3 screws instead of 4, (see the 2nd image), I’ve moved the 4th post in the CAD model and posted the .stl under the ‘download tab’ for anyone who’s interested in printing it. I’ve put 4 little self adhesive silicon feet on it as well so it doesn’t slip around on work surfaces. The holes for the retaining screws need to be drilled and I used 3 self tapping screws (I removed from an old remote control) to hold the board but really, 2 screws would probably be enough to hold it in place.
Arduino is a lot of fun but it’s also got serious applications as far as the project and creating working prototypes goes. This became obvious to me on the trip to the Met office where I saw that Arduino could be used to change the world!
Anyway, it’s back to the electronics for me, no rest for the curious!
A couple of identity management stories have caught my eye this week. The first is regarding the tagging of sex offenders when they are released into the community.
A man was released into the community in the North East of Scotland after serving a sentence for a previous offence and within days had tried to murder a woman in a public park in order to get access to her grandchildren who were, at the time, in her care.
A report into the case has just been published and calls for the tracking of some offenders by satellite as a way of limiting the possibility of this type of thing reoccurring. Presumably this tracking will involve GPS technology and the use of some type of tagging, similar to existing offender tags. This would allow real-time tracking and make locating people quicker and easier, however, I doubt it will stop people from trying to re-offend in the way this man did. A tag wouldn’t stop the actual attack -would it?
I doubt there will be much resistance to this type of tag from the general public if they think it’ll be a useful tool to stop sex offenders re-offending, however, would it be a success? Full story here.
The other story popped into view this morning and involves Facebook. People have reported that bouncers (doormen/women) have been demanding to see Facebook profiles to confirm the identities and ages of people trying to get into nightclubs. I suppose that if this had been a one-off challenge by a bouncer it probably would work. The prospective clubber would have either confirmed their age or been caught out, however, if it’s being done as a matter of routine what’s to stop underage people with fake ID’s setting up fake Facebook accounts to back-up their ID’s? Full story here
The NASA international space apps challenge was a global event held over the 21st $ 22nd of April. I went to the Met Office in Exeter with a couple of Dundee University colleagues, Jon Rogers and Tom Metcalfe. This was my first time at an event like this so I had no idea what to expect or what I’d be doing, even Jon & Tom (veterans at this type of thing) were mostly in the dark about this one. I think the mystery added to the sense of anticipation, or should that be fear!
We arrived at the Met Office at around 8am on the Saturday morning and got our first look at this fantastic building. It wasn’t really what I expected, my knowledge of the Met Office was non-existent and until then my impression of it was a small room somewhere near the roof of the BBC TV center in London! The signage helped to build the anticipation.
Image Credit - Jon Rogers
Once inside the building we were greeted by very welcoming Met Office staff who showed us to a space we could use over the week-end. We dropped out things in our new home and before being taken to a lecture theatre for an initial briefing about security etc. we were fed and watered! This was going to be a great week-end!
If you look at the event site you’ll see there were a large number of challenges that had been set for the week-end, these challenges were starting points and provided a focus to form a team around. Teams would then be free to generate ideas for development into solutions for the various challenges. One of the challenges #welovedata was sponsored by Jon Rogers, Sandra Wilson and David McGloin, it was this challenge we were going to work on but our outcomes and solutions were entirely dependent on the direction the team took over the week-end.
After the initial lectures were over we quickly set up in our space and people began to drift in to see what we were all about. It didn’t take long for others to get involved and we were soon joined by Omar Jamil, Rupa Chivers, Andy Wood, and Clinton Montague. The team also had another member, Josh Trotter-Wanner from Canada who kept in touch online.
After some initial brain storming we decided that we would have fun by creating something fun, combine it with science and hack our environment. The idea began with a kids bath time toy, we were inspired by a water feature in the building. What do kids play with in the bath? Rubber ducks of course! Science inspiration? Well that comes from the International Space Station (ISS).
The water feature in Met Office atrium
Image credit - Dougie Kinnear
Ripples in the water had to be a feature, we wondered if the space station could cause these and so members of the team got to work on putting together a ripple generator that would be started and stopped by the ISS going overhead. Other team members started writing the code and assembling the electronics to make it happen and I got on to making the duck a reality using CAD software and an UP3D printer. Of course our duck wouldn’t have wings, it would have solar panels because it was going to be the ISS Duck.
The images below show the ripple generator being installed and tested.
Image Credit - Dougie Kinnear
Image credit - Dougie Kinnear
Next are a couple of images of the team at work during the event, writing code, developing ideas etc.
Image credit – Dougie Kinnear
Image credit - Dougie Kinnear
The next image shows the UP3D printer getting started on the first ISS Duck print.
Image credit - Dougie Kinnear
And the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the ISS Duck! .stl download link in the meun bar at the top of the page
Image credit - Jon Rogers
Once all the making was done, the coders and Arduino builders had worked their magic and we’d had a couple of test runs all we had to do was sit back and wait for the ISS to pass over our location…
This clip is our first test using an actual pass of the ISS to set off the wave generator.
While we were working we soon became aware that we had someone very special in our midst. We were in the presence of the Director of Human Space Flight from the Unlimited Space agency – Jon Spooner. Jon (image below) had been set the challenge of hacking his way into space by the 1pm on the 22nd. #welovedata were about to begin our next challenge!
Image credit - Dougie Kinnear
After some discussion we came up with the idea that we could get a mini Jon 3D print up to at least the edge of space on a Met Office balloon. The Met Office were keen to facilitate this (it was their idea really) and it seemed to be a plan, however, the logistics meant that it couldn’t happen this week-end, however, it is going to happen. This will be the subject of another post because even as I write the story is developing, more to follow…
Over the week-end Jon not only entertained us he also educated us a bit about Human Space flight, but, most importantly he inspired us.
Our main project, the serious bit, began to evolve as we interacted with Jon. We decided to create something that would benefit people, after all that was the main point of the whole event. We came up with a device that could give people advance notice of pollen counts in their location. Asthma is something that affects huge numbers of people and through group discussion we decided to go with this as a theme. we looked for data online that we could source pollen levels from and did a 3D print of a pollen capsule to house LED’s that would indicate pollen levels. We envisage a final product that would have different pollen capsules indicating different pollen types and levels but for the prototype we’d create one multi-coloured specimin. The globe would give around 12 hours advance notice of the pollen count for the users particular location.
To test the theory and the code for this we decided to print a bracelet for Jon Spooner to wear. The idea was that if we could get him trending on Twitter the bracelet would glow and he’s make it into space. The bracelet would incorporate the mini Jon print and the team set to work.
The next image shows the bracelet hooked up to the Arduino kit
Image credit Jon Rogers
And the next image is the one that was used on Twitter to help spread the word. Get Jon Spooner into space!
Image credit - Jon Rogers
And the bracelet glowing
Image credit - Jon Spooner
And Jon Spooner glowing – no Photoshopping fakery here, this is natures work!
Image credit - Omar Jamil
This led to the pollen indicator print and the final outcome for our team. We had a number of ideas about the feasibility of the product including building in location sensors via IP addresses or utilising GPS data so that area specific data can be read from the net, however, in the time we had for the project we were only able to produce a scaled down prototype although our concept is fully achievable.
The image below shows the pollen capsule hooked up to the Arduino gear, it’s been activated by online data.
Image credit - Dougie Kinnear
With the lights out!
Image credit - Dougie Kinnear
So this was nearly the end of the week-end. We finished with all of the Exeter teams giving a presentation in the lecture theatre in from of a judging panel who were going to pick 2 teams to go forward into the Global space apps challenge competition. I’m very proud to say our team was one of the two picked and look forward to finding out where we come in that.
As I said earlier plans are afoot to get Jon Spooner into space and I’ll blog about that another time. I’ll post some links below to other pages and stories I’ve seen about the event, you’ll get links to the other team members from their Twitter accounts, have a look they’re a great bunch of talented and creative people.
Maybe other team members can post their own links in the form of a comment (I moderate comments so they may not appear straight away)
Lastly I’d like to thank Jon Rogers for getting me involved in the event and I’d also like to give my sincere thanks to the Met Office and all of the folks there who made this event happen, you were and continue to be, awesome.
I’ve been messing about with Rhino and Keyshot 3, a recent purchase. The educational license includes animation this time and it looks really good. I’m looking forward to getting more practice with it.
Hit refresh to re-run the clip. Try pausing the animation and scanning the code!
The image below shows the ring without the QR code. The idea behind the ring comes from medieval seal matrix rings, used to make a mark in wax to seal documents etc. This ring is obviously scanned rather than an impression being made although if the code was applied as a negative then it could also be used as a seal or stamp.
In an earlier post I linked to an article about the Governments plans to store our internet and e-mail use. I’ve read in other articles and heard comments on TV that run along the lines of ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to be scared of’. This is often used when discussing things that the general public might perceive as a threat to their privacy etc. I suppose in an ideal world this might be true, however, we don’t live in an ideal world.
Many, if not the vast majority of people, will have nothing to hide, but what happens if you have something to sell? As I understand it there will be a lot of people within different organisations involved in collecting this data. For instance my web and e-mail use involves my ISP, my e-mail hosting company, my employers ISP’s and their mail platforms etc. Plus there are the companies that my contacts interact with. That’s a lot of companies, how can we and the Government be sure that none of these companies employee’s wouldn’t be averse to making a quick bit of cash with our data? The mobile phone hacking scandal shows that there are people out there who are willing to break the law for their own interests, even when ‘you have nothing to hide’.
I suppose that it’s possible at the moment for people working in these companies to have a look at where people are surfing to or break into mail boxes on their companies servers but the new plans are different, all of our data is going to be collected, collated and brought together in one place. That will make it very easy for someone to identify it and take advantage of anything they find.
To highlight this, in the last couple of days this story has broken. An airline employee passing passenger information to paparazzi. Presumably these passengers ‘had nothing to hide’, however, it would appear their travel plans became a commodity to be sold.
So it’s clear from the above example and the phone hacking scandal that you don’t need to have anything to hide to have your privacy invaded, you just need to have something that someone, somewhere, can assign a value to.
I’ve seen a few articles recently about fingerprint scanners becoming available for to the public at large. One interesting story is the use of scanners to manage the identity of young people in Stoke-on-Trent who want to buy alcohol. Initially the person has to use a passport or driving licence to prove they are over 18 then their finger is scanned and the details stored. The next time they want to buy alcohol they just need to have their finger re-scanned. Read more on this story.
BBC technology report that Sony has filed a patent for a smart phone based fingerprint scanner, it’s safe to assume that they won’t be the only company at this and I would expect this to become the norm in the near future.
Adafruit industries have added an Arduino compatible fingerprint sensor (pictured above) to their huge range of electronic goods. I have a feeling I’ll be doing some experiments with this in the coming months.
One of the biggest issues with body related wearables and indeed implants is a power source that doesn’t need to be hard wired. German scientists may have the answer
A new wireless system using magnetic coupling can transmit power to devices up to 20 inches away and it’s capable of passing through a variety of materials, including muscle and bone.
So what is acceptable when it comes to privacy, either real or virtual? Are the governments new plans for logging internet use acceptable or a step too far? Is the amount of data that can be gleaned from store loyalty cards minimal or intrusive?
The following links relate to privacy issues
The main issue at the moment is the Governments plans to monitor and store the web usage of everyone in the UK.
Data stored by commercial organisations is the topic of this BBC article, it discusses Tesco, Google and TfL’s Oyster card.
This Guardian article discusses the Conservative Governments decision to scrap National ID cards.
No2ID is a single issue campaign organisation that works against what it sees as state control of personal identity.
Staying with the state, this article discusses a Government decision to allow the storage of UK driver details offshore, India to be exact. This means that the personal details of every driver in the UK will be held on offshore servers, this can include credit/debit card details. This related article discusses concerns over the security in offshore call centres
Tougher privacy laws are the subject of another Guardian article. It suggests that while MP’s are all for freedom of expression their recommendations regarding privacy laws say otherwise.
This BBC article discusses the withdrawal of an app called ‘Girls around me’ that used readily available social network information to show the user images and details of girls in their locality!
I’ve decided to change my site layout. This will now be my new front-page and access to all of my previous sites will be from here. All of the previous work will be held under Archives in the main menu. I’m going to blog here about wearables, technology and personal possessions along with anything else that I come across that interests me in the coming months. At the moment the site is still being developed but it will be fully functional in the next few days.
