Bifurcation..

Direction 1

I worked through the breadboard design of the RFID Reader; it was interesting and I am ready to move forward with it. However, as I was looking into getting the layout done for this design I was contacted by a colleague from UCCS. He had a project he wanted to work on,. called Hummingbird. The overview of what the project is supposed to do is shown below:

This is the overview of how the system could work on a given farm. Each node will send environmental data in a 'mesh' like configuration. Then the data will be sent to a sever and mapped onto a heat map and the statistics of the environment will be made available to the user.

We are going to design a wireless system capable of giving real-time flora-health and environmental statistics to farmers.  I've been working on this project with Miguel for a couple of months now and we are making steady progress.The prototype code for the embedded system is complete (in C#) and the schematic is also complete.

This is the main hub for the prototype. I'm using all open source hardware. This will allow me to quickly convert the schematic into a PCA unique to Hummingbird.  I'm also developing the sensor system but that is proprietary :-D 

We can probably connect to the server soon but that is upto Miguel. I'm also working on getting some housings made for this project. It is our goal to turn this into a business.

Direction 2

Additionally I've started working on a Google Glass project.

Where as I'm playing a major role in doing the hardware design on Hummignbird on the Glass project I'm (learning to) code Java for Android. Android is a really great operating system; it is fairly low-weight for the amount of flexibility it offers.  I'm working with a wold-renown :-) dentist to gain understanding on the 'customer' base and what their needs are. We have drafted a user specification guide.  There are some key issues that we will need to over come with this project. Mainly the optics and the complex vocabulary of the dental industry will need to be addressed.

Looking ahead

I'm interested to see which project wins. So far the first project is moving a long more quickly. I'm new to Android and so the Glass project is more challenging.  The next step for hummingbird is to get the sensor design complete. The next step for Glass is to get OpenCV for android loaded into my GlassApp.