A 4 hour workshop was organised for 11 2nd year engineering students from Republic Polytechnic on using the Android Smartphones and DAQ to solve real life problems. These students have learnt Python during their first year and have completed one semester of analog electronics and digital electronics. However they are unfamiliar with DAQ and have no prior Android programming experience.
They brought along their personal notebooks and 3 of the students owned Android smartphones from Samsung and Sony Experia. They were formed into 3 teams and given the following problem.
Heat Stroke Notification
“An NS man collapsed during jungle training and died of heat stroke in Brunei”. Heat stroke is defined as a body temperature of greater than 40.6 C due to environmental heat exposure with lack of thermoregulation. This is distinct from a fever, where there is a physiological increase in the temperature set point of the body.
Design a system where a person’s body temperature is monitored and when 40.6 C is exceeded, an emergency SMS with a map URL is sent. The recipient of the SMS should be able to click on the link to see on a map the location of the victim.
Although not every student had an Android smartphone, nonetheless the RemoteControl feature of the Python for Android scripting environment allows every student to complete the task using only their notebook with bluetooth (to communicate with the EMANT380 Bluetooth DAQ) and the android emulator. After testing on the notebook, they then copied their solution unmodified to one of the 3 Android smartphones for the field test.
One team’s solution is shown in the following video
Synopsis: Learn how you can build a “homebrew Wii” device that interacts with the computer graphics. In this 2 hour workshop, you will explore the use of a bluetooth gadget with some sensors for interacting with simple games and animation running on the computer screen.
Singapore Polytechnic staff were introduced to the EMANT380 Bluetooth DAQ through a 2-hour EMANT380 Bluetooth DAQ training jointly conducted by KY Chan and Pee Suat Hoon in Singapore Polytechnic on 8 October 2008 as part of the Singapore Polytechnic Magellan Staff Workshops series. 12 staff attended the training to understand the functions of Emant Bluetooth DAQ.
The lesson started with KY Chan demonstrating how Emant Bluetooth can be used together with different sensors for games development. After this half an hour demo session, Ms Pee continued with a hands-on session where participants tried to link Labview and Python programs to acquire the data collected by the EMANT380 Bluetooth DAQ.
