Colin Smith- 4th year project: RFID

Goodbye!

2008-06-03T22:45:00.001+01:00

Hi all. Finally remembered to sign off on the blog! Project is done report is in and results are already out :-) Hope you enjoyed the show.

Nearly There

2008-04-30T19:49:00.002+01:00

Ok im way behind on my blogging so heres what i've been up to. Fixed the problem i was having with the LCD. Its now displaying the cues. From an implementation point of view im pretty much done. I think i might make a few changes to the python code but nothing major. I also want to tidy up the website and the way cues are displayed, again only a few small changes. I'll get this done Saturday. Final draft of report is due Friday so i've a few things to finish this evening. Tomorrow i've to get the final evaluation done and added to the report along with a data flow diagram. Hopefully that will be the final draft done. Wish me luck :-)

Pouch

2008-04-22T21:04:00.002+01:00

Ok got the pouch finished today, which somehow took hours. Sewing is really hard. Also soldered the circuit and went to hook up everything but ran into a slight snag. Ok so theres two serial ports on the gumstix, one for the LCD and one for RFID reader. Reader only works on second one for some reason so i had to use the first for the LCD but it turns out when the gumstix boots up it outputs its startup messages on the first port, which looks like crazy code on the screen, so i tried getting them both to work off the second port but no luck. I decided then to just have two different batteries one for reader and gumstix, powering gumstix will just be for demos and stuff if i dont want it plugged in all the time, then second battery powers the screen. Turning on the screen seperatly avoids the crazy output when the gumstix boots. Ok thats fine for now however there seems to be something funny going on with the code now. RFID stuff works but not all messages are being sent to the screen. I cant see whats wrong at all. I'll give my brain a break from it and take another look tomorrow. Will make a short survey like thing before i go to bed about the cues evaluation and get some people to do it tomorrow.

LCD update

2008-04-19T15:28:00.002+01:00

Finished off a spot of coding today. The LCD will now display the time and date of when u last had something. It does this in a loop. The screen only gives 32 characters, and doesnt scroll which i initially thought, so the info it displays is fairly simple. Just the item with the date and time of when u last had it. The only thing left to do with this is to solder its circuit properly. I'll do this next week when im making the pouch. Also want to look into getting the LCD backlight working, not that its really important but it looks better. It works for its self testing setting but not when i send data to it. I think i recall seeing a list of codes online somewhere to make it do different things so i'll have a look for this. I finished off my second draft of the report today and sent it to Graeme. For next week i want to do the survey for the readable cues evaluation, make the pouch and test it, and also now that i have a bit extra time left i will take another look into the bluetooth and see if i can get it workin. Wish me luck!

Progress... Finally!!

2008-04-17T15:51:00.002+01:00

Ok finally a good day. I started off today writing a C program to open the Gumstix's serial port and send data to the LCD. Was'nt too bad in the end, thanks for the sample code Steve, and seemed to be running fine but nothing was being displayed on screen? I was testing this on fedora 6 first because you cant compile anything on the Gumstix. Anyway i decided to just try the code on the gumstix but it didnt like it one bit. Before fixing this i decided to make sure data was actually getting to the screen. I went over the circuit again and it turned out i had the transistor the wrong way round. The LCD was still being powered so i didnt realise. Anyway i fixed this and tested it by just echoing strings to the serial port. The screens cursor seemed to react so i figured it was getting data now. Just for the craic i thought i'd try python again because it connects to the serial and sends data in just two lines of code, and also you can set the correct connection bit rate which might have had something to do with echo not really working. Well anyway it worked!! Its also super handy that i can use python because i can edit the python script which processes tag reads to also send data to the screen. Im just not sure yet what actual info im gonna display???? :-/

Update

2008-04-16T15:27:00.003+01:00

Ok just a quick update on whats happening. The bluetooth work is going on hold for the moment as its proven very difficult to find a stable buildroot with wireless and bluetooth capabilities. I have a backup plan for later if theres time. Started work on the LCD screen. It was pretty straightforward to bulid the circuit for connecting it however programming with it has proven difficult. I initially tried python with pySerial but didnt get any results. Im going to try C next which i was going to work on today however i forgot that the lab computers have security on the serial ports in Linux. It seems serial ports are a security risk in linux and you can use it to access data. Nevermind i can work on it tomorrow at home. This has given me time to work on my report and i should be pretty much finished my second draft today. I also took some time to get some feedback on what i could call my system. This was less productive...
Suggestions so far are:

The Colinator
Find your crap if you lose it machine
Come find with Colin
Find that bitch
Colon
Find me
Locate -"This already exists :-/"

A big thanks to everyone for their amazing suggestions...

Still going bald

2008-04-08T10:31:00.002+01:00

Ok i think everything that could possibly go wrong at this point has gone wrong so its all up hill from here lol. Had some trouble flashing buildroot yesterday. First filesystem didnt work but i think thats because i didnt pick right format for gumstix. Second one was too big, it has to be less than 16mb. Finally have a proper one just need to flash it over. The annoying thing is all these things take hours. Had to leave buildroot running all night. It also didnt help that my laptop decided to stop working half way through all this. It turns out if the root folder is completely full, then linux cant boot properly. On the plus side i know how to flash the filesystem correctly now, its incredibly simple using hyperterminal in windows, which is what i had anyway to begin with. Aghhh! Ok deep breaths... :-) Also i updated uboot so thats much easier for flashing file system now. Also i had time to go over programming with bluetooth and python again and it seems very straightforward. So for today i need a break from this and will concentrate on my report, but am still determined to get the bluetooth part finished by tomorrow or thursaday!

Tearing my hair out :-)

2008-04-04T23:36:00.002+01:00

Ok my goal today was to install the new file system on the gumstix. I built the file system ok then ran into problems when it came to flashing it to the Gumstix. The method i was going to use was to flash it from the cf card however it doesn't work. This seems to be due to the version of u-boot installed on the Gumstix. This can be updated but theres lots of warnings that it would seriously mess up the gumstix if it goes wrong so im not doin that. Next option is to flash it over serial. My laptop does'nt have a serial connection so i decided to put linux on my pc. Installed ok but then i could'nt use the monitor because it turns out there is some driver conflict or problem with nvidia graphics cards. Its very hard to use computers without monitors. Grrrr! Anyway what i then did was install a virtual machine in xp and am loading a linux image on it. Of course it doesn't have kermit installed. I feel like i've been here before hmmmm. I've lost the will to live at this point so i'll come back to it :-)

Meeting/ Work schedule

2008-04-04T12:21:00.002+01:00

Had a meeting yesterday with Lorcan, Steve, and Graeme to talk about the interim report and the project. We talked about how there will be four drafts for the final report. My first one will go to Lorcan, next two to Steve and Graeme and final draft to Lorcan. I've started working on my first draft and am hoping to have it ready by next Tuesday or Wednesday. We discussed the presentations briefly, which will be worked on in the final week after reports are handed in. I also got a spare wifistix and console-st from Lorcan. Unfortunately there was no spare Gumstix but this shouldn't be a problem. I'm currently working on installing the new file system on the Gumstix but it takes some time so I'll blog later on how it turns out. If this goes well im hoping to have the Bluetooth component finished also by next Tuesday or Wednesday. This will give me plenty of time to work with the LCD screen which im guessing will be the trickiest part overall. Heres my workplan:

1st April - 9th April: Bluetooth component and first report draft. If Bluetooth component cant be completed by the 9th I will continue working on it until the 13th.
10th April - 27th April: LCD component. If I need more time on this I can continue working up until the 4th of May.
13th April - 17th April: Second report Draft
20th April - 24th April: Third report draft
28th April - 8th May: Work on final draft
8th May - 15th: Presentation preparation

The time periods for completing report drafts are somewhat flexible. My aim is to do at least half an hour work on the report each working day.

Its that time again

2008-04-02T16:42:00.005+01:00

Ok its been a while since i've been blogging so here's a big update. So theres roughly bout 5 weeks left to get the project done and i've set myself four main goals. First is to use the Gumstixs bluetooth to keep track of interactions with people based in their phone id and also locations in the form of static bluetooth nodes, more on this later! Next will be to do something clever with a built in screen, need to give this more thought on what exactly it will do which i'll decide once the bluetooth is setup. Also I need to go back to the cues and the website and fix them up with the new data and stuff, maybe add some frills to it if theres time. Last thing is getting the report finished :-)

I've been working on the bluetooth component for the last few days and ran into a few problems. First of all using python it should be quite simple to take in bluetooth ID'd as variables then trnsmit them the same way as the tag reads to the server. Problem is the current
gumstix configuration or filesystem does'nt have certain components i need, which are needed to use bluetooth API in python. After fighting with my laptop a little i have buildroot installed which i'll use to make a new filesystem with all the things i need and send it to the Gumstix. I really didnt want to dabble with buildroot but its actually not so scary now that i've gotten a chance to play with it. I'll get a second gumstix off Lorcan tomorrow so i can do this without making a mess of the Gumstix i already have. Hopefully it will all work well, only problem I can see is setting up the existing code for reading tag data on the new Gumstix so that it still works ok. Wish me luck!

Fun with cues

2008-02-14T14:27:00.002Z

Took a break from assignment madness today and took a look at the cues to see if i could make them more advanced, or more human readable. Now instead of just printing out a TIMESTAMP it says things like: "You last had your phone just after five" and "you last had your keys at a quarter to seven." Once i realised timestamp is 24 hour clock and not twelve, ooops, it all worked fine. Im happy enough with these for the moment. I think i'll also add something with the date. Instead of just saying "you had whatever on: 12/02/2008" it could say "you last had whatever last tuesday"

Meetings

2008-02-12T21:01:00.001Z

Hi all. Had a meeting with Lorcan yesterday to discuss the presentations and whats happening next with the project. Lorcan was happy with how the presentation went, I just need to handle me nerves better :-) We also talked about my work plan for the project over the next few months. Im gonna focus more on course work for the moment and do some project stuff at weekends maybe. Theres three main things I want to work on. The cues need to be more advanced so im gonna look at this at the weekend. I'll be looking into using bluetooth which will be able to register people the system comes into contact with and also static blutooth locations. The last and probably most difficult part will be to integrate an LCD screen to the system. Have not decided exactly how this will be used yet, but want to get the other two parts out of the way first.

Presentations 2

2008-02-06T11:19:00.000Z

We had our second fourth year project presentations yesterday. The idea was for everyone to present their work so far and also to give a demonstration. There was a bigger group this time watching the presentations but they all went really well. After everyone had finished presenting everyone gave practical demos of their work, which was cool taking a look at the other projects. Im happy with how my prototype is so far but i need to start thinking about what i want to do with it next. Got some cool ideas from Steve about using bluetooth so i'll be looking into this aswell. We have an interim report due in a months time so its probably not a bad idea to look at that now if i get a chance

Loose Ends

2008-01-17T18:57:00.001Z

Went back to my php/mysql code today and fixed up a few more problems I was having. So at this stage with the website you can pick which object you lost and it will tell you when you last had it and what items you did have at that time. So far I've just been testing with three items but I can add more easily and it will work the same.

I've started trying to make the hardware more compact and i've managed to fit the circuit inside the gumstix box. Barely! Lorcan mentioned a possible problem with heat coming from the circuits voltage regulator. I checked the gumstix specs and its good in temperatures between 0 and 85 degrees so it will be fine. I've posted a pic of where its at now.

I must bring everyones attention to a cool little windows program im loving at the moment its called tortoiseSVN and it lets you do all your svn updates and checkouts just by right clicking. Well handy!

I think im pretty much done with my demo for the moment so for the rest of the week Im going to do some of my report and continue editing the wiki.

More Web stuff

2008-01-16T19:19:00.000Z

Im officially hating php/mysql at the moment. I spent today working on my website. I have a new section where you select what item you have lost then it will tell you when you last had it. This is grand but i also want it to show what other items you had at this time. It doesnt make sense just comparing by datestamp cos this will compare it exactly by second, so im using a select query which will find items which have the same hour and minute as the lost item. The problem comes with setting the hour and minute as being the same as those in the data entry corresponding to the lost item. Confused? Thats ok my brain is mush so im stopping for the day.
Also started my wiki editing which I'll be working on over the week. Heres the link for those interested https://trac.ucd.ie/wiki/GumstixRFID

Update: I've managed to fix this problem. It was annoying me so much I had to go back and work on it. I realised I could just take the timestamp field gotten from the query which returns the last occurance of lost item, and set it as a variable. Then I could just take characters at certain points in the string and set these as new variables corresponding to hour and minute. I can pass these into the query which selects other objects that the user had at this time. The timestamp is always in the same format so its ok to explicitly state what characters are taken from the string. Probably not the most elegant code but hey it works

Webpage

2008-01-15T18:40:00.000Z

Fixed an annoying problem I was having with mysql today. I now have my php pages setup so that when a tag is read it will check what item the id corresponds to and store that item with the tag id and date/time stamp. I have a basic web page setup, its still very rough, which just shows what you had and at what time. I'll have to add a bit of functionality to it. Instead of just viewing all data it will probably be better to select the item your looking for first. I dont think its necessary to store tag reads continuously so I'll see if i can just have it per minute or something.

Meeting

2008-01-14T16:32:00.000Z

Just back from todays project meeting. I met with Lorcan and Graeme and gave them a quick demo of the protype so far. We also talked about what I could do next for the discretionary and exceptional project components. This is something I will need to think bout this week. Graeme suggested using two readers in some way. Hmmm. Perhaps a system which has a mobile part and a stationary part. I reader built into a bag or jacket then like a "safe" box left at home. When an item is not at home or in your pocket then it could notify the user that you may have lost something through the lcd screen and maybe with a beep or something? If they have lost something they can log into the website and get some cues. I like this overall idea. I'll give it more thought during the week.

For the rest of this week I will do the following:

Finish the webpage that will give the user their cues.
Spend some time on my report
Get the wiki sorted

Nearly There!

2008-01-10T17:35:00.000Z

Lorcan sent me his lecture notes on php so I read these today. They were really helpful and
i now understand completely what is going on with the gumstix code. So armed with this knowledge i've managed to fix it up so that when it reads a tag its sending the id to my database correctly. This code will work perfectly for my demo and i can go back to it at a later date to replace or edit it as needed.

Spent some more time today with mysql, just doing some test queries and really just testing the whole system in general. My next goal will be to create a webpage that offers some basic user functionality and human readable ques generated from whats in the database.

Code ugh...

2008-01-09T17:37:00.000Z

Ok im taking a break from coding to report on my progress. Had another blonde moment today when it turned out hyperterminal is already installed on lab computers. Ooops apologies all round. I spent some time today with mysql and php so i did some editing on my test page, test.php, so it now both inserts into the database and then prints it on screen.

Also started looking at the code for sending the tag reads to my database. Was a bit lost at first but Lorcan explained what was happening and I think im with it now. I've got some of this set up properly I think. The python script runs automatically on the gumstix booting up. When i place a tag next to the reader it runs the test.php page which causes the database insert. Only problem is im not getting the tag ids so im guessing i need to look into get commands. Anyway better get back to it.

More fun with networking

2008-01-08T17:16:00.000Z

Ok so got the gumstix configured properly today to connect to the router with the correct settings and all. Was'nt too hard but i had trouble finding out what the gumstix mac address was, so i could check it was connecting ok. There is nothing on the net about it, however it turns out that its actually written on the gumstix itself quite clearly. Duh. Anyway blonde moments aside the gumstix automatically connects to the router on booting up.

Ok so I've two main things left to do:

Get some code going that will send the tag reads to my database properly
A web site with some basic human readable ques.

Im hoping to have these both finished by the end of this week.

Router Fun

2008-01-05T22:19:00.000Z

Ok was in work all day so only got a little project stuff done this evening. Spent some time looking into setting up the router. Im fairly sure I know what im at now. I gave my laptop a static IP address then configured the router to enable portforwarding to this address. By connecting to the router it should be possible to access the server by typing the IP address into a browser address bar. I'll borrow a second laptop tomorrow and see if it works.

Quick Update

2008-01-04T13:19:00.001Z

Ok so went back to the circuit this morning because it was wrecking my head and did a new one that works perfectly first time. Cant figure out what was wrong with the other one but who cares it works now. This bout all I'll get done today because im off to work in a while. :-(

Day 2

2008-01-03T21:29:00.000Z

Well didnt get as much work as I'd like done today, was a little busy. With some help from Lorcan and after several very minor burns and shocks I have my circuit done again. It definately has power connected ok with lights and such but I will need to test it using kermit to ensure its transmitting tag reads. I tried using a windows version as my laptop doesnt have a serial connection but im not sure how reliable it is and i didnt seem to be getting any results. Hope its just kermit and not the circuit :-( So will wait till comp. sci is open again on monday and use one of their Linux machines. In the meantime I want to get my router sorted. I have it reset and connected to my laptop so I just need to figure out how to configure it for what i want it to do.

Back to work!!

2008-01-02T21:21:00.000Z

Ok so I started working on my project again today. I got my server fixed up after there was a problem with php. I also installed phpMyAdmin which is handy for the database stuff. I had a problem with setting this up aswell but it turned out i needed to edit a config. file to use a mysql user account. So both these problems are sorted and I have the database and server setup with a php page. I put some sample data in the database and have the php page displaying this data just to test its all working together ok. Also took a look over my circuit again. I had thought it was working perfectly but im not so sure now so im going to redo it just to be certain. What I'd like to get done next is setting up the router with my laptop. This is the one thing that I dont understand completely and how its supposed to fit in to everything??? So its gonna be fun. Wish me luck!!!

Feedback Please!

2007-11-27T16:09:00.000Z

Hi friends. Right I need some feedback from you all so I can settle on a final design for my project. Ok so the system is used to help people find items that they have lost. At the moment im settling with the idea of a pocket built into a "fashionable" bag. People can put their phone and wallet and important things in the special pocket and it will record when they last had it etc. I also like the idea of a similar pocket built into a jacket. I dont think the RFID glove is that practical for this kind of system. I'd really appreciate everyones thoughts and feedback on this. New ideas welcome too. Thanks!

Project meeting

2007-11-16T13:38:00.000Z

I had a project meeting this week with Lorcan, Steve, and Graeme. The main point of the meeting was discuss the presentations we held last Thursday. The presentations went well over all and I got some useful advice and feedback on my own presentation. The main points I can improve on are: Starting with an exact description of my project is a good idea so straight away everyone knows exactly what the project is and what im doing. When discussing RFID I need to tone down the science part, I agree it will bore people to death and make them feel stupid if they dont get it. Slides needed a little polishing, I left in a stray bullet point and messed up the title page a little. Project was proposed by Lorcan!! Also I should be a little clearer about how my project relates to Caities work. Im not exactly building onto that work simply using similar technology. Toning down the description of Gumstix will be helpful too as its not really essential to explain it in so much detail. Basically I should stop saying basically.

They also mentioned some clever tips to really make it stand out. Collaboration is great! I could mention Christine and how my project also relates to ubiquitous computing which she discusses. Fancy! Also I could pass some of the technology around and let people take a look while i continue on.

All in all next presentation will be amazing!!!

Quick Update

2007-10-24T12:52:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update on what I've been working on over the last few days. I've been setting up my "work environment" on my laptop. Have Linux installed and finally have the wireless working properly. Hooray! If anyone else is doing this i suggest fedora 7 because it has a lot of the wireless card drivers included. Its a bit of a pain installing these manually. I've set up eclipse with subclipse so I can access my svn repository on googlecode directly through eclipse. Having trouble installing a python add on for eclipse so might have a look other editors, any suggestions anyone? Have been learning about the technologies i'll be using. Worked through a Python tutorial. Python is dead handy. I have some very very basic experience with php and sql so im currently going over these again to understand them better.

Design

2007-10-21T21:05:00.000+01:00

Ok my drawings are not amazing but hopefully they will explain my idea a little. Im trying to make the whole thing less restrictive without effecting tag reading too much. There will be no glove and the reader will be positioned just above the wrist at an angle from the hand, so that the hand can open and close normally. All thoughts and comments welcome.

System sketch

2007-10-21T19:57:00.000+01:00

Heres a rough sketch of my system architecture. Sorry its a little hard to see.

"Reminding Short-Term Memory Sufferers to Complete Routine Tasks"

2007-10-18T22:01:00.000+01:00

This is Caities final report for the RFID ODCSSS project. Heres a quick recap on what the system does. Small RFID tags are attached to a number of objects, which can be read by the RFID glove. The glove consists of an RFID reader sewn into the palm. This connects to through a simple circuit to the Gumstix computer. This circuit also supplies power to the reader and Gumstix. The Gumstix reads the data picked up by the reader through one of its serial ports. The Gumstix is connected to an expansion board with wireless capabilities which is used to connect to a remote server on a pc and pass the data to a webpage. The webpage updates a database with the tag information.

The system is designed to recognise individual tasks. Activities are associated with a number of tags. A task is identified based on the percentage of associated tags that have been read, within a given time period. Each task also has a specific "end" object or the last object that will be touched in a given task, which indicates when the task has been completed. Overall a nice simple and effective method.

For testing a number of users were asked to interact with objects involved with spefic tasks, and later asked for feedback on using the glove. Overall many found the glove restrictive mainly because of the RFID reader in the palm, and the glove being uncomfortable. My first thought was to move the reader to the wrist but this was already tested and was not very effective due to the short range of the reader. However I do have another idea that might work, which would also make most of the glove unnecessary. Will post a sketch of this soon... Oooh.

"An Introduction to RFID Technology"

2007-10-18T13:08:00.000+01:00

Lorcan sent me this very interesting paper. It explains in detail how the RFID technology actually works, and a number of potential applications for it. RFID can be divided into the two types active and passive. The system I am using is passive where by the RFID tags do not need their own power source but are activated by the reader. There are again two types, magnetic induction and and electromagnetic wave capture. The main difference is the range of the reader. I am using near field RFID based on magnetic induction.

Basically the reader contains a coil and passes an alternating electrical current through which creates a localised alternating magnetic field. The tag contains a smaller coil. The readers magnetic field creates an alternating voltage across the tags coil when it enters this field. A capacitor causes a charge to build up, thus powering the tag. The tag can then generate its own magnetic field which opposes that of the reader. The reader can interpret this as an increasing current. The tag can vary its load over its coil which results in variations in its magnetic field corresponding to its binary ID. The reader interprets these signals through the change in current through its own coil.

The paper describes other interesting techniques but they are not applicable to my project.

"Ubiquitous Memories: a memory externalization system using physical objects"

2007-10-16T19:49:00.000+01:00

This is a paper I read about a system called "Ubiquitous Memories" which proposes to augment human memory trough interaction with objects. This sounded very interesting at first but parts of the abstract and introduction were a little confusing. It is proposed that the technology will help perform various daily tasks and gives examples; "reducing wasted time, facilitating human to human communication and recycling our experiences". I didnt seem particularly clear to me what their system would do. What exactly is a "recycled experience"?

In a later section the design concept was discussed. The concept is to naturally augment the human memory. The system design was was broken down into the following proceedures. "1: A user perceives an event via his/her body. 2: The perceived event is stored into his/her brain as a memory. 3:The human body is used as media, i.e, memory travels all over the body like electricity, and memory runs out of the hands." At this point the paper completely lost me, and goes on to say the memory is transferred to an object and can be later recalled through touch. Im not sure if these points had some leaning to the actual biology behind memory or they were trying to describe the concept in a very abstract way.

The whole thing makes more sense when the hardware is described. There is a head mounted display over the left eye which can display video to the user. This eye piece also has a camera to record users activities. There is an RFID reader on one wrist. These are both connected to a remote control for the system which connects to a hip mounted wearable computer connected to wireless LAN. Its all very "we are borg". I find the location of the RFIS reader interesting. I wonder how effective this position is at reading tags, it does'nt seem to be mentioned in the paper, and wether it is worth investigating. Basically the system works by recording a users activities. Objects are tagged with RFID tags and when read the user can see a video or scene of an event related to the object. The given example is a trophy will trigger memory of a sporting event.

I thought the testing of the system was done quite well. A number of people were asked to remember specific things and to later recall them. Their memory was helped in different ways one of which being the "Ubiquitous Memories" system, and the best human memory aids could be determined.

Overall the system seemed very innovative with plenty of potential, however much of the paper was extremely abstract and unclear.

Project meeting 2

2007-10-16T19:15:00.000+01:00

I met with Lorcan and Graeme yesterday for a project meeting. We discussed what I had done so far and what my next milestones should be. This week im going to work on my research document and hopefully get it finished for Friday. This weekend i'll take a look at some more Python tutorials. I've never programmed with this before but it seems fine. Caitie found it worked very well with the Gumstix. I also need to research more on connecting the Gumstix to wireless as im still a little unclear with some aspects of this.

RFID ODCSSS Project

2007-10-14T22:51:00.001+01:00

Caitie Lustig took this project for ODCSSS during the summer. I could'nt find the final project report in the CVS repository, but Caitie sent me a rar file with some useful notes and what seems to be a near completed draft of the final report. The paper is titled "Reminding Short-Term Memory Sufferers to Complete Routine Tasks" The main focus of the project was to use RFID technology to asist sufferers of short term memory in completing everyday tasks. The system was designed to determine which activities were being carried out based on what objects were touched. The system can then alert users of forgotten tasks and when an activity has not been completed. I was interested in how this was achieved. Each activity had specific objects associated with it, and a final step ie, the last object that will be touched in that activity. A task is identified by the percentage of associated objects that have been touched. Time limits were also given for each task to be completed. This ensures to notify users in case they had forgotten what they were doing. I like this system. Its simple but effective. Im not sure if multi task recognition was included but I think the system would be easily adapted. The glove was tested with users carrying out a number of specific tasks. The results of these were not in the notes I have, so I will ask Lorcan and Caitie about them.

RSS problem

2007-10-14T22:50:00.001+01:00

Heres what I found out about the problem with the RSS feeds: "News feeds (Atom, RSS) don't work with private blogs, because there's no way to provide an account for the readers to login with. It's a feature of the design. http://bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com/2006/12/blogger-blogs-and-permissions.html " I guess we will just have to keep the blogs public??

Pics

2007-10-14T22:46:00.001+01:00

Heres two pictures of the Gumstix in its jazzy new box connected to my pc with Hyper Terminal on windows.

Heres the circuit I was working on. It just needs to be cut to make it as small as possible so it will fit inside the Gumstix box.

Will keep posting pictures as I go.

What I've been up to

2007-10-14T22:43:00.000+01:00

Im a little behind with my posts at the moment, its been a busy week. I met with Lorcan on Thursday and I started work on the circuit which will connect the rfid reader to the gumstix. Turns out soldering is not so straightforward plus I ended up soldering the regulator in the wrong way. Lucky it came back out easy enough and the circuit is now working correctly. The components were flattened as much as possible so it will fit inside the Gumstix box.

Todays Work

2007-10-04T15:45:00.001+01:00

I met with Lorcan today and he went through the hardware I'll be using. This was definately a big help and I've gotten my head around how it all connects together and how it works. Also met with Lucy Dunne today, an expert in wearable computing, whoi will a great help with the circuitry involved. Will be meeting with Lorcan again next week to do a bit of soldering. Will post more detail on this later...!

I took home a Gumstix today with a serial lead and power plug, so can connect it to my pc and have some fun learning about it. Its basically a fully functioning mini computer running Linux. Very cool. This one is connected to a wireless expansion board. Also took an RFID card reader and some RFID tags, but wont be working with these just yet.

Had another look into thr RSS problem but could'nt find anything related to it. Submitted a query / bug report so hopefully we will get some more on this soon.

RFID Wiki

2007-10-03T19:21:00.000+01:00

Spent some time going through the Gumstix RFID wiki today to familiarise myself a bit more with the harware Im going to use and how it all fits together. A Gumstix is basically a functioning mini computer loaded with a Linux based operating system. A flash memory card serves as a hard disk. A basic breadboard circuit seems to be used to connect various components, and a serial connection is made between the RFID reader and the gumstix. I understand how each of the components work but am still a little uncertain as to how it all fits together. I'm meeting with Lorcan tomorrow and he is going to explain the hardware to me which should clear everything up.

References

2007-10-03T14:56:00.001+01:00

Will use this post to list any reports I write about. Will probably be handy for later referencing:

A. Schmidt and C. M. Hans-W. Gellerson, "Enabling implicit human computer interaction- a wearable rfid-tag reader", Proc. 4th Int'l Symp. Wearable Computers (ISWC2000), pp. 193-194

Matthai Philipose, Kenneth P. Fishkin, Mike Perkowitz, Donald J. Patterson, Dieter Fox, Henry Kautz, and Dirk Hahnel. "Inferring Activities from Interactions with Objects", (2004)

?? Suppakri Chatchayanuson, Charles Christopher Oneyama, Nachiket Shelgikar, Saravana Sivasankaran "Ketchen Tracker" ??

Some more Research Papers

2007-10-03T14:43:00.000+01:00

Another report I looked at was a CMU student project. Again the basic hardware is the same, however data is transferred to a phone or pda and synchronised in real time. The main concept is a system which keeps track of kitchen items and saves time with grocery shopping. The most important points i got from this report is the emphasis it puts on potential problems, such as tags positioned too close together, and error handling. I had'nt yet thought much about this and its something I will have to bear in mind later on in the project. It also mentions that code may not run correctly on the gumstix even if its ok on a Linux machine. Fingers crossed this is not very common... :-(

Some more Research Papers

2007-10-03T13:36:00.000+01:00

Heres a few more notes on the papers I read yesterday. The first one is titled "Inferring Activities from Interactions with Objects" its the Intel research Seattle project. It begins with discussing the difficulty of using computers and sensors for interpreting and recognising the activities of individuals as they indertake everyday tasks, and more specifically in the care of elderly people. The main problem seems to be getting the recognition software to adapt to "variety", for example the same task could be completed in different ways. Their solution to this is to represents tasks in a sequence or probable sequence of the objects used.

The basic system is the same as my own project where objects are RFID tagged and read from a mobile RFID reader, in this case an antenna embedded in the palm of a glove. The software implementation is based on probabilistically estimating activities from the sensor data, taking into account different variables such as time. For example in the given scenario, in the frist step of making a cup of tea there will be a high probability of encountering a kettle. This seems like a logical approach to the problem. The system was tested with people undertakning a number of everyday tasks. My own project will need to be tested in a similar way. The results varied depending on the task but were promising overall. One thing thats important to note from the results is that water and metal are bad! Water absorbs the radio waves and metal could short circuit the antenna.

Research Papers

2007-10-02T19:44:00.000+01:00

Started some of my reading and research today. The first paper was titled: "Enabling Implicit Human Computer Interaction, A wearable RFID-Tag Reader". The paper deals with the concept of implicit human computer interaction, or in other words using a persons actions as inputs that can be interpretted by a computer. The basic concept of this case study is identical to my own project, where a mobile RFID reader is integrated into clothing, or something carried by the user, which records interactions with various stationary RFID- tags.

The paper gives a brief explanation on how the system works. The RFID-tags are small electrical circuits which become active through electromagnetic induction, or are energised by the magnetic field produced by the reader. While it supplies energy it is able to communicate with the tag, sending a unique identification in a continuous string to an attached computer, which can then in turn be mapped to URLs. This system can be applied to a number of scenarios such as stock control.

The main outcome of this is to develop web based applications which use the RFID data in some useful way. This is again applicable to my project but I think I would like to explore other ways of communicating with the user such as the built in display that Lorcan suggested.

Which version control system?

2007-10-02T17:09:00.000+01:00

Finished looking over some version control systems today. Have used GForge CDE and GoogleCode before for previous projects plus some testing with others such as Mercurial. Spent a lot of time today with TRAC, a web basd managment tool. It was mentioned at the meeting so thought I'd check it out. Turned out to be a bit of a pain setting up on windows, I miss my mac, but it was fine in the end. After playing with it for a while it seems to be a nice tool. Although I still like google code which we used last year in our software development project, so decided to go with this. Set up the project quickly, will need to go back and do my description properly, but at least thats one thing out of the way...

First project meeting

2007-10-01T18:07:00.000+01:00

I had my first project meeting with Christine today and met with Lorcan, Steve, and Graeme. They talked to us about our first milestones such as setting up a blog, picking a version control system, and our initial reading and research. They told us about a few useful points to bear in mind during the project, such as collaborating with each other and setting up a sort of support group between the six of us through our blogs. Collaboration between different projects can look good when it comes to grades :-) The blog will be used for keeping track of our meetings, our thoughts and ideas, and generally everything we do for the project. A lot of this will be very handy when it comes to writing our reports. One thing that we will not be forgiven for is not backing up properly. Something I learned well when we lost most of our first year project. It is also worth trying to get as much as possible done before the second semester which sounds like its going to be a bit of a nightmare...

Lorcan went through my project with me and talked a little bit more about it. This was good and definately gave me some ideas with where I can go with the project. He will be giving me the hardware I need with in the next weeks or so. I can also email Caitlin who took this project during ODCSSS which is cool. We'll be having our next meeting probably on Monday. For the moment im gonna go pick a version control system. Ooooh