Arduino Based Wifi Robot

Posted By: SuRaySh On Tuesday, November 29, 2011 Under:



Project Name:  Wifi Robot
Electronics and Communication Engineering
Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu



Since the beginnings of human civilization man has had a fascination for a human-like creation that would assist him. Societies in the early part of the first millennium engaged in slavery and used those slaves to perform the tasks. With the human evolution, Man had discovered mechanics and the means of creating complex mechanisms which would perform repetitive functions in simple way which later on somehow demoralized the slavery system.


Robot is an electric machine which interacts with physical objects and to be given electronic programming to do a specific task. It may also have some ability to perceive and absorb data on physical environment, to process data and to respond to various stimuli. This is in contrast to a simple mechanical device which does tasks through purely mechanical processes and motion.
However, for many laymen, if a machine appears to be able to control its arms or limbs, and especially if it appears anthropomorphic it would be called a robot. It slams the regularly used static Closed-Circuit Surveillance system with its mobility.

Demo Video




Features of the Wifi Robot


I have developed this system by using Arduino (an open hardware 1.0) as micro controlling unit (MCU) and WiFi as the medium for the communication between user and machine. According to the instructions provided from the webpage we will be able to control the device within the WiFi range under favorable environment. For additional features Robot is equipped with obstacle detector (ultrasound sensor), temperature and humidity sensor. The Robot I developed looks like a vehicle toy .It is provided with the circuit platform and is fitted with IP camera on a rotatory mechanical frame.


The project focuses on:


The Coordination between Human and artificial agent.
Effective wireless transmission and reception.
Assisting the Human Resource Management for effective working.


System Block Diagram

















The microcontrolling unit Arduino is interfaced with Internet via Ethernet Shield. Any command from the user is decoded by the ethernet shield and is send to the microcontroller. The microcontroller is equipped with different sensors so that it sends the environmentalcondition to user regularly. DC motor controls over the direction and motion of the robot and servo motor controls the direction of obstacle detection sensors.

The operating steps :
  • First, user opens the web page
  • Websites shows the controlled interface
  • User sends command to the PC
  • PC sends packet data to the router
  • Through Internet space packet data is reached to the next router and the Ethernet shield connected to the router
  • Ethernet shield decoded the packet data and sends to the microcontroller
  • Finally microcontroller controls over the other devices and through the same path data is reached to the user

Platforms


a)      Use of Arduino programming language Arduino-0022.
b)      PHP and HTML tags for webpage design and content management.
c)      XAMPP as the local server.



Limitations


I still call it a RAW project because currently developed system is only for the academic and Research purpose and lots of things must be added in order to make it ready to use. We believe no machine is perfectly efficient and our system is no exception to it. There are certain identified and unidentified limitations existing in our system. Hardware, software and environmental inefficiencies had forced us to stick to a wire connection in the absence of WI-FI.


Scope


—  Potential enhancement leads to multipurpose scope like:
-surveillance purpose
-industrial purpose
-military purposes as spy robot

Future Enhancement
 
—  World Wide coverage by giving Public IP to system.
—  Development of robot limbs.
—  Image processing.
—  Motion according to working environment.
—  High precision and multiple Sensors


For further project details:

Contact:                                                                    
Suresh Ghimire
Electronics and Communication Engineering
surayshgh -at- gmail.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/ShSuRay
https://twitter.com/#!/surayshghimire

My Blog 

Introduction: Andriod

Posted By: Bishnu On Saturday, November 12, 2011

What Android is?

Android is an Operating system for relatively low powered (in comparison to workstation) mobile device such as Smartphone, tablets. It is Open Source Operating Software and is developed by Open Handset Alliance which is led by Google since 2005. It is based on Linux kernel 2.6 which is written in C and the user application is written in java. In spite of common java platform android use customized java Virtual Machine called Dalvik virtual machine and due to this very reason it doesn't support ".jar" applications and had its own ".apk" applications. Google have released various versions of Android OS some for Smartphone and some for Tablet PC such as

-1.5 Cupcake

-1.6 Donut

-2.1 Eclair

-2.2 Froyo

-2.3 Gingerbread

-3. Honeycomb

-4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

[ Note: All version Android OS are named after Food ]

What smart phone is?

Smart phone is just a mobile with some extra powerful features which are commonly found in computers. They are high end mobile phone which is hybrid of PDA and mobile. Today's smart phone has features like wi-fi, touch-screen, GPS, full page web browsing etc.

Android OS and Smart Phone

Smartphone also comes with other OS such as Symbian, Bada OS (samsung), windows etc. Android OS for Smartphone was released in 2008 by google. It is open source and it is embedded on various mobile brands such as Intel, HTC, ARM, Motorola and Samsung etc.

Why Android?

As it is Open Source Platform, you can build your own application if you have such skill on java and mobile application development. If you are general user you can utilize your hardware fully by using various application contributed by Android Society.

Nepal and Android

Along with others Nepali markets are also packed by Android Phone. You can find mobile hardware developed by various companies which are powered by Android. Some of them are Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony Erricon etc. Those phone cost from Rs. 14,000 + .

Appes for Android

Hardware will be dead with out software that handles them properly that's why applications play vital role on how you use your phone and how it helps you . As android is Open Source you can find most of the appes for free (due to contribution of Android developers) in its Android market or on third party websites.

Some of those are

www.freewarelover.com

https://market.android.com

And if you are interested in application development have a look at

http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/index.html#tools-sdk

[ Reference : wikipedia ]

Kathmandu GTUG :: November 5th Meetup Report

Posted By: Unknown On Thursday, November 10, 2011 Under:

We started with a rough agenda doc/paper. You can get a view of what it looked like here: KTMGTUG - November 2011 Meetup Agenda

2011-11-05 12.13.24

Allow me to share what we came up with:

Participation: 12 + 4


Bhupal Sapkota (this is me, i am reporting now), Bhuwan Pokharel, Sunoj Shrestha, Prakash Newpane, Kedar Bhandari, Bishnu Bidari, Rajesh Khadka, Hem K. Shrestha, Suresh Ghimire, Sushil Gupta, Nawaraj Singh Thakuri, Tek Nath Pokharel

2011-11-05 12.13.02 

and about 4 other guys from Classic Cafe New Baneshwor who welcomed us to the cafe, served us tea and at the same time were wondering what the heck we were gossiping there. I clarified them later that we were talking about something good for our tech community. They winked :)
 

Discussions/Decisions:

Agenda: 1) Introduction : Hello session, tea/coffee

It was nice meeting all community members who were present at the meetup in person.

2011-11-05 12.07.20

Agenda: 2) Collaborative Blogging @ http://ktmgtug.blogspot.com

This idea is similar to main GTUG Magazine Site http://gtugs.blogspot.com We will formulate a team of blogger who will cover articles/posts on specific topics once in a week on fortnight. Proposed blog topics were : Google APIs, Android News/Tutorials etc.

2011-11-05 12.06.20

On this agenda Kedar Reported:

It was really a fun ! Today we discussed, even it is better to say-expanded the idea of Collaborative Blogging at a tea table meeting held at a restaurant (Opposite to College Cafe,about 50 meters away from Baneshor chowk towards Shankhamul). The program was actually scheduled to be organized at the College Cafe but as it was closed at the time, it was then held at the restaurant, opposite to that cafe. Although the meeting was done with just a cup of tea, the sharing of idea was great achievement, and the most interesting part was that we individually paid for that cup of tea too(!).

The idea behind Collaborative Blogging is a group of members or better to say group of bloggers contributing at a specific topic at the same platform.

2011-11-05 11.44.58

We were 12 community members present at the meeting. The participants were from different fields and interests of IT including Computer Science & IT, Engineering and Media.Out of this presence, we formulated four blogging groups who will contribute research papers/articles on their respective interest area as described below. (please subscribe to our blog to get these updates in your email.)

1. Robotics/AI

The topic seems interesting. Among the participants Suresh Ghimire, Prakash Neupane, and Hem K. Shrestha showed their interest at this topic so they are going contribute their knowledge, ideas and experience through Collaborative Blogging.

2. Web Design/Development/Presentation/Networking

The most popular and most common topic in today's world. Among the participants Rajesh Khadka, Bhuwan Pokharel, Sunoj Shrestha, Teknath Pokharel and Nawaraj Singh Thakuri showed their interest at the topic and they are going to contribute including the different fields/tools of Web Design.

3. Android

Among the participants Bishnu Bidari from Amrit Science Campus showed his interest in Android so he is going to share his ideas through the Collaborative Blogging.

4. Latest Updates (Technology)

Among the participants, Sushil Gupta, Bhupal Sapkota and myself Kedar Bhandari showed our interest toward Latest Updates in technology sector in our country and around the world. So we are going to contribute in Latest Updates of Technologies through the collaborative blogging.

These were some topics we discussed at the meeting but the idea behind is its never ending collaboration, the new topics will be there. Even you, (the reader) can contribute with different topic!

Moreover, the team decided to  post at least a  blog according to their respective field/interest in a period of 15 days (at least), and this will be his/her responsibility as well.

2011-11-05 11.44.50


Agenda: 3) Next Event Planning / Discussion

Theme for the next event will be a “Blogging Workshop”, where KtmGTUG will provide a complete technical presentation on how to create, update and maintain a personal/corporate blog with existing available blogging platforms. Team will decide the target audience within 10 days (i.e till 15th November) which will be one of the

- School level Students,
- College students(+2, bachelors), medical students
- C.A. members
- Media Celebrities.

 2011-11-05 12.13.10


Agenda: 4) Presenters for next events:

Since the next event will be a “Blogging Workshop”, we will call selected external presenters to share their experience in blogging/online content publishing.

2011-11-05 12.13.37

Agenda: 5) KtmGTUG Meetup - Every Month

Kathmandu GTUG Community will meet on every first Saturday once in a month. The location and time of the meet-up shall be shared via Google Group of Kathmandu GTUG a week prior to the meet-up.

2011-11-05 13.32.00


Agenda: 6) Sharing Member Profiles - (With Google Docs Web Forms)

KtmGTUG member Sushil will create a web form with discussed profile outline. The profile information collected via the web form will be visible to all Kathmandu GTUG community members.

2011-11-05 12.06.13

Sushil created a Google Doc Form in the eve that day where, Kathmandu GTUG community members can submit their information. Our main objective for collecting this information is getting to know each others in community. If you are from Kathmandu GTUG community or want to join our community please add your information in the form. You can view the collected info too.

Feedback about the meetup from participants:

Sunoj Shrestha said :

Thanks to all those who have contributed. I am really hoping to step up from being a user to being a developer and KtmGTUG is going to be my platform. Anyone interested in being a developer can join this group and share ideas on various technology.

Rajesh Khadka said:

Though i am late in responding due to some problem. Saturday’s program was awesome. And thanks to  Bhupal dai and all the KtmGTUG member’s to provide us the the information about platform like this. As Sunoj Shrestha mentioned that this is the platform to enhance our knowledge so i would like to  say ”if any one is interested then this is the right place to be”.

Since we had long list of agendas to be discussed we ended up taking a bunch of more hours (about 3 hours) than initially expected (1 hour at max). But, the excitement of getting to know KtmGTUG community members in person, discussing/sharing ideas for improvements of the community were really inspiring. This meet-up was awesome experience for all of us.

We would love to see more of our community members to be present on next meetups/events organized by Kathmandu Google Technology Users Group.

Happy Googling.

P.S.

Photo Credits to Bhuwan.

This report was written using Google Docs - collaborating in real-time with all the participants of the meetup.

About Blogging - for the beginner !

Posted By: Anish Under:


The material here is for the very beginner of the blogging and considered as if s/he don't know about blog or first time s/he thinking about blog with out any knowledge, if you are an advance blogger then, it is worthless to spent your time here.
what is a blog?

Wel, simply a blog is a chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links in the web page. It can also be say it is a hybrid dirary/guide composed of text, image objects and data in a personal web platform.
>Blogs are also sometimes called as ‘weblogs’ or ‘web logs’.
>The momentum trend of blogging was established with the introduction of automated publishing systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com although people used to maintain blog long before the term was coined.

How to start?

Assuming you don’t understand or want to learn about writing websites in code, you’re probably best off looking at one of the sites that offers free blogging. A couple of the more popular are Wordpress, LiveJournal and Blogger. Others are available.

For simplycity here I present as an exmple: just follow the steps-
>Log on to
www.blogger.com or www.blogspot.com .
>Its google blogging paltform so you should provide your google account (or gmail)username and password.
>Then after you will get to your blog-Dashboard.
>You can click on New Post button then start writing your blog.
>After finishing your writing click on ‘Publish’ button to publish your post.

And there you are ,you just created your first blog.

What is a Dashboard?
A Dashboard is a platform or simply an interface from where you manage your blog.
All the stuffs like settings of blogs, creating new post, layout setting and collection details about your blog is situated at the Dashboard. So it is the first place where you get into while logging for your blog account.


Want to know more?
As the title it is informations above is for very beginner of the blogging. If you are interested to have more knowledge about blogging including detailed about types of blogging, selecting good blogging platforms, income from blogs and many more things, you can follow the following reference links.I will definitely provide more about blogging in my later posts.thanks!

URLs for references:-
1. http://howtoblog.org/   
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/how-to-get-a-blog/  
3. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/14/blogging-for-beginners-2/  

Backup the installed apps on Android

Posted By: Bishnu On Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Almost every Android user are familiar with "Android Market" and also
with the download process of the android applications from it. The
applications downloaded from there are directly installed so you can't
find backup copy on your sd-card. And most of the users want to keep
backup of what they had downloaded so as to use on future. But the
default file manager not even allows you to take a look at the phones'
internal memory blocking you to see where the installed apps are
stored. Some third party file managers allow you to browse the folder
but block you to copy directly from there. So how to backup those
installed application?
If the last sentence of above paragraph is your voice, then here is
the solution.

- Download one more application from "Android Market" called
"AndroZip". It is in fact file compression utility but it can also
serve as backup taking application.
- Install it and run it on your Android device.
- Drag the title menu bar having icons and select on the application
manager.
- After some moment you can see the list of installed apps including
the system apps.
- Now tick on the required application and click on backup.
- After selecting folder to store backup and allowing some time for
AndroZip to do his work, you can find your apps' properly named
backup copy on your sd-card.

How to Start Node.js on Windows

Posted By: Hem On Monday, November 7, 2011 Under:

Node.js is the Server-Side Javascript Programming Environment  It is initial in stage with latest release version of Node-v0.6.0. It uses Javascript language which is easy to understand and deploy in both Server side and Client side.

More info are given on the slides presented by me on Aug 3,2010
http://semicolondev.com/semicolon-labs-introduction-to-node-js
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61537463/Introduction-to-Node-Js


or You can log on to the official site http://nodejs.org , http://no.de,
Node tutorial is available on http://nodebeginner.org

Run Node server in the windows pc within few steps


Step 1. Download the file "node .exe" from http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.6.0/node.exe. Its just less than 5 Mb


Step 2. Save the file. Lets do it on "e:/node" folder.


Step 3. Create a new file -Lets say "server.js" on same location and Add the following Codes
var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function(req,res){
res.writeHead(200,{'Content-Type':'text/html'});
res.end('
<h1>Hello World!! Your HTML text goes Here</h1>
');
}).listen(8000);
console.log('Server running at http://localhost:8000');



Step 4. Now open the "Command Prompt" and type 'node file_name' i.e "node server.js"


step 5. Click on 'Allow access', then Open the browser and type the link http://localhost:8000


(note: Press Ctrl+C to terminate the server)
Isn't it Easy???
Enjoy Coding.......

First Event - Introduction to GTUG/Kathmandu GTUG

Posted By: @bhu1st On Wednesday, June 22, 2011 Under:

Invitation:
Open

Expected Participants:
~50 Engineering Students + Kathmandu GTUG friends

We have presentations from local developers on: 

1. Introduction to GTUG and how Kathmandu GTUG got started (cheers to
our BBC outriders coverage
2. Introduction to HTML5 / Canvas 
3. On the spot demo of Collaborative Software Development Idea using
Google Project Hosting and Subversion with one simple app most probably in HTML5. 

Date and Time:

June 25th 2011, 2:00 PM - 5:30pmHimalaya College of Engineering Shankhamul, Kathmandu. 
If you plan to attend this event in group please mention that in our group discussion thread
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