WE WON!

After the Final-Pitches the personnel of New Factory held a gala at TUT premises where all the teams gathered to celebrate the ending of the projects. In the event some awards where given to the teams, and so it happened that we won the whole thing!!

Yaaayyyy!

We are honored receive this award as a token of our hard work during the past months! All the effort we put to this project really payed off in the end and we are truly satisfied with the results.

We want to thank Demola & New Factory for mentoring us and giving us the opportunity to apply for a great project like this. We want to thank Intel for the support and tools they gave us that allowed us to put our vision to practice!

We wish all the best you all and good luck to the new set of students taking on the Demola projects on Spring 2016! At Demola the sky is truly the limit, and we are a living proof of that :)

Final Pitch

It is Pitch-time again! 

We are now at the final stage of our Demola project. The prototype is fully complete, the presentation is made, pictures are taken and the pitch rehearsed! We are ready to showcase our product and the ultimate wearable for the audience.

Here are few pics from the presentation that we are going to use in the presentation:

Wish is luck!

We are back!

We are back from the holidays and the preparation for the final pitch has begun!

Few weeks ago before we all went our separate ways for the holidays our team leader Esa divided tasks amongst team members. We got back together today on our Whatsapp group and discussed our current situation. The gathering or our "Final Paper" has begun, and Esa, Milla and Aya are going to meet up asap to finalize the Final Pitch that will be held next Thursday 14th of January.

The prototype is now mainly completed, and the Vafa and Ilkka are now concentrating on the final touches. On the last post we stated that the only remaining part was the communication between the android app and the prototype itself. Due to the hard work out tech-guys have done during the holidays this part is also complete. 

Now we focus in make the prototype as neat and clean as possible.

Here is a picture of the prototype as it is right now:

Team Meeting

Our latest team meeting was held this Wednesday 16th of December.

On the meeting we showed the prototype to Joonas and Mikko as well as the android application to the technical guys have been working on. We got the information that Mikko had ordered all the yet missing parts we still need for the prototype.

The feedback we got was positive. They were happy with the results so far and asked to push in order to finish everything in time. Naturally the demo didn’t work properly when we tried to showcase it (probably something to do with the wiring of the belt), but that problem will be fixed!

We talked about the final pitch and how we are going to do it (the video part is still a question to be answered). We also talked about the ultimate wearable concept and Joonas asked some of the case examples we have preliminary thought about (like the biometric authentication, emergency navigation, augmented reality combined with your body needs etc.)

We also talked about how team Mexico will combine their idea to our ultimate wearable. Joonas will be contacting them soon on that.

Next meeting will probably be help after Christmas and until that we can do individual work amongst the team!

Team Sensing Wearables wishes you all a merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Prototype components

On this blogpost we are going to give an update on the prototype building process. Below we describe you the main components that out prototype belt consists of.

The three main parts on the prototype are:

1) the belt: built using the vibrator motors , wires and the fabric

2) android phone for having the navigation system 

3) raspberry pi board which is a mini computer that is used for prototyping.  

On the picture you can see the elastic we are using for the prototype.

The raspberry pi board and required modules are directly connected to the belt, and controls the patterns of vibration based on the data that is generated from the navigation application in android phone and is transferred via bluetooth connection. 

We have divided the process of building the prototype into 4 main parts: 

1) building the belt mechanics

2) programming the raspberry pi for driving the belt in some predefined formats (different patterns of vibration can be defined for telling the users different things about the next move).  

3) Building an android application that is capable of turn-by-turn navigation over a free maps and navigation system. This application will send the data about the next turn and the distance remained to reach the next turn which then will be "translated" to the user by the vibration patterns. 

4) Bluetooth communication between part 2 and 3: Part 2 should be capable of receiving the bluetooth messages and part 3 should be capable of sending messages. 

The belt in the making

Where are we now?

- We have the belt (part 1) 

- We have the raspberry pi with bluetooth receiver working (part 2)

- We have the android application but not the bluetooth sender. 

We are at the second half of part 3. when we have the second half of part 3, then some tests would be needed to make sure the bluetooth communication between the phone and belt is working flawlessly, and that is when part 4 is also completed and we will be ready for final presentation. 

The aftermath

The Mid-pitch went great for out team!

Team members present at the meeting where Milla (the pitcher) and Aya (assisting with the overall presentation). We managed to give the pitch in time and got to say everything we wanted!

After the pitch we got face-2-face feedback and answered questions presented by our fellow Demola team members. One thing that arose was "how the belt actually communicates with its user?". This was not told in further detail on our presentation so it was good thing that it came and we got a chance to explain the sensors technology we use on the prototype belt (small sensors situated 360 around the belt inner surface).

Next stage is to work on the prototype itself which the guys ( Enrico, Vafa and Ilkka) are building as we speak.

More pics coming from that later!

Preparing for the Mid-Pitch

We had two meeting concerning the Mid-Pitch. Last week (9th of November) we held a meeting with Esa, Aya and Milla where we made the base for the presentation and made the manuscript for the pitch.

We met again on the 16th. We decided that Milla is going to be the pitcher and practiced the speech. At first it was over 1,5 minutes too long so many adjustment we're made. 

Wish us luck!!!

- Milla