Hacktastico!

Today was a fairly productive day, though not as productive as I would have hoped. I made some headway on all aspects of my project, but didn’t get very far in on any of them.

I was able to delegate some of the sewing for the jacket to my wonderfully crafty girlfriend and she was able to sew on both sets of LEDs. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stop by her apartment so I don’t have any pictures to upload yet. Fear not, though, as I will have some tomorrow! I have yet to design the circuit for the Lilypad Arduino, XBee carrier and power supply, but that should come very soon (hopefully tomorrow, er today. I really need to stop writing these at 2-3am).

On the XBee front, I was able to get my two XBees communicating with the help of some fellow Build18 participants. It’s a great feeling when you have two computers talking over hardware you configured, even if it’s the most unnecessarily complex IM protocol/client in existence. Now that my communication problems are over with, I can set my attention back to writing code and designing the circuits needed to interface the two major subsystems.

Despite the absence of two of the three lasers I will need to complete the project, I have begun designing the laser mounting system. This is a nice challenge for me as I don’t often get to use my mechanical design and machining skills. I’m a bit out of practice, but I drafted a design by hand, modeled it on the computer, and eventually milled some prototypes. Unfortunately, the Roboclub shop was out of drill bits large enough to support the laser. I learned this only after spending four to six hours milling the parts and saving the large hole for last. Needless to say, I was upset. Thanks to friend and fellow Robotics Club officer Dan Shope, I have a new design that will be significantly easier to machine and much more likely to be finished tomorrow. I will upload the drawings of my first prototypes tomorrow and hopefully some pictures of the new design as well.

One part of my project that I haven’t focused much on yet (with the exception of keeping up these fairly regular blog posts) is the publicity aspect.  I’m beginning to see myself advertising my project more and more which is kind of cool. I attended a meeting of the ECE department’s Student Advisory Council with some other Build18 participants (not entirely because of the free food, I swear!) and gave a little spiel on my project. I’m getting better at making my elevator pitch for the project; I can describe it well in about 45 seconds to a minute. An interesting thing I learned at the meeting was that one of the Build18 sponsors (Qualcomm, I believe, but it could also be Google or Sparkfun) would be sponsoring an award for one of the projects. I’m super excited! There are a lot of cool projects so it’s good to see someone will be recognized. I also learned that although there is a project demo session in 2-3 days, there will be a final unveiling at the end of the year. This means that I might have a chance to put some real effort into the aesthetics of my project which I’m also really excited about! Can you say vacu-forming?

I apologize if this post seems a little scattered, but  it’s about 3:20am and I’m not quite awake any longer. In any case, expect pictures of the jacket in progress, drawings (and possibly pictures) of both the failed and not-so-failed prototype laser mounts, and an update on the XBee circuits

Today (err, yesterday now) was the first day of Build18 and the official start of my project.

Look at all these sweet parts!

All of the products I ordered from Sparkfun came in (the lasers from Amazon were delayed due to weather problems) so I decide to get started on making the jacket portion.

Although I wasn’t able to get the XBees working, I did make pretty good progress on the rest of the programming needed to run the turn signal jacket. It’s a pretty simple program right now, just blinking the left or right side LEDs and turning on the associated indicator LED. I plan to add the wireless functionality and possibly a few more advanced blinking settings after classes today.

For those interested, here’s the code so far. Don’t forget to auto-format (ctrl-t) after you’ve copied it into the Arduino IDE.

Tomorrow I’ll post a circuit you can use to unit test parts of the code.

This is going to be a short post, but I thought it might be a good idea to update you all with the Bill of Materials I sent off to the admins of Build18. (Note: There will be some part exchanges as we’re trying to get as much stuff as possible from Sparkfun, one of the Build18 sponsors)

Bill of Materials (click for larger version)

This isn’t the final B.O.M, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what I’m doing. The original lasers I purchased are no longer sold on Amazon, but this one looks like the ones I got (although I can’t vouch for the actual laser itself). One thing to note is that my budget for this project was $250. I’m pretty sure that with less prototyping-oriented gear and a longer build period, the cost of this project could easily go under $100, possibly even cheaper depending on your source for the lasers.

I may post some additional minor updates before I get back to school and actually begin working on the project.

Build18 is coming up and I’m super excited. For those not familiar with Build18, it’s ”a week-long event of building, hacking, and electrical play. No rules and no pre-reqs: just you, your project ideas, and the stuff you need to build them” hosted by the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon. I was really sorry when I missed out on building something last year so I’m coming at this year’s event with a bit more than healthy amount of enthusiasm.

So far, I’m still in the brainstorming phase. I’ve decided on a project combining my passions for electronics and biking. After a couple of close calls with traffic, I began wondering what sorts of things would make me, as a cyclist, feel safer and more visible to drivers.

As an engineer, my first goal is to get a sense of what gaps exist in current technologies. I’ve done a bit of surveying, but I need a larger sample size to really get a handle on what’s needed (I’m looking at you, comments box). Additionally, I’ve begun to look into what situations create the most danger for cyclists. My hope is that by looking at crash statisics, I can figure out the area that would most benefit from some sort of technological advance. (Please note that I think being safe on the road is a shared responsibility, not solely a driver/cyclist/pedestrian responsibility)

A parallel course in my brainstorming process is looking at what people have already thought of, or actually produced. This is to make sure I’m somewhat original in my idea, as well as seeing if there’s a product I can improve upon. Some really awesome bike-safety projects exist, such as the turn-signal jacket, bike speed jacket, bike brake lights, and laser bike lane.

After some preliminary research on bicycle crashes, I noted a couple interesting statistics:

• Intuition holds as intersections are the area in which most crashes occur
• A surprisingly large percentage of accidents occur when the motorist and bicycle are on a parallel path

I would really like to come up with some application that deals with the more fatality-prone situation that occurs at intersections, but I have yet to come up with something that would really be effective. I’ve pondered the signals that cars give to each other to indicate intent (turn signals, brake lights, reverse lights, horns, hand gestures, etc.), but almost none of these counter the issue of avoiding a car that runs red lights or stop signs. Additionally, much of the issue is that the right-of-way is not being yielded at intersections, both by motorists and cyclists. As I cannot think of a solid solution for intersections, my focus is beginning to shift towards the non-intersection case.

So far, my ideas are most along the lines of the Laser bike lane project. I think it’s a good start, but it doesn’t fully realize the idea of a ’safety bubble’ around the cyclist. A (somewhat dated, but still relevant) study by The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center found that approximately 28% of crashes occur when the motorist and bicycle are on a parallel path, thus the idea of a bubble around cyclists could really be applied to this situation.

My implementation would combine a number of the projects I listed above into what I believe would be a more effective package overall. I would have side-facing lasers indicating boundries on either side of the bike with the ability to blink in sync with a turn signal set by the user (and possibly residing on a jacket), as well as changing color to red when the cyclist begins braking. A rear-facing semicircle would create a signal to drivers to not creep up on cyclists.

Project Feature List (so far):

• Side- and rear-facing line lasers
• Lasers synched to both brake and turn signals
• Turn signal jacket

In any case, this is all a work in progress. A more technical post will be on the way once I start finalizing a design and selecting components. Feel free to make suggestions. Feedback is totally encouraged!

Sources of bike crash statistics:

• http://www.massbike.org/info/statistics.htm
• http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/almanac-safety.html
• http://www.edgarsnyder.com/bicycle/accident-statistics.html

Pinecone Research:

How to: Make Money on the Internet is a short series on utilizing various resources on the Internet to supplement your income. Be forewarned: it’s neither fast, nor very time-efficient. If you have some free time, though, you can earn a little extra income on the side.

Others in the series: Intro

There are many survey sites on the Internet, the most reliable  I’ve encountered has been consumer testing through Pinecone Research. The pay is only $3 per survey, but there are often perks if you’re in a wanted demographic which is just perfect college students.So far, I’ve gotten cans of yet to be released Red Bull and boxes of Macaroni and Cheese in addition to the regular $3 per survey. Registration is very similar to Demonoid.com, you’ve got to sign up during special “open registration” events which happen every once in a while. Sites like Free Stuff Times often post links when Pinecone is looking for new members. You can try this link, but I’m not sure if you’ll get in because it may be old. Each survey takes approximately 10-15 minutes which equates to approximately $12 an hour on the low end. Not too shabby for some mindless survey filling. In the two months I’ve been doing surveys with Pinecone, I’ve gotten about $30-40. Not too shabby.

So, you’ve come to the (mostly) uncharted territories of the Internet to make money, have you? Well, let me first tell you that unless you’ve got a completely original idea, awesome web programming skills, mad design skills, and a gift for marketing, you won’t make tons of money. Or even a livable amount quickly.

In my experience, Internet Money comes slowly. That said, if you’re a college student like me with a knack for procrastination, the Internet’s a great place to make enough money to buy food other than ramen every once in a while or save for the holidays.

Thus far, I’ve done everything from survey sites, ebay, craigslist, menial tasks for pennies, product reviews, mystery shopping, search-to-win sites, and just about everything in between. What can I say, I’ve got a lot of free time. What they all boil down to is this:

There is no such thing as free money. Everything has an opportunity cost and the tradeoff is your time.

Hopefully, this post will help save you some time in your search for some additional income. I’ll be highlighting the following websites:

• Pinecone Research(Must join at certain times but pays well. $3 per survey, one to two times a week)
• Amazon mturk (Menial tasks. Need strategies to effectively earn money. Payout as soon as you earn anything)
• SurveyHead (Survey site. Sometimes hard to qualify for surveys. Payout at $25)
• Swagbucks (Search-to-win site. Very slow, leave this to relatives)
• Campus studies (College student staple. Not really on the internet, but I’ll cover that later)