Licensing of work completed!!

As you can see on the top of the page, we have licensed our work/product, crediting to Project Arditor.

The Arduimobile Documentation

Download the ardimobile documentation file from the URL below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/192dz6nc6ggbugn/Arduimobile%20Product%20Docx.odt

THE GENIUS CAMERA FEATURE.... WORKEDDDDD

IT WORKED?

After 2 sleepless nights without rest..... IT WORKED?? THE CAMERA FINALLY WORKED????

MY WORK HERE ON EARTH IS DONE. I MUST GO NOW MY PEOPLE NEED ME!!!

I CAN FINALLY SLEEP AFTER 28 HRS AWAKE.

THIS IS HOW SATISFIED I FEEL RIGHT NOW


I AM VERY CRANKY AND INSANE NOW >> I AM NOT MYSELF BUT I SHALL DOCUMENT THIS MILESTONE.

I'M NOT GONNA EVEN RECOGNIZE THAT I WROTE THIS BEFORE I SLEEP LATER...

I use an app on my mobile phone called IP camera and it so happens to give a very accurate and fixed server IP address. Instead on using an ip camera, we shall place my phone into Arduimobile and connecting to the local wifi network.

This is a new attraction is that we are able to use our very own phone as the camera for the function.

And we have also solved a latency issue that was rather distasteful when the cloud camera was tested out in a home network (not using NTUSECURE/ NTUWL).

Now the live stream speed has improved and we are able to hook up video imaging for our intended feature.

I had enough but this is a sweet beginning for our finale product... This mod rocks. <3 <3 <3

Problems encountered so far

As with all great projects, there will always be a few limitations we need to overcome.

After Monday (26th May) lecture, there are two issues to be addressed:

1. We need to find a way to get around the security issue surrounding the mydlink account that governs the camera usage. We have established the fact that the laptop used to access the mydlink viewing page and the camera itself has connection to the local school server. This might likely be resolved by recreating the mydlink account and registering the IP address using NTUSECURE.

2. The huge lag experienced during the live feed is likely due to the fact that the path the feedback is sent is really very complex. The flow chart below (I do not own this picture, taken from and credited to mydlink.com) shows the layers of filters the feedback needs to travel from the camera to the laptop for the user to view the live feed.

What we hope to do is keep the path in the blue zone, from the Camera to the Router to the PC.

This is why Open source is important, look at all the trouble we could have potentially avoided. Unfortunately, we were not able to get an open source camera, given the time frame we were given to work with, which would have been much easier to work with.

The code that powers the Arduino

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
int sensorpin = 5;             // analog pin used to connect the sharp sensor
int val = 0; // variable to store the values from sensor(initially zero)
int DistInCm = 0 ;
int SensorPin = 1 ;
int LightVal = 0 ;


SoftwareSerial mySerial(0,1); // pin 2 = TX, pin 3 = RX (unused)

void setup()
{
  mySerial.begin(9600); // set up serial port for 9600 baud
  delay(500); // wait for display to boot up
  mySerial.write("    Welcome!    ");
  mySerial.write(254); // move cursor to beginning of first line
  mySerial.write(128);
  delay(5000);
}

void loop()
{

  mySerial.write("                "); // clear display
  mySerial.write("                ");
  mySerial.write(254); // move cursor to beginning of first line
  mySerial.write(128);
  val = analogRead(sensorpin);    // reads the value of the sharp sensor
  DistInCm = map(val ,600,0,0,40);
  mySerial.write("Distance :      ");
  if(DistInCm<= 10)
  {
    mySerial.write("Object close");
  }
  else if (DistInCm > 10 && DistInCm <= 20)
  {
     mySerial.write("Object near");
  }
  else if(DistInCm > 20 && DistInCm <= 30)
  {
    mySerial.write("Object far away");
  }
  else
  {
    mySerial.write("No object");
  }
 
 
  delay(5000);
  LightVal = analogRead(SensorPin);
  mySerial.write("                "); // clear display
  mySerial.write("                ");
  mySerial.write(254); // move cursor to beginning of first line
  mySerial.write(128);
  mySerial.write("LightInt :      ");

  if(LightVal<=300)
  {
    mySerial.write("Low");
  }
  else if (LightVal>300 && LightVal<=450)
  {
    mySerial.write("Medium");
  }
  else if (LightVal > 450 && LightVal <= 620)
  {
     mySerial.write("High");
  }
  else
  {
    mySerial.write("Very High");
  }
  delay(5000);
}

WE. ARE. LIVE. (Beta still)

Meeting in the afternoon, we roamed the roads and alley ways in Singapore in an effort to find all our hardware needed to complete the Arduimobile.

We questioned ourselves one last time before heading out for our hunt. Will the project have growth potential and will it be sustainable?

We unanimously agreed that the project shall satisfy both requirements upon the fact that surveillance and mapping is a lively industry and the needs for such equipment and services range from any common individual to businesses and even governments. As existing products are only able to provided sole images of certain places of interest and roads as per user request, our project actually improves upon this function with our distance and light sensor which serves to calculate and display representations of the displacement of certain target objects from a point to the camera and also lighting conditions for the environment surrounding the target.

Then it was off we go on our hunt at Courts and Challenger to buy our wireless surveillance camera which we bought at a discount because Ezra signed up for membership on the spot. A cunning one, we have here. 

After exhausting all possible places to get a RC Car that doesn't cost us a bomb and is big enough to hold our Arduino Mother board, the camera, the display screen and the power source for the Arduino Mother Board.......... we decided to take a stop and rethink of our strategies for finding the stuff and we ended up at a place of childhood and modelling art, Tai Seng Corporation at North Bridge Road. 

This here is what immediately captured our hearts and we decided on this RC Car the moment we ended the shop.....

Deepest apology for the fat face and being "one of a kind at that". #Fountain

After which we triumphantly headed to an empty void deck with chairs to get fix our Arduimobile in a flash and this is the beautiful moment when our equipment started to piece together and run smoothly. #Nomoredonk

Our construct is well on it's way and possibly finished by the time you read this post. :)

Look forward to our product soon guys :)

Arduimobile?!

So on Monday 19/05/14,

We officially bought and started testing out our new Arduino Pro set. With the extensive and expensive set of equipment that we had bought, we were thrilled with the idea and possibility of being able to increase the interactivity and functions of our project.

Building upon the idea of Arduino software controlled camera, we have started making plans for a new product stemming from Project Arditor. This new product that we will construct in the week to come is called the Arduimobile. A remote controlled car with a surveillance camera attached to it, along with the Arduino Motherboard and a Liquid Crystal display.

What we hope to achieve is an Arduimobile that successfully uses infrared sensor to detect a target and take a picture of the target after which the Liquid display will reflect the lighting conditions and the distance calculated between the Camera and the Target captured in the picture. Also, we are projected to link up the camera video output to a local wireless hotspot, giving live feed to the projector screen in the point of view in first person plus the figures on the liquid display.

We are rather positive of the outcome of this product and given the time frame to work on this we are looking at a few more weeks of improvements and debugging after the product is up by the end of the week. We shall be obtaining the remote controlled car and camera soon. 

using a light sensor to control LED light

Tried going to SIM LIM square to buy an audino to start fidgeting with it. Informed by the people there that it was a  fruitless trip.

spend time going through the source code for using a light sensor to determine the amount of light in the background and based on the analog reading to determine the amount of light the LED light should emit.

 int pin = 0 ;
int LEDpin = 9;

void setup()//working source code
{
 
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(LEDpin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
  int val = analogRead(pin);
  val = constrain(val, 750,950);
  int ledlevel = map(val,750,950,255,0);
  analogWrite(LEDpin,ledlevel) ;
 
}

Credits

Credits to Sher Wen who tried to find the components today.

Don't worry things will work out :)

Harvesting the Brainstorm - Project Arduino

After a session of brainstorming, we have looked at the different ways that a standard Arduino can help to improve or create functions in hardware items and have come to a consensus to have our Arduino software improve upon the functions of the camera with the help of a light sensor. Hence, our Project name shall also be known as Project Arditor, which is a word play on "Arduino" and "Editor" as we plan to make our resulting product an Arduino powered photography tool.

Being an amateur photographer, Ezra is consistently faced with the difficulty of getting the correct exposure value to get a picture taken of a particular scenery or object. He would have to resort to taking a few shots at the same thing then choosing the "best looking" picture via elimination.

This procedure is called Bracketing and it can be rather inconvenient and time consuming, not to mention that if the target object is moving, Bracketing will almost not work as the scene could change often, resulting in frequent changes to the lighting conditions.

As such, Sher Wen and Ezra had decided that the reason to execute Project Arditor is that such a helpful project will benefit majority of photographers or camera owners - helping them to capture clear and adequately lit pictures, especially during critical moments when pictures can only be taken during a limited time frame (Eg. moving objects/targets). 

At the end point, we aim to make Project Arditor, an USB compatible Arduino Motherboard coupled with Light sensor equipment, capable of adjusting the camera settings internally to allow the user to only have to zoom in or out of the object and capture a clear and adequately lit picture on the first try. We believe that this project will not be too complex to achieve and will hence achieve rather satisfactory results upon completion.

Future problems could possibly be that we will need to improve on our own coding/programming abilities to make our own goals for Project Arditor become a reality. 

The fact that Arduino is an open source software makes it quite easy for us to free make full use of its functions to make Project Arditor happen so quickly and economically in the first place. It could take us weeks and months just to get permissions from other software providers who will also charge us for the usage of their technology, making it much more costly for the end-user. We can carry on with the project without worry of any complications with the company we bought the Arduino software from. Also, the effects of pricing could also affect customer consumption as they might be deterred from using our product from Project Arditor. Thus an open source technology like this makes it easier for our product to reach our target users altogether, from the technical side to the political to the economical side. 

Naturally, our target users are basically anyone who owns a camera device. Almost every middle-income household and above would have a camera at home. As explained earlier, the product from Project Arditor is going to drastically reduce the need for a few things, namely Bracketing and even Photo-editing. It is foreseen to improve the overall quality of pictures taken by the user and also allow the user to enjoy the overall experience of photography, with less frustration from lighting issues. Pictures could be published much faster with much less photo-editing required.

The project might have potential to grow as an entire automated module in future camera models, possibly able to cover more than just adjustments due to light sensing but even colour scale recognition as well. Once again, open source technology of the software has given us the privilege to freely explore beyond the scope of the project. However, we are keeping the scope of Project Arditor to light sensing for now. 

In all earnest effort, we look forward to achieving great results from this project and learning experience :)

Below is a video on how photo-editing looks like. (A process our project aims skip or minimize for the end-user)

Different function of Arduino + Considerations during Brainstorming

Both Ezra and Sher Wen are tasked with going through different Youtube videos and see the multiple functions of Arduino and coming up with a function that we can propose our Arduino to serve.

Now we were faced with a number of questions with regards to the nature of the project we should partake in. 

This would mainly include: 

1. Why are we going through the particular project? 

2. Is the goal of the project achievable? 

3. What will be the potential problems we face - will the nature of the 
software being Open source be suited for us to reach our goals? 

4. Who are the targeted end-users and will it be useful to them? 

5. Do we have the time to complete the project? 

6. Will the project have any potential to grow in the long run? 

7. Whether it is worth the trouble of going through the entire project when other factors like personal handling skills or replacement of hardware would be more convenient? 

Open source technology

Create blog for Open source technology

In our team of 2, there is Sher Wen and Ezra.

We are called Arditor.

We hope to be successful this mod XD