Demo to Dr. Kalam at IGNITE 2010, IIMA

IGNITE 2010 was an even organized by the NIF(National Innovation Foundation) at IIMA on 8th Nov. The event was basically meant to encourage young innovators and to distribute awards to the innovators of some selected ideas. Dr. Abdul Kalam (ex President of India) was the chief guest. Me and my team consisting of two other members implemented a system, which we call as a Blind Men Navigation System. We got a chance to demonstrate our project to Dr. Abdul Kalam, when he came to IGNITE. We guided him from the entrance to the area where some other projects were exhibited. Also got a chance to talk to Dr. Kalam and it feels really amazing.

I'll give the more details about the projects later on.

Here are some pics of me and my friends with Dr. Kalam

Make your mobile phones Touch Screen!!

Want to have a mobile with touchscreen? But do you find it too expensive and not fitting your budget? Are you restricted in the use of internet and apps because you don't have touchscreen phones?

O yes, I am and for all those people having the same problem, Engineers in Cambridge may just have the answer to your woes - and you do not even need to splash out on a new mobile. The engineers at the Cambridge University have developed a software which can tell exactly where you tap on a screen simply by listening to the sound it makes.

A purely software option that just measures the sound signals through the normal microphone of the telephone, and characterizes where you might have been tapping on the screen to replicate the performance of a normal touchscreen phone.

Because the invention doesn't involve any hardware upgradation of the phone, it would simply be a matter of finding the relevant application on the internet, paying for it and downloading it onto your phone.

The technology is so effective at monitoring sounds that it can pin point the "tap" to within one square centimetre, and that it is responsive enough that most users will not even realise the difference between this approach and a conventional touchscreen handset.

The screen resolution is not as good as one will get on an iPhone or new touchscreen phones, but one can certainly navigate complex menu structures on the phone in a similar way to an iPhone.

I am just waiting to find a similar application for my mobile and have an experience of touch screen.

eUnagram

Recently, in September, we were given a project in the course - Embedded Hardware Design. We were required to make any real application on the ATMega 16 or ATMega 32 microcontroller. We decided to make an electronic anagram solver. It has a mobile like keypad, which can be used by the user to give jumbled words to the processor. The processor would look for the unjumbled word in a hardcoded hashed dictionary. On finding  a match, the controller would show the output on the lcd screen. The user can also the see the alphabets on the lcd screen, just like a mobile. Right now there are only alphabets, space and backspace keys on the keypad. We haven't yet implemented keys for numbers and special characters. We have named the device eUnagram (Un + anagram).

You can find the code on the following link

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5806664/eUnagram/main.c

For the using the LCD, I have used the LCD library by Peter Fleury. You can find the library on the following link

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5806664/eUnagram/lcd.c

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5806664/eUnagram/lcd.h

I have also posted the code on AVRFreaks.

http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?module=Freaks%20Academy&func=viewItem&item_type=project&item_id=2807

The code is working properly, though I think I can still optimize it. 

Comments and Suggestions are welcomed!