One of the committee members of the festival, Arun Paudyal stated that the projects were divided into two main categories of software and hardware and a total of 50 projects were presented at the festival. Along with projects based on the theme ‘Engineering Rural Development’, there were also other projects outside of the theme.[break]
Presented by a three member group, arduino based computer for rural development is essentially about providing children in rural areas the knowhow of basic computer. Kiran Shrestha, final year student at Kantipur Engineering College, explains, “While computers are not available to every family in rural regions, a television is more accessible to them. Through this idea, the children can use their TV at home as substitutes for basic computer uses.” Currently, there are only three programs installed in the project; calculator, piano and notepad. At around Rs 700, it is cheap. He says, “Typing is a necessary skill in today’s time so we installed notepad, which will also save the document for later edits and changes. The piano is for entertainment and the calculator is for educational purpose.”
The project does have limitations. For example, arduino, which is like a micro processor of a computer, has only two kilo byte of RAM.
Though the group has received interesting feedbacks and is thinking of including simple programming tools in their project, Kiran says that they’re not very sure how far it will go. He doesn’t believe it’s a feasible project because the college hasn’t shown much interest in it. “I don’t believe our college will come forward to help us and we need that support if we want to explore this further,” he says.
A jury comprising of Dr Aman Shakya from Pulchowk College, Deepen Chapagain from nLocate, Anjesh Tuladhar from Young Innovations Pvt Ltd and Jneshwor Bohara from Verisk Information Technologies evaluated the software category of the competition. The hardware projects were evaluated by Dr Nanda Bikram Adhikari and Daya Sagar Baral from Pulchwok College and Binayak Shrestha from Karkhana.
Along with Everest KC and Bidhya Nandan Sharma from Pulchowk Engineering College, Sushant Kafle presented ‘Kabach’, an android phone application that means to offer victims of sexual assault with immediate help. The 3rd year students initially came up with this app during the Violence Against Women Hackathon that was jointly organized by World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, Young Innovations and the Computer Association of Nepal on June 16.
“Our app has pre-installed shake detectors that will automatically send SMS to the police as well as emergency contacts. The force and duration of the shakes or motions can be fixed in the settings of the app,” says Sushant, 21. A motion will set off the GPS (Global Positioning System) that will give off the location of the attack to a Quick Response Team through a text.
Besides suggestions and helpful feedbacks from the jury and visitors, there were also many well wishers who have urged the students to work on their projects in order to commercialize it.
Smart Wheelchair was one of the 40 projects in the technological festival. Fixed out of a standard plastic chair and a gear from a printer, the mechanical design is not very strong, admits Ramu Raut from Kathmandu Engineering College. Mechanical parts were modified to make the wheelchair which focuses on handicapped people with various degrees of paralysis. There is a headphone to control the movement of the wheelchair for someone with full body paralysis, and a joystick is available for those whose hands function. “It took us about a week to finish the project. There’s also a speech control system but it’s not very effective in noisy areas so we’ll have to work on the noise cancellation part,” he says.
A member of the Robotics Club in his college, Ramu worked on the wheelchair with two other friends. His idea was so liked that many social organizations suggested that refining the idea would be commercially viable and very helpful for handicapped people. “The judges didn’t believe that it only took a week to finish this,” says Ramu, adding that they have stage wise photographic evidences.
Unlike Kiran, Ramu’s college has been encouraging and will be felicitating the group during a demonstrating event at college.
Taxi app to solve unbelievable fare crisis
KTM Taxi Meter, which won first place in the software category, has managed to create quite a buzz around town. Four Kathmandu University students; Aawesh Man Shrestha, Anil Rai, Ayam Pokhrel and Kripesh Siwakoti came up with the android based phone application for their embedded system mini project. They launched the app, which works on level 17 of the Google map, by testing it from Koteshwar to Kausaltar, Bhaktapur.
The group has also shot a video demonstrating the app. The video, which can be found on YouTube, was made for a midterm presentation as well as to verify with the traffic police department. The app works ‘on the basis of GPS and the rate provided by Nepal Bureau of Standards & Metrology’, as stated by the voiceover in the video.
Kripesh, 21, a 3rd year student, says, “We came up with the idea during discussions with our teacher, Prakash Poudyal. It was a mini project for school but we decided to sharpen it for the technological festival. Many people have expressed their desire to collaborate with us and maybe even sell it, but we’re actually planning on making it available for free.”
The basic feature of the app is that it gives you the correct fare for the distance you travel by taxis. The group still needs to work on certain aspects of the app like making it available to iOS and Java users. “We haven’t incorporated the waiting charge in the app, so we’re thinking of doing that. The distance and the cost calculation is also just an estimate, and we need to fix that. People have said that there’s a GPS limitation, I know that it will work if you’re outside. It’s expensive to use GPS through Ncell and we need to tackle that too. Another feature we want to incorporate in our app is the taxi fare SMS that the government has launched on April 14. This way the app users can know the exact fare for the distance they travel,” he lists the other modifications to be made.
The taxi app will soon be available for download for free.
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