Category Archives: Project

Intel Perceptual Computing Challenge Award

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Interactive Gesture Camera

Interactive Gesture Camera.

We just won $1000 – One Thousand US Dollars! Awesome! Thank you Intel!

During the time of December 17th to February 20th Intel held the Perceptual Computing Challenge Phase 1. I entered “Google Earth Controller”, an application demonstrating touch-free navigation of Google Earth utilizing an Interactive Gesture Camera and the Intel Perceptual Computing SDK.

It allows you to fly like Superman across Earth or other planets while staying seated in your favorite chair! See video below.

Yesterday afternoon the winners were announced and Team “W” is happy that “Google Earth Controller” was awarded with Second Place. While this was just a weekend warm-up hack we are getting ready for Phase 2 of the challenge. Stay tuned!

AquaChem at BlackBerry App World

AquaChem

AquaChem

I am very excited to announce, that as of today, AquaChem is available in the BlackBerry App World. AquaChem is a handy tool to solve common Aquatic Chemistry equations for determination of Activity Coefficients, Ionization Fractions and Equilibrium Constants. The application provides students with a simple means of performing laborious calculations, the underlying chemistry of the problem being studied can be the primary focus rather than the calculations.
Get it at BlackBerry App World

Get it at BlackBerry App World


AquaChem at BlackBerry App World

AquaChem at BlackBerry App World

AquaChem for the BlackBerry PlayBook

AquaChem

AquaChem

Research in Motion announced: everyone who submits an application for the BlackBerry PlayBook by March 15, would receive a free PlayBook tablet. Since I am very excited about the BlackBerry PlayBook, it’s Hardware, and it’s underlying QNX realtime operating system and I am waiting for it to appear on the market, a free Tablet is enough incentive to look into how to code for the PlayBook as an early adopter. I implemented AquaChem – an Adobe Air application – from scratch, after spending a couple of hours going through a comprehensive tutorial with Source Code.

Links:

AquaChem is based on the idea of iChem. The purpose of the application is to bring Aquatic Chemistry on modern Handheld devices to the classroom. AquaChem has just been submitted to the BlackBerry App World.

Creating Depth Images with the Kinect Sensor.

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Microsoft’s Kinect Sensor is a nice peace of Hardware and considerably cheap for a camera that also provides a 640×480 depth image. Soon after it appeared on the market in November 2010, it was reverse engineered for users to interface it from the computer without the Xbox 360.

Technology Enthusiasts and Roboticists all over the world picked up a Kinect to see what they can do with it. My personal motivation is to improve Perception for my Service Robot. Shortly after the publication of the Kinect Hack, Microsoft and PrimeSense decided to release an official SDK: the OpenNI Framework.

Below are the first Depth Images and User Tracking Images, that I took with the official SDK. 

iChem

iChem Logo

iChem

iChem is a case study to bring aquatic chemistry calculations on the iPhone to the classroom. The computational nature of aquatic chemistry lends itself well to the iPhone platform and by providing students with a simple means of performing laborious calculations, the underlying chemistry of the problem being studied can be the primary focus rather than the calculations.

The application features Activity Coefficient, Ionization Fraction and Equilibrium Constant computations. The goal is to provide a user friendly tool for chemistry students, which enables them to quickly solve standard computations on their fingertips. The tool will be made available to the public, soon.

iChem Screenshots

iChem Screenshots

[1] Martin Wojtczyk, Mark A. Nanny, and Chetan T. Goudar. Aquatic Chemistry on the iPhone: Activity Coefficient, Ionization Fraction and Equilibrium Constant determination. In 239th American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition, San Francisco, USA, March 2010.