Lent Edition - 2015-16
the cambridge engineer
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Contents
Makespace Cambridge
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BriteCloud: The New Smart Electronic Warfare Countermeasure from Selex ES
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On the Fast Track to Innovation for Enterprise Wearables
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CUES Hackathon Powered by ARM 2015
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Cover photo by Calum Williams from the Cambridge University Engineering Department Carl Zeiss Photo Competition 2015
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Opportunities for Software Development Engineers Microsoft Research Cambridge We are looking for world-class engineers to work in close partnership with our Researchers, Engineers and Product Groups, on some of the most innovative technologies in Computer Science. Microsoft Research Cambridge are seeking talented Software Development Engineers to work with an elite team of top developers who tackle the hardest problems in Computer Science on a variety of projects across the lab http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/cambridge/ For more information on our current engineering roles visit https://careers.microsoft.com and search for Engineering jobs in the UK, in our Technology and Research team, or scan the QR code below to go direct to the job description.
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Editorial Hello everyone, Lent is almost ending, and so here is the last issue of The Cambridge Engineer for this academic year! In this edition, we’ve got Makespace sharing about the range of projects and makers they have; if you’re ever interested in tinkering around with things, you might want to take a look at Makespace. We also look back at the CUES Hackathon and the innovative ideas you get in 24 hours (sometimes being half asleep can give sudden bouts of inspiration too). Our sponsors, Selex ES and ARM have also contributed articles about some of the work they are doing. Even though this is the last edition, contributions and ideas for the next academic year are always welcome. Please do drop an email to: magazine@cuengineeringsociety.org.uk And my thanks to all the people who have helped out with The Cambridge Engineer this year; it’s been fun, and your help is greatly appreciated. On a final note, best of luck with the rest of year, and see you next year! Best wishes, Sze Ning Chng CUES Magazine Editor 2015-2016
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Makespace Cambridge If you have an interest in tinkering with things, and making the crazy ideas in your head come to life, Makespace might just be the place for you. Mark Wainwright from Makespace shares a bit about the community workshop and the projects that some members have been working on. Makespace is a community-run workshop on Mill Lane in the centre of Cambridge. It opened in 2013 and is part of a growing movement of similar spaces across the country, usually calling themselves by funky names such as make(r) spaces, fablabs and hackspaces, where people can come to make things, use tools and equipment they are unlikely to have at home, share expertise and learn from each other.
entrepreneurs building product prototypes for some of Cambridge’s many startups.
Members pay £40 a month for 24-hour access to a wide variety of equipment, including laser cutters and 3D printers, CNC routers and soldering irons, lathes, mills, a glass oven and even a programmable knitting machine. There are currently around 270 members who have many different reasons for joining, from hobbyists making quadcopters or other toys to
If you sit around in Makespace for long you soon meet people working on every conceivable kind of project (and several inconceivable kinds). Below are edited interviews I’ve carried out with three members about their current projects.
The only person employed by Makespace is an administrator – me. Four directors have overall responsibility for the space, but it is members themselves who take on the day-today tasks of ensuring that equipment is in good order, that new members receive training in using it, and that the place is reasonably tidy and the kitchen doesn’t run out of coffee.
Mayke Santos
The Multispectral Pi: a camera for conservation Mayke Santos is a conservation professional in Venezuela, currently in Cambridge doing an MPhil in Conservation Leadership. “I’m building a Raspberry Pi-based multispectral camera for conservation applications. The idea is that you can fit it to a drone, fly over a large area, say a forested area, and take pictures from above. The idea came from my work managing conservation projects in tropical countries. I have projects where we needed to buy a
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satellite image to decide how to implement them. For example, if you want to reforest an area, the image will help you plan the work. Then two years later you want to see how things have developed, but you’re not going to spend $6000 on another image to find out. So I started to think about making my own pictures. But just to buy a camera for this kind
of work, the cheapest one on the market is $6000 and most are $10,000 or more. So the idea of this project is to create a multispectral camera from a Raspberry Pi that pushes down the cost, so the technology can be used at a reasonable price in developing countries. The Multispectral Pi just has the two standard Raspberry Pi sensors (two sensors is why it is ‘multispectral’), an RGB sensor that takes colour pictures and a Pi-NoIR which detects near-infrared. The result is still pretty much OK for simple things – detecting deforestation for example, or different forest types. And as you can use it with a drone, you can also take pictures close to the canopy, so you can identify tree species. It’s actually very difficult to identify a tree if you are standing on the ground, 30 metres under the canopy.
The infrared sensor is useful for conservation work as it detects infrared light that is reflected by vegetation. That can give a lot of useful information. For instance you can see how healthy it is, you can differentiate different stages of vegetation – old growth forest, secondary forest and so on – and you can see stress in plants caused by, for example, too much humidity or drought. I couldn’t have made it without Makespace. Makespace has the resources, the equipment – but also above all the people. There are always people around with knowledge and experience, and I’ve found people are very willing to give help and advice, which has been very useful to me. The communal side of Makespace is actually the most valuable of all.“
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Izzie Byers
A costume for Beth Izzie Byers is a freelance costume maker and designer living in Cambridge. “I make costumes on a freelance basis. I make a lot for private commissions – I made quite a few ballgowns for the May Balls. I’m also trying to start up an online Etsy shop with different things.
At the moment I’m making a costume for the London opening of War of the Worlds. This is the first big production I’ve worked on, so I’m still very excited about it. It’s huge – it’s going into the Dominion Theatre. They’ve taken the tour production and they’ve added more people and more effects, and supposedly a 3D hologram of Liam Neeson as well. There’s one designer who’s designed all of the costumes, and they’ve hired freelance people to make them. The character I’m making this for is called Beth, and at the moment I’m drafting a pattern for the bodice. Apparently she has a minute and a half to get out of the previous costume and into this one. She’s also flying around and they’re not sure yet how the harness fits or how this fits around it! The part hasn’t actually been cast yet, so I’m making it to a standard size and then I have to go down to the studio and fit it next Thursday to, hopefully, whoever they’ve cast by then. I get to watch the rehearsal as well – that should be fun.
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I used to work through a company called Quiver who had a shop in Cambridge, but they closed just before Christmas, so now I’m working freelance. Eventually I’d like to work for a big costume house, but currently I’m enjoying the diversity of freelance work. I’ve been desperately looking for a studio for ages, and the prices in Cambridge are horrendous and there’s nowhere that’s really suitable, so finding Makespace was brilliant. I actually heard about it from a friend in Dallas – they have a makespace there, and I was complaining about the lack of studio space, so he looked up other makespaces and found this one. I do have my own sewing machines at home, but the only place I have to use them is in my bedroom. Being able to work separately from my living space is nice, and besides it’s not a lot of fun sitting working on my own. It’s good to be in an environment where there are other people working on things, even if most of it’s not really similar to what I’m doing. And I’m hoping to get inducted on the laser cutters so I can cut patterns out, which will speed the process up immensely, and it’ll allow me to do other things like cutting out detailed lace designs and so on.“
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Jonny Waite
Icarus: a large 3D printer Jonny Waite is a PhD student in the Engineering department. “I’ve built my own 3D printer before, but that was a RepRap and needed a lot of fiddling to keep it working, so I wanted to make a more robust one. While I was at it I wanted to build in some features that aren’t in the Makerbot or Ultimaker [Makespace’s previous and current 3D printers]. So I’m putting in 2 nozzles to start with, possibly more later, and I’ve got a higherpower heater and an enclosure. The bit that pushes the filament is what makes a 3D printer – the rest is just a 3-axis robot - and it’s still being perfected. There are different ways a filament feed can fail: the Ultimaker lets the motor skip before the filament slips, which is a recoverable failure but limits the printer. I’ve gone for the approach of ‘clamp it down and overengineer it so it works reliably’, and it does. The biggest thing I’ve printed on it was a fully
automatic magazine-fed rubber band gun for a friend. It took about 8 hours, which Icarus has done twice, left unattended, with no problem. It’s also printed a lot of the parts of my latest tricopter design, Orville. And it’s printed few parts of itself: covers, brackets, etc. Mainly what I’m working on now is more nozzles. There’s lots of exciting possibilities with multiple nozzles. Two nozzles is much better than than one, because you can build a separate support structure in a different material which you dissolve away afterwards. That means you can easily build overhangs and almost completely enclosed spaces. There’s lots of fiddling around to get it right. This is probably the fourth major revision of the design, and it’s kept me busy for well over a year, which is the longest project I’ve ever done.“
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BriteCloud
The New Smart Electronic Warfare Countermeasure from Selex ES James White, an Industrial Placement Engineer with the Microwave Engineering Department at Selex ES in Luton, gives an introduction to the fascinating world of Electronic Warfare. Technology company Selex ES, part of the Finmeccanica group, makes significant advances in many different areas of engineering, from defence and civil security to aerospace and ‘smart’ energy monitoring solutions. The company’s most recently launched product, BriteCloud, is a new expendable active decoy designed to be released from a fast jet in hostile situations to reduce the threat posed by an incoming radar-guided missile. For Selex ES to develop and manufacture BriteCloud, skilled engineers from multiple disciplines work closely to ensure the product is reliable and effective every time it is deployed as an electronic warfare end-game defence. Electronic warfare (EW) is the use of electromagnetic energy to exploit, reduce or prevent hostile use of the electromagnetic spectrum whilst also retaining its friendly use. Selex ES works on the reduction and prevention aspect of electronic warfare and provides Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) to defend
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against the threats which are posed, as well as other aspects of EW. BriteCloud specifically targets the end-game radar-guided missile engagements and acts to defend the aircraft from the threat in a significantly improved way from previous countermeasures. A Brief History of Electronic Countermeasures The origin of EW comes from radars being employed to detect aircraft, through the electromagnetic reflection from fuselage and wings, around the Second World War. This initial hostile use of the electromagnetic spectrum led to countermeasures becoming important to keep pilot and plane safe. One of the first countermeasures was chaff, originally simple strips of aluminium foil, which is released from the aircraft and provides a significantly large return signal to any incident radar system. This provided a false radar return which was able to confuse basic systems, however, as the chaff has no velocity and dissipates quickly, threat systems quickly improved to see through this crude defence. The natural progression of EW and ECM led to noise jamming; to effectively hide the returned signal of the plane within a mass of noise. This is analogous to the enemy shining a torch at a small reflector (the friendly plane) but receiving a blinding reflection the size of a searchlight back. This high power signal overloads the radar’s receiver and it cannot function, it is therefore acting to ‘blind’ the radar. Homing missiles would also struggle to operate with this strong jamming signal present. Home-OnJamming was developed to enable a missile or radar to lock onto this high power signal, as this signal originates from the Defensive Aid Suite (DAS) on-board the plane using this jamming technique once
more makes it the primary target. The logical next step in ECM was to distance the emitter from the aircraft and this was made possible by towed radar decoys. The decoy is towed some distance behind the aircraft, whilst attached via a cable such that data and power can be transferred. The towed decoy can transmit all of the jamming techniques of the aircraft Defensive Aid Suite (DAS) (including more advanced techniques than noise jamming) and is also distanced from the aircraft in an effort to maximise the distance between missile and aircraft. However, Selex ES recognised that there is a market for fully detached and completely independent advanced offboard ECM, and this is where BriteCloud is revolutionary. BriteCloud Selex ES have designed BriteCloud such that it fits inside the standard (55mm diameter) flare tube of fast jets, and therefore, no significant changes to the aircraft systems are needed for BriteCloud to be used. The packaging size is also remarkable when the amount of capability and technology encased is evaluated. A key advancement for offboard decoys is in the use of Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) within the decoy so that sophisticated jamming techniques can be used. One such jamming technique is the ability to create multiple false targets, and then manipulate the ‘decoys’ to confuse and defeat an incoming missile. This capability is also available on other Selex ES DAS products, although these are much larger systems and so are mounted within a jet. Many of the details of the jamming techniques used are highly classified so BriteCloud also has to declassify itself as it will typically be used over hostile territory. The firmware and software inside the device will erase the initially sensitive data as it falls whilst producing advanced jamming techniques. The mechanical and aerodynamic design of such a small packaged ECM is also vital as the aircraft will have no influence over the device once it is released. The package therefore must be able to withstand an initial shock on launch (a g-force of 500gs) as well as the various atmospheric conditions it will experience during its flight. The orientation of BriteCloud is also significant as it must be correctly positioned such to provide the best
angle for jamming. The aerodynamics to allow this precise flight, factors such as the centre of mass and centre of pressure were evaluated to achieve the correct flight profile. The fins of BriteCloud, which open on release, create sufficient drag on the package to ensure stability. The power source used to run BriteCloud is also partly dependant on the atmospheric conditions in which it will be deployed. At 50,000 feet above sea-level and -40°C, some battery technology simply won’t cut it. Selex ES concluded that a standard lithium ion battery would be unsuitable at low temperatures and would self-discharge over time, risking the BriteCloud not operating when deployed. The power is therefore sourced from a thermal battery which has a very long shelf life and so it is very reliable on activation. This is also a key factor as the device must work on every single deployment, due to the possible nature of the hostile threats. The thermal battery is activated by a pyrotechnic charge to raise the salt electrolyte to several hundred degrees. Thermal management within BriteCloud is modelled by mechanical engineering and enables the device to reliably go from totally powerless to fully active and released from the aircraft in less than a second. BriteCloud is a significant improvement over the previous generation of ECM products and maintains Selex ES as a global leader in force protection. It fits into a common platform flare tube as well as making the package low cost and expendable. This means that BriteCloud a powerful electronic countermeasure to act against modern hostile threats. Selex ES needs all sorts of engineers, working over a range of disciplines, in highly integrated teams to produce world-class products like BriteCloud. With a business based on top quality engineering talent, Selex ES will continue to excel and support the company motto of ‘Help them See, Keep them Safe’.
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On the Fast Track to Innovation for Enterprise Wearables
Bee Hayes-Thakore is the Director of Marketing Programs at ARM and works with the world’s fastest growing community of IoT developers through ARM mbed. Bee gives an introduction to how ARM is making resouces for differentiated wearable products easily available to anyone with a great idea. Connected wearable devices are enjoying a huge steady growth, becoming illustrative of how Internet of Things (IoT) devices are integrating in consumer lifestyles. Beyond this initial consumer demand for wearable sensors on account of quantified health awareness and advancements in the healthcare sector, wearable devices have huge potential to transform and improve enterprise cases. Well designed and differentiated wearables can help businesses couple better practices to ensure safety, wellbeing and ways of helping distribute, guide and help employees use their time most effectively. A Tech Pro Research report showed that 47% of companies surveyed are using, or planning to adopt wearables within their organization in 2016. Among those using them, smart watches, sensors and headsets were the three top categories of devices being used, or considered. Accelerating product development Designing these smart, connected IoT products require a rethinking of design. At the most basic level, product development shifts from largely mechanical engineering to true interdisciplinary systems engineering. Time to Market remains the key to winning in the fast growth market, alongside ensuring that the product is highly differentiated. Yet typically, 80% of the time to development of a product is spend in what is non-differentiating cycles of design. Increasingly consumer success and stickiness builds from a strong ecosystem of applications that allow users to connect, use the data and insights from the device simply and conveniently. To support both hardware and software in winning on these three axes, the mbed partnership has undertaken the release of an open-source mbed Wearables Reference Design. This reference design is the base set
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of PCB Schematics, design files, mechanical CAD files, software libraries and example code that can be built upon. But it is equally important that such open source elements can be confidently relied upon based on evidence, both for technical and business decision makers. The biggest challenge is addressing how all the design elements of the hardware and software can integrate well and be optimized to produce the final product to ultimate save time and cost and reduce risks for the design team. Anyone embarking on a wearable venture with a great idea needs to ask an important question: “How much my do my investors care that the entire design is build from the ground up? What efficiencies of reuse both in hardware and software can I leverage to benefit?�
A tested and validated approach to wearable design A test and validation driven development offers another very critical tool for success through offering a greater degree of confidence in the design decisions taken. Open source consumables of a design are not entirely scarce to come by, but by and large these are retrofitted from mobile SoC components. It is hence, more suitable when these resources have been designed from the ground up, to address the key challenges faced in the wearables market, like battery life, connectivity, usability (user experience) and miniaturization (small form factors). The mbed Wearable Reference Design has been put through its own test by the mbed team to develop into a prototype product
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in order to integrate the benefits of lessons learnt through the process. This testing and validation led to the design of a prototype watch that leverages the power efficiency of the ARM Cortex-M family of processors to its maximum, and leverages the power efficiency of mbed OS, to deliver an impressive eightweek battery life. Innovating for differentiated user experience The ultimate tool for success to look for is a hybrid architecture that is scalable, modular and can offer integration capabilities that would help address the vertical market you want to focus on. The bill of materials can be further optimized in order for the product to be better suited to the address the verticals as the market evolves, extending the battery life for specific modes of operations. Further optimizations in software, elements of the graphical user interface software, APIs such as event scheduling and assisted sleep-awake and activation modes of sensors, and choice in connectivity options can all extend these capabilities for the use-cases being considered. Community driven efforts such as mbed OS build on these advantages by offering further
interoperability as connectivity evolves and the mechanism to weave end-to-end security that is critical for a rich user experience and customer loyalty. Products are now expected to have the software application ecosystem developed in conjunction and ready in time for hardware launch. Readily available and highly cost effective developer tools that can ease development effort and enable new business models quickly. Enabling new business models The combination of several combinations of the hardware and software capabilities present exciting new opportunities for spawning new businesses models. Hybrid business models arise when products coupled with apps are turned into services. One instance of this is services delivered via wearable devices in crowd management and crowd control, offering navigation, ability to two way communicate, utilize mesh networking capabilities and device authenticated identification of the user. This has great potential for large congregations of people, who need to be moved and directed around musical festivals, pilgrimage routes or even applied to tracking, rescue and safeguarding on mountain hike routes. The door is wide open for innovation in this space.
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CUES Hackathon Powered by ARM 2015
Last October, CUES held its first ever hackathon in collaboration with ARM. While the majority of participants were engineers, it was great to see students from other departments (even medics!) turn up to give this a shot. Sze Ning Chng looks back at some of the brilliant ideas you’ve come up with! The Hackathon began with a presentation by Milosch Meriac, IoT (Internet of Things) Security Engineer at ARM. “Our grandparents could count the number of electric motors they owned. Our parents could count the number of things with transistors that they owned,” he says. And in our generation, we can still count the number of connected devices we own. But the numbers in this game are staggering. ARM has recently celebrated the sale of 50 billion ARM powered chips in devices around the world. This in over a decade. Ericsson, Milosch added, has predicted 50 billion connected devices
by 2020. The mbed OS, which was used for the CUES Hackathon, is an IoT focussed, embedded OS for ARM microcontrollers, and optimised for things which are on the network. And in addition to the microcontrollers, ARM brought a whole load of electronics with them for this event. There are flex-sensors, LEDs, conductive thread, and of course, the basics like soldering irons. “Voice your crazy ideas”, said Johnny Austin, another ARM engineer, and co-founder of Makespace, a community workshop in Cambridge. “We will help you with that.”
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Smart Bin
“We’ve made a smart bin,” explained Pashu, a second year engineer at Churchill, as he gestured at the bright green bin. “There are flex sensors in the base, so it can measure weight, and there are light sensors to detect when the bin is full.” The four person team from Churchill got their bin to gather data about how often your bin is emptied, and even connected it to Twitter to tell you when it’s full. “You can use the data to compete with your friends too,” he adds.
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Childcare
“Uh, no, we don’t have a team name yet. How about ‘Chocolate covered badgers on motorcycles’? Well, actually, our product’s called ‘Childcare’, so could we call our team ‘Childcare’?” The team of three first year Robinson engineers and a Master’s student studying entrepreneurship at the Judge Business School next door planned on making a set of bracelets for children and their mothers. “It’s two bracelets, one for the mother and the other for the child. So if the child gets away from the ‘Confidence Circle’, the bracelet will buzz and tell the mother the child is in a dangerous area,” explains Francois. “’Confidence Circle’? You really are a business guy aren’t you?” quipped his team mate.
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Sygnal
Sygnal is a bracelet which provides information through buzzers. “But at the moment it has lights instead of buzzers so that we can see it,” explains Virginia from Trinity Hall as she demonstrates how the bracelet works. The idea is that the bracelet can give you information, such as the time, without you having to check your watch or fish your phone out. “For example, when you’re cycling, you should be able to just feel it, instead of having to look at your watch. And it could send information if there are cars coming behind you, or navigation information. Even biofeedback, like heart rate.” “Our visual field is so overwhelmed already, whereas the tactile environment is still very open,” she adds. So how has the Hackathon experience been? “We’ve learnt a lot, like he learnt to solder,” said Virginia, gesturing to her team mate Jacob.
Panic Button
“It’s a panic button. It’s low power and quite small, so you could fit it in your belt or your bag.” The team is made up of three Trinity engineers and a Caius engineer. “If you’re in danger or you feel unsafe and press the button, it speaks to the phone, which talks to the server, and it looks through your Facebook friends list and looks for your friends who are closest to you and sends a message that you’re in danger,” explains Aniruddh. And is it working yet? “The parts all work independently, but we need to integrate them.”
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“Tentative”
“So our team has a medic and a bio NatSci,” introduces Samir, a second year medic. “We’re planning on putting sensors on your feet to know if you’re sitting or standing. Then if you’ve been sitting for too long, it could send a message to tell you to exercise. Maybe it could be a social media thing?” But when I checked in on them again later, the plan had been changed. “We couldn’t find any pressure sensors. So now we’re detecting the motion of a baby,” explains Carla and Sara. “It’s bad for babies if they sleep face down, so if the sensors show that the baby has turned around for more than 3 seconds - and it has to be more, in case the baby presses it accidentally - then an alarm will sound to tell the mother.” “We’re also adding a flex sensor so that if the baby is moving, the mother will know the baby has woken up.”
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Slipper Alarm Clock
“We’re making an alarm clock in a pair of slippers.” The plan was for the alarm to stop only when the user put on the slippers, suggesting they were already awake. So what’s the inspiration for this idea? “One of my friends didn’t show up for a lab session, because he said he overslept,” explained Pamela, a first year engineering student at St Catherine’s. And why did you decide to join the Hackathon? “I had no idea what this was, but at a volleyball session last Friday, Chow (one of her team mates) got really excited about it, and said if we didn’t sign up soon there wouldn’t be any places. And I thought it sounded fun.” I spoke to the team again later to see how they were doing. “So we’ve finished Stage 1; we’ve got three stages. Stage 1 is working now. The ARM engineers solved the problem. Working on Stage 2 now, to get the Bluetooth package to send.”
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Leo Zhou is one of the ARM engineers helping out with the Hackathon. “It’s been very useful to learn about what people struggle with,” Leo explains. He works on mbed, so this has helped him understand how people take to the product. “There’s been great uptake, and people are excited to be playing with all the hardware.” He also saw some interesting ideas around the room. “There are people trying Bluetooth monitoring of mailboxes. And Bluetooth doorbells, so you know someone has rung your doorbell even if you’re not home.” “And there’s a rather interesting idea, if they
get it working. You have a ring, and when you fist bump with someone else, you connect with them on Facebook. But at the moment, some people are still trying things out.” Chatting to Leo again at the end of the event, he shared his views on the Hackathon. “I’m really moved by the enthusiasm from the participants, I feel really motivated to help, seeing how many people stayed overnight. And it’s great to see people who now have viable products.” “Personally I would like to see more such events, both as an ex-student and an ARM employee. It really engages enthusiastic students, and gets them into electronics and programming.”
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