Blog 1 - Daniel Lawton

Blog 1 - Daniel Lawton ("Hello World")


Bio:

My name is Daniel Lawton,  I’m from Tramore in County Waterford. Currently studying my final year of my Computer Science degree, with the Internet of Things as an elective.

Some things I enjoy outside of College, include going to the gym, I have been interested in lifting weights since I was a teenager, my love for the gym stemmed from needing to bulk up for rugby, but I ended up enjoying the gym far more and quit rugby for the gym all together. I also have an interest in running, with it being one of my main hobbies at the moment. Other hobbies include reading, with my favourite genre being history. If I could go back to any point in history it would be to the Aztecs the year before  the Spanish explorer’s landed to give the locals a heads up. 

Once done college, I want to do more travelling, places I want to go to include Germany, Italy and Mexico and then down into South America.

Project Ideas

Dug the Dog: 
Using Unitree’s Go2 Voice Module, give commands through speech, such as ‘sit’, ‘stay’, ‘dance’ etc. Using camera and object detection model to play game of fetch.

Self-Writing Journal:
A display board that converts spoken words into written text. Similar to portrait drawer, but instead writes as you are speaking. Makes jotting down notes easy.

Fall Safety Belt:
 A belt that uses micro: bits to detect sudden acceleration, if someone has fallen, the belt will release an airbag, using co2 cannisters that rapidly fill an Airbag, helping to break the persons fall. 

Walking tracker: 
Attach micro: bits to shoes. Can be used for GPS navigation, step counter, exercise tracker, or as a way to control a character walking in a game, example Skyrim walking simulator.


 

 Micro:Bit

The micro:bit is a small powerful microcontroller designed for beginner and advanced use cases. The micro:bit comes with several features, these include communication through Bluetooth and radio antennas, an LED display and light sensor, General Input Output pins to connect to other electronics. The micro:bit is also packed with other sensors such as a built in compass, temperature sensor, accelerometer, speaker, and a gyroscope. The micro:bit can be programmed to use all of these features through its code editor, you write up the code in either blocks, JavaScript or Python. The editor allows for different libraries to be imported such as the cloud module IoT cloud kit, that allows for the micro:bit to connect to the internet.

In my own experience I have used the micro:bit to detect the pH of water, using a pH sensor and an analog to digital converter. The pH sensor had its data read into the micro:bit which then used the IoT cloud kit library to send my data to my phone through MQTT. 






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