Fostering Engineering Ingenuity and Self
Contents
1. 5 Server Web Server i WebApp I Room i Man t T E T haad 7 rw TCP IP bes fe OE Room j gt Door Controller y N Plug Lights Motion Sensors Figure 2 System architecture 3 2 Android mobile device The personal mobile device is used to identify the user and exercise control over the assigned room in a meaningful way to the guest or staff member We chose to implement this initial version of the project using Android mobile devices 11 and the Java programming language 14 One of the issues we had to tackle was the security of login over a Wi Fi connection We approached this challenge by implementing an access token with an expiration date The token t obfuscates the actual text password p using the SHAI algorithm 12 and incorporates the time of the access request tO using an internet time service In the following equation an access token t is generated from p and to t SHAI SHAI p t0 1 Access token t is only valid x seconds after creation after which the server will not recognize it any longer The server can determine if the token is expired because tO is attached to the command along with the token username and command The server can then use the hash of the user s password from the database and the time to generate a token This type of token eliminates sniffing attacks With this info one of the students had to implement the whole Android application2. The student was provided with a basic tutorial including a live coding session 3 3 Server This software module runs on a physical server and is the central entity of the system The software baseline on which we built this module is Windows 8 operating system 7 a Tomcat 10 webserver and a MySQL database server 6 all running on the same machine The rooms and users are entries in the database and the Rooms and Rent servlets are used to create the web interface needed to assign control of a room to a guest DbManager class controls and populates the database access object classes RoomsDAO and UserDAO UserLogin is the login page for the web application It uses class PassCheck to verify the validity of a password Services Login and Register implemented as servlets are necessary for the Android application to invoke functionality The HotelDriver class implements the protocol used to interact with the room controller Arduino compatible module 8 Every method of the HotelDriver is offered 21 as a service to the mobile application after adding a user authentication layer We also added a subscription service on the controller for the motion sensor allowing the room controller to provide notifications when movement is detected in the room Two students were given this description and a tutorial including a bit of live coding and were asked to build a working service based app 3 4 Room Controller The room controller is
3. Wall Technologi Education Design talk publication Book https books google ro books id GheifdC3 VjUC Presentation http www ted com talks sugata_mitra_shows_how_kid s_teach_themselves 18 Mitra S The Hole in the Wall Self Organising Systems in Education isbn 9780070617872 2006 https books google ro books id 2cjaAAAAMAAJ 24
4. felt he was slowing down his teammate so we directed him towards tutorials and invited him back when he feels he is prepared 3 Design and implementation The challenge was to provide home automation that is available as a website see the high level functionality image in Figure 1 This allows the hotel staff to grant access and control of a room to a guest and manage the room statistics and logs When granted access a guest can use any and all room functionality until the end of his her stay directly from the mobile device 20 Figure 1 Giving control of a room to a registered user 3 1 Architecture The system we designed for the students was composed of a central server one embedded controller per hotel room one mobile device for each staff member or guest and interconnecting Ethernet or Wi Fi networks The embedded hotel room controller implements all interactions with the physical elements of the room power plugs lighting door lock motion sensor see figure 2 for the block diagram The hotel server communicates via Ethernet with all controllers using basic socket communication but also waits for requests from mobile devices and reports from room controllers This is done via a Room Management Module All functionality of this module as well as administrative functionality and user profile management is offered to other applications using REST web services 16
5. Fostering Engineering Ingenuity and Self determination in Computer Science Undergraduate Students Sorin llie Alexandru Mitrica Alecsandru Sperila Cristian Totolin Marius Neghina and Marcu Marian University of Craiova Department of Computers and Information Technology Blvd Decebal nr 107 Craiova Romania ilieviorelsorin gmail com Abstract Computer Science undergraduate students arrive in the first year with great expectations of themselves However they soon realize that being the next disruptive innovator takes a lot of knowledge inspiration and hard work This realization chips away at their determination until they accept their fate as just another developer Last year we conducted an experiment in maintaining student enthusiasm for innovation aimed at first year students We created multiple teams lured them with easily programmable Arduino projects then asked them to make the projects work together and finally implement an android app to control those projects This generated a complex skill set for the students and fostered team work and self determination towards innovation One such project was the Smart Hotel project awarded with three international prizes had 5 public presentations was described in multiple interviews on TV and radio and is being updated with pro activity and artificial intelligence 1 Introduction The engineering inclined students love to tinker with hands on projects Taking advantag
6. and fourth place in the international BringITon workshop Iasi Romania The Smart Hotel project was also presented in the Intel Romania 10 year anniversary Trello task management system https trello com ESDC 2014 international contest http nuedc sjtu edu cn EN show aspx info_lb 20 amp info_i d 66 amp flag 20 3 MSmart 2014 national contest http imsmart ro 4 BringITon Iasi 2014 http bringiton info uaic ro en event and Researcher Night in the University of Craiova One of the students also won first prize in a locally organised embedded contest how to electronics After the first contest was won one of the students accepted an internship and started rejecting further tasks on the principle of lack of personal support and enterprise like efficiency He immediately became a part time employee at a local software firm 7 Future Work There are two directions to be analyzed the future work of the team members and the future development of this hands on way of educating students 8 Student team The future work on the Smart Hotel project consists of voice operation modularization for private use and proactive artificial intelligence Since the last public presentation the project has already become voice operated by invoking the services via open source voice recognition software however it is unclear if this is more useful than the mobile app Modularization poses challenges on self organization for eas
7. e of this fact for educational purposes became much easier when we received a sponsorship from Intel 20 arduino compatible microcomputers We asked for volunteers and 7 students showed up eager to play with the devices 6 first year students and one senior all having minimal programming and networking knowledge The first order of business was to find one or more projects that the students would be happy to work on so we organised a brainstorming session After one week of individual research all students proposed Copyright 2015 for the individual papers by the papers authors Copying permitted only for private and academic purposes In A B dic M Colhon eds Proceedings of the 2015 Balkan Conference on Informatics Advances in ICT small projects in the domain of home automation They organised themselves in teams of two Within a week they were presented with their own arduino compatible device a breadboard and a variety of sensors actuators and basic electric parts The next month students worked hard on their applications showing a great deal of self determination but still needed the presence of someone with more experience to guide them Soon we realised they find the solutions they are looking for themselves so we stopped trying to help them but used the granny teaching method presented here by professor Sugata Mitra 17 18 By using this method the teacher is supposed to constantly ask qu
8. estions then praise the student when he solves the problem Once hooked on experimenting with their devices we presented them with the challenge of merging the projects by using Ethernet connections web services and web interfaces The student s work envisions a new way of interacting with hotel rooms by simply interacting with a mobile app that can control door locks lighting plugs etc Access can be given to guest users and maintenance staff to a room for a given amount of time even at predefined intervals At all times the server can log all door accesses presence power consumption and so on for inspection To summarize the teaching strategy was 1 attracting students with fun toys ii allowing them to set the initial goals self determination iii high support with planning and initial implementation leadership through example iv a daunting challenge meant to improve teamwork purpose v tutorials about new technologies like web services android object oriented programming versioning networking self improvement vi validation through prizes 2 Research phase The students were asked to find similar approaches tutorials and help with the component shopping They found the following Philips s Hue Connected Bulb 1 uses a central module that plugs directly into a wireless router and translates signals between a Wi Fi connected smartphone and the 19 bulbs The bulbs cost from 79 to 89 a piece and a kit c
9. implemented on an Intel Galileo Arduino compatible module 8 The operating system on which we built this software was Yocto Linux 9 We implemented an Ethernet server that communicates with the web server using an Ethernet Each room must be assigned a static IP We can now outline a schematic of the interaction protocol between the mobile device the server and the room controller see figure 3 for the sequence diagram 13 We identify three types of interactions i mobile gt server interactions ii mobile gt room controller interactions via server and ii room controller gt server interactions Room Controller Controller command Figure 3 Interactions Schematic 4 Hardware room controls The initial projects implemented by the students were the room controllers for lights power sockets and access 4 1 Door Pressing the Open Door button in the mobile app invokes to the central server via Wi Fi which in turn sends an Ethernet packet to the room controller that opens the door We built an automatic door that also has a normal metal key in case of blackouts see figure 4 We used a relay to operate the door We also connected a 5V output port on the door lock and an input port on the door frame so we can detect when the door is shut Figure 4 Demo door 4 2 RGB Lighting RGB LEDs can emit any color of light depending on three analog command circ
10. ing method on them without really providing any explicit answers so they instinctively moved to rubber ducky and pair debugging In this programming approach they explain their code to each other or to imaginary partners until they find the problem All students were required to attend each tutorial even if it had no immediate benefit to their portion of the project for collaboration purposes Students stated that that most of the initial motivation was generated by the fact that they believed in the project initially and this was fostered by financial and educational support from their teachers They also state that their enthusiasm only grew when they were faced with seemingly insurmountable tasks that they successfully completed databases object oriented programming mobile computing web applications networking embedded computing and electronics They loved becoming better problem solvers They enjoyed cannibalizing old electronics to find the parts they needed This team expected their teachers to be all knowing at the beginning soon they realised that we have limitations But they still needed a mentor present at all times in the room The project investment was about 500 euros and the teacher time spent on this project alone was about one and a half man months 6 0utcomes The project was awarded third place in the ESDC international contest Shanghai China third place in the national contest IMSmart Bucharest Romania
11. om control solution 5 Control4 from Exzel Smart Home reference accessed February 2015 http www exzelsmarthome com products homecontrol index html 6 MySql refference manual http dev mysql com doc refman 5 7 en accessed June 2014 7 Windows 8 User manual accessed June 2014 http www microsoft com en us download details aspx id 39055 8 Intel Galieo online manual accessed June 2014 http www intel com content www us en do it yourself galileo maker quark board html 9 Yocto Linux documentation accessed June 2014 https www yoctoproject org documentation 10 Apache Tomcat Server documentation http tomcat apache org tomcat 7 0 doc 11 Android Developer Manual http developer android com accessed June 2014 12 Schneier on Security Cryptanalysis of SHA 1 accessrd June 2014 https www schneier com blog archives 2005 02 crypta nalysis_o html 13 Unified Modeling Language User Guide The 2 ed Addison Wesley 2005 p 496 ISBN 0321267974 14 Ian F Darwin Java Cookbook 3rd Edition ISBN 978 1 4493 3704 9 publisher O Reilly Media 2014 15 Thomas H Cormen Clifford Stein Ronald L Rivest and Charles E Leiserson 2001 Introduction to Algorithms 2nd ed McGraw Hill Higher Education 16 Leonard Richardson Sam Ruby RESTful Web Services Web services for the real world ISBN 978 0 596 52926 0 publisher O Reilly Media 2007 17 Mitra S Beyond the Hole in the
12. ontaining one hub and three bulbs costs 199 The Belkin WeMo Switch Motion 2 is a relatively low price device which has a_ plug and play configuration that will appeal to many budding home automations Belkin s WeMo Switch controls your plugs via Wi Fi SmartThings 3 is another approach to a smart environment they use a hub connected to a router which can control multiple modules The modules connect to the hub via Wi Fi and are controlled using an Android or iOS device Smart Room Control Solution 4 from Distech Controls is a different approach to the smart room problem They use different modules which require a complicate installation compared to other solutions The wiring is complicated and modules have to be carefully mounted on the fuse box Control4 5 from Exzel Smart Home is an award winning product that can help homeowners manage their home in a smart and integrated way From turning music on choosing movies to controlling the lighting setting room temperature controlling sprinklers monitoring the front door camera to see if anybody is there setting and monitoring fire alarms and security alarm systems All of this can be done by one single user interface be it a touch screen panel iPhone iPad iPod or universal remote control At the end of the research phase two of the 7 students quit One realised that he is not happy building such devices and made a career change towards medicine the next year The other
13. then supported in implementing them 10 Conclusion This experiment had the purpose of turning students into programmers in the shortest possible time using hands on challenges The skills they learned were applied in the spirit of self determination and entrepreneurship Soon they were approached by prospective buyers and human resource representatives of local programming firms All the students accepted internships but half of them also work on their own projects such as artificial intelligence for home automation indoor localization systems and easy to program embedded systems The programming games and tutorials found by the students and reviewed by their mentors are now part of the optional bonus point challenges presented to first year students 11 Acknowledgement This work was partially supported by the strategic grant POSDRU 159 1 5 2 133255 Project ID 133225 2014 co financed by the European Social Fund within the Sectorial Operational Program Human Resources Development 2007 2013 References 1 Philips s Hue reference accessed February 2015 http www usa philips com e hue hue html 2 The Belkin WeMo Switch Motion reference accessed February 2015 http www belkin com us p P F5Z0340 3 2015 SmartThings reference http www smartthings com February 4 Smart Room Control Solution by Distech Controls reference accessed February 2015 http www distech controls com en csa products smart ro
14. uits This allows the user to set the mood in the hotel room as he desires The user can choose any color using the android app where he sets 3 different values for the Red Green and Blue hues The preferred colors can also be saved on the Server This command can be given via internet from virtually anywhere 4 3 Plug The smart plug functionality allows the user to turn a device connected to it on or off by pressing the SmartPlug button on the Android app The app will send a message to the central server via Wi Fi which will send a message to the Controller and activate or deactivate the relay By using a current sensor the SmartPlug can read how much current is being used In order to control the power plug we use a relay much like the ones used for the door Both the relay and the sensor are connected in series with the power plug 4 4 Motion Sensor Movement detection sets off a notification The room controller will read input from the PIR and forward it to the server via the alarm subscription service when presence is detected so that the server can log it 5 Collaboration The students used Google Docs to synchronize tasks and module inputs and outputs In the beginning most interactions were done through their advisory professor 22 But in just one month of working this way they self organised using Trellol as a work management platform git for code versioning They also realised that I was actually using granny teach
15. y configuration While the proactive artificial intelligence is meant to automatically adjust actuators to reach a preferred environment status The next step in the students training is slowly removing teachers from the equation in order to generate self reliance The students no longer need teacher presence to get tasks done but they require it in order to actually attempt to start working For that reason we started limiting teacher interaction to one short scrum meeting a week Most of the tasks are assigned and reported on using Trello Premature workforce integration of the students seems detrimental to their studies We generally see a decrease in time and effort dedicated to tasks when students start working even part time For this reason we created connections with several private sector organizations with real life problems that need to be solved and are willing to support the students financially for their efforts This way we can make sure they keep improving their knowledge base and also become self sufficient 9 Education style During this experiment we identified a few problems with the educational process not all students are made 23 to be computer scientists and the sooner they find out if they like it the better the topic of computer science is ever changing to the point that it takes a very long time to update contents of teaching materials students must be included in projects that are worthwhile for them
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