This week was very exciting. In addition to meeting with Dr. Anderson to discuss some particular details about the server relating to our project, we also had an opportunity to visit the 16-inch telescope at Gallalee Hall. See this post for more details.

3 other students are working on a riverbed project, so on Wednesday we took a trip to a few different areas of a river. This included lots of walking through woods, terrible cell phone reception, and even ticks! They tested some equipment though, and we got our feet in the water, so overall it was very productive!

I will be heading home this week, but I am going to continue working remotely on the voice controlled home automation app from East Texas until the end of the 10 weeks.

I can't believe we are already to week 6! Time flies when you are having fun. This week we have been working on the voice command definition (VCD) file. It is an XML file which dictates the different voice commands that can be used to activate the app and perform different tasks. We decided on the name "Lovelace" in honor of Ada Lovelace for our app. The VCD must include the different types of devices that we can control as well as the different types of controls, such as switches, dimmers, thermostats, etc. Below is a screenshot of part of our VCD file.

This week is all about parsing JSON data. Dr. Anderson has provided us with some code to parse the JSON data and assign it to C# objects. So we are working on integrating this into a Windows 8.1 phone app. There isn't much to post for this week's update since this process has entailed quite a learning curve, so we have spent a lot of time researching various methods for accomplishing these tasks.

This week we have been working on our MEAN servers. MEAN stands for MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and NodeJS. If you are interested, you can find out more information about MEAN here: http://mean.io/#!/

So we have set up a test server on our local machines, and we are practicing interfacing with the API that Dr. Anderson set up. Essentially, all this does at the moment is return a tiny bit of information (see below for a screenshot). 

We have been using this to learn how to interface with the JSON data from the API in our C# program. So far I have managed to get the JSON data as a string and display it on my app screen. By the end of the day, I hope to successfully parse the data and be able to manipulate it via voice activation. The ultimate goal is to tell Cortana to turn a device on/off and have her send the command to our app, which will interface with the API, which in turn, sends the data to the server. Then using openHAB, the device will be turned on or off.

There have been a lot of tutorials this week, and the quest for knowledge is ever-increasing!

We completed our voice calculator apps this week, which I think turned out quite well. My app in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucKscuooX1Y
I tweaked the audio after this recording so there is no overlap between the buzzer sound and Cortana's voice.

We have also completed additional tutorials for Git, which is a distributed version control system. It is used for tracking changes to code, and it enables teams to work together on the same project more efficiently. We met with Dr. Anderson earlier this week to discuss our goals, set up the virtual machines, and watch a brief Git demonstration. So far, I have successfully managed to push, pull, commit, and clone a git repository. I have also picked out a few research papers to read, one of which I will be presenting to everyone next week. By the end of the summer, we will be creating a research paper of our own (using LaTeX), so this will provide some practice in the format and presentation of the paper.

Last week, we were asked by Dr. Gray, a professor here at UA, to participate in an interview in which we were asked questions relating to our intent and motivations in the field of computer science. He runs the CS4HS program in Tuscaloosa whose purpose is to provide high school teachers interested in teaching computer science the tools and education they need to guide their students. Please below for the links to the video and CS4HS program.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCgraZGo8xY
CS4HS: https://csp-cs4hs.appspot.com/preview

This week we have learned a lot of C#, XAML, and how to create apps for a Windows 8.1 phone. We have a task of creating a voice-activated calculator, which has taken up all week. Of course, Monday was Memorial Day, so some of us were not in the lab then. I have not completed my app yet; I am having a few issues with getting Cortana to understand voice dictation and make the calculation, but eventually I will figure it out.

We are at the end of the week, and it looks like we will have a very busy, exciting summer. We have learned a bit about the project that we will be working on, but first we have some preliminary work to do. This week we completed tutorials on C#, Windows 8.1 apps, and Cortana to make sure that we are up to date on everything. We will also be doing a project with Arduino at some point this summer, which I am very excited about! I have always wanted to tinker with it. You can find more information on Arduino here: http://www.arduino.cc/

Our project will be to take a robot, make it autonomous, and enable it to have a human-like interaction with the elderly in order to increase the quality of life and extend the amount of time elderly people can have in their own home.

Our next task will be to create a couple of apps to refine our skills in creating Windows apps. We will eventually be integrating our voice-enabled home automation app with openHAB.

I am looking forward to it!