This was a busy week. In addition to finishing the paper and other last minute things, we gave a couple of presentations to high-schoolers. The first time was truly at last minute notice. Dr.Anderson managed to put together a presentation that involved us demoing the creation of a magic 8 ball Android app and informing the students a bit about our research. She then took over, explaining the curriculum and showing videos of the former CS department projects. The second time was at the Robotics Lab. We talked about our research and demoed the robots. I got to present my calculator app and managed to get a few laughs whenever a student discovered an Easter eggs. The students had a lot of fun both times and I think we really got them interested in Computer Science as a major.

I've enjoyed my time here at the University of Alabama. I will definitely try to keep in touch with Dr.Anderson and the rest of the research team. I'm really glad DREU gave me the opportunity for this experience.

This week flew by fast. I'm still working on the final report. It's coming along, slowly but steadily. I'm actually learning a lot about elders, ableism, user-technology interactions, etc. just from the process of researching and writing. I hope to have the paper completed before the end of next week. So far that looks possible. I haven't been able to put much time into adding finishing touches to the app. I hope to do more of that next week. All-in-all, it's that time of an internship where you kick into high gear to make sure you complete all your assigned tasks and leave the rest of the work pick-up ready for the next wave. There's a lot to do, but I don't think it's impossible.

It's so hard to believe that it is already the eighth week! Reviewing these last two months makes me realize just how much we have been able to accomplish in such a short time. I've learned C#  and how to use Microsoft's Speech SDK. I've created a voice-operated calculator app. I've learned about web services and operating with a MEAN stack. As a team, we've been forming and reforming the home system's server architecture. We have been determining the best framework for the app-server API. We've decided on the standard voice commands and have been creating the corresponding VCD and grammar files. We have done so much but there's still much more to complete.

Since I only have two weeks left, I want to leave behind work that will be easy for the next group to pick up. To do this, I would like to finish coordinating the VCD and SRGS files. I would also like to resolve any errors and warnings in the app. Morgan has already started work on coding how the app interprets a recognized commands. I would like to advance that work to a point where the next group can fully understand our intent. I also intend to review and elaborate our comments for the same reason. Besides this, the next major goal before I head back to New Mexico is to complete the research report.

This week I have worked a bit on the VCD and SRGS files, but mostly I have been focusing on the final report. I have started on the outline questions and been reading research material.

We're going to be pretty busy these last few weeks!

We're still working on the building the VCD and SRGS files. Dr. Anderson is still making tough decisions about the server's layout. This week, though, we are moving a bit ahead. Morgan finished the VCD draft and is now coding the app to interact with it. In the meantime, I'm modifying her VCD draft and my SRGS files to match each other. I'm also adding improvements to clear up any confusion that may result from the files' structures. 

This was a short week not only because of Independence Day, but also because of the field trip we took on Wednesday. The other group in our lab is working on a sensor project. They needed to survey the river to learn more about the sites, collect data, and test their equipment. Our group came along too for the learning opportunity. The biology researcher the sensor project is being done for pointed out important features of the sites and explained to us what work is like as an ecologist. We had a lot of fun. This was very different from the usual day in the lab. I appreciate getting the chance to see fieldwork done within Computer Science. I had not really considered it before, but now I think it may be an area to consider.

There's only a few more weeks left. I'm excited to see what other adventures are in store!

This week we had a lot of rewrites. Morgan is working on creating the Voice Command Definition (VCD) file and I'm working on creating the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS) files. At first she and I brainstormed and developed at standard list of commands. We then started writing the VCD and SRGS files based on this list. However, we were unaware that Dr.Anderson had been developing a list of standardized commands too. When she presented hers, we combined both the lists and began again to write the files. While Morgan and I did this, Dr. Anderson worked on rearranging the server so that it could send and receive messages more efficiently. Our goal is to push most of the work on the server, thus allowing as "thin" an app as possible. A "thin" app means faster performance and an decreased likeliness that users would hesitate to download the app to their phone due to memory issues. However as Dr. Anderson works on building the effective server framework, changes occur that affect our VCD and SRGS files. 

Overall this has been one of those weeks where you constantly reassess your framework and go back to the drawing board to improve. We are at that stage where the small-scale intricacies must be addressed in order to continue. The good news is that once we establish this, we will have accomplished the hardest part of the project. The next parts will take some time but not be as challenging mentally.

Being a part of DREU this summer, has not only allowed me to learn about research but also to broaden my horizons. This weekend I got the opportunity to join another REU group for a hiking and whitewater rafting trip. I had never done this before and it was an amazing experience.

This week we finalized the set-up. We have a local server which will relay messages from the app to the home, vice versa. The server was built on a MEAN stack. This means it will use MongoDB as a database, Express and Angular as the frameworks for the server applications, and Node.js functioning as a sort of operating system on which everything to runs. Interaction between the app and the server is done via a RESTful API.

Morgan and I played around and figured out how to send requests to the server using HTTP methods but we couldn't figure out how to parse the response messages. We also needed to determine  the content and format of the server's response messages. We brainstormed with Dr.Anderson and decided that the app should expect to receive a json with a list of rooms that have voice-capable devices. Each room would catalog its voice-capable devices and each device would hold data such as its name, current state, and available commands. With this established, Morgan and I can actually code a decent portion of the app.

Coding voice recognition for Windows apps involves two parts. The first is activation of the app via a command. This means the app launches and performs an action when it given one of it commands through Cortana (i.e. outside the app). The second is responding to in-app commands, that is, once inside the app, reacting to voice commands directly (no Cortana intermediary). Morgan and I decided to split these tasks. She'll implement voice recognition via Cortana. I'll work in the in-app voice recognition. While Morgan I work on the app (the client side), Dr.Anderson will be working on arranging the server (1) to organize the data more helpfully and (2) to send messages in the our decided format.

It hard to believe that we're already half-way through the internship. It's been exciting and I'm learning a lot. Being at University of A's been a great experience, so far. There's so much more to do. I'm excited for the next half.

Having learned to create a simple voice recognition app, the next stage of our project was to figure out how to send the voice commands from the app to the physical objects. Dr. Anderson showed us openHab, an open source home automation system software. To quote the openHab website: "openHAB is a software for integrating different home automation systems and technologies into one single solution that allows over-arching automation rules and that offers uniform user interfaces". Said another way, openHab allows the user to buy various home automation system technologies from different companies and interact with them all using openHAB's simple user interface. Our task would be to program our apps to connect to the openHAB server. This will allow the app to obtain information about the state of appliances and to send commands to the appliances.

Doing this requires an understanding of web services including the concepts of REST, HTTP, MEAN, etc.

In addition to learning these, we also continued to read research papers related to our projects.

Outside of the lab, my roommate and I spend time at the gym or at the pool. This weekend, we invited our apartment complex to a potluck. It was great. We got to meet other REU students, eat great food, and just have a lot of fun.

We accomplished a lot this week. Morgan and I both finished our voice-activated calculators. They turned out pretty well. Both of ours do the basic multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction functions. We also decided to add some fun features. In my calculator, you may do color math and object math. For example, adding red and blue will give you the solution of purple. Multiplying chair and apricots might result in the solution "a rather poor choice of decor", one of ten random responses available. I also placed easter eggs for when the user tries to divide by zero or use infinity.

This week Dr.Anderson gave us access to the remote servers. She also informed us that we will be using Git and LaTeX. We will need to review tutorials on those. We will also need to start reading research papers relevant to our project.

Our research team grew more this week. A sophomore Computer Science student has now joined us, so now we have a team of six (plus Dr.Anderson). Half the six are DREU participants. If you're interested in learining about the other DREU perspectives of the project, I check out the links to their websites below:
    http://morganbuford.weebly.com/
    http://omarwhite-ua-dreu.weebly.com/

Also, Dr.Jeff Gray, a researcher at University of Alabama, is working on a project to encourage high school interest in Computer Science. He asked us to assist him by performing a video interviews. I should have prepared for the questions ahead of time, but he seemed satisfied with the video anyway.

If you're interested in learning more about his project, please follow the link below:
   https://csp-cs4hs.appspot.com/preview

This week was a bit shorter because of Memorial Day. We're still in the set-up stages. Dr.Anderson is setting up our remote accounts and the servers. In the meantime, Morgan and I have begun programming our calculator apps. 

I spent way too much time trying to install a version of Visual Studio that allows programming of Windows 8.1. After cycling through silly incompatibility issues, I finally downloaded a version that works with my computer. I can't use the emulator because my computer doesn't have the professional version of the Windows 8 operating system, but since we have a Windows phone that I can use for testing, that won't affect me. (Warning Boring Tech Elaboration : I was going to the lab computers but they use Ubuntu. Because of this I installed a virtual machine Windows 10 (tech preview), but the Virtual Studio won't allow Windows 10 users to create apps, because the Windows app store does not accept Windows 10 apps yet! I was going to use a Windows 8 virtual machine, but then realized I already had Windows 8 on my laptop. Doh!)

Once I found the right software, I actually began working on the calculator app. It was a bit frustrating in the beginning. The actual C# wasn't difficult because it resembles Java, however implementing voice recognition was confusing. Windows updated it's speech recognition techniques, but the old information is still prevalent online. Discerning between outdated and current methods was hard for me. I eventually figured it out, though. At the end of the week the calculator wasn't finished, but I had some sense of direction for the project.

Outside of lab, I got to know University of Alabama better. This campus is full of history. On a lunch break, I checked out the University of Alabama's Museum of Natural History and got transported back in time. I was also delighted to find a black history display with actual journals and letters at the Gorgas Library. I spent hours of my rainy Memorial Day exploring this library.

My research team and I also hung out. Whether playing fetch with a dog at the Quad or lifting weights at the gym, we always found something fun to do. One day after lab work, my roommate and I went biking along the Riverwalk, a trail along the the Black Warrior River. On the weekend, our research team went out together for gourmet burgers and a stroll around downtown. We also visited the Birmingham Zoo.

This only the second week and we've already done so much. We expanded our research team with a new member, an exchange student form Brazil. Next week, I hope to complete the app. Dr.Anderson will present our logins and access to the project servers. We will be moving to the next stage in the project.