IKatha (Two)

This time I got something very exciting and new. which is Free and open, Yes Free!! as in B33r 😉

So, I was working over a new project which is developed for Ipad.

The code can be downloaded from here -> https://github.com/unknownhad/i-Katha-2

The code is open (Like always) and free, so you can download it modify it and distribute it  🙂

The app is available over itunes and can be downloaded from -> https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/ikatha/id789851768?mt=8

Thanks to Autism Society of India and Prayas Labs, for helping me with this project.

The project is build specifically for the kids with autism and ADHD.

The best part in Ikatha 2 is the old pre-created story can be modified and add new stories.

Try it and provide your reviews 🙂

REDx 2014, Red Eye Flux

Tags

Eye Doctor, Hyderabad, LVPEI, MIT Media Labs, OpenSource, REDEx 2014, Solution

Last weekend I was in Hyderabad, Attending REDx 2014. Thanks to LVPEI and MIT Media labs for bringing this to us.

It was an awesome learning experience. My Mentor was Elliott Rouse and we started working in a group of 6. Pic Credits. John Werner

On the very 1st day I had my own plans to implement few things, but at the very end, we find out that this time it is different and we have to implement some pre decided projects.

What We got is Red-Eye Flux Complete Explanation can be found here –> http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Light-Emitting-Diodes-dot-org/Sample-Chapter.pdf

Or I would like to say it as Devil’s eye experiment, it’s the same thing which we got red shiny eyes while clicking the images using a camera.

These proper red eyes mean the eyes are healthy and any abnormality in the flux means there is something wrong with it. Doctor’s use this method over very small kids as they can’t tell what’s wrong with them.

After some brain storm we came up with the problem statement.

1) Standardization of flux what we got.

2) Minimizing the cost of present equipment used.

3) Recording the flux received.

Present equipment is costly can’t record and it’s all based on the doctor’s experience nothing is standardized.

After the Problem statement, it’s time to start working over it.

Started with optics.

After that defining the problem inside the problem

And after that experimentation with different cameras

And finally we were able to build our very first prototype.

After testing hundreds of different camera we find our solution in surveillance camera/Snake camera. Which was able to capture the red flux and most of the camera of these days do cancle that effect.

After capturing the image do some image processing

We have used Matlab for image processing the code can be found here

And which works like

 

And after this we can create a histogram for Standardization of the process.

The camera cost not more than 10$ so this is cheap and as we use camera so we can record this too which was not possible earlier. 🙂

Our Poster for this project.

Objective and Clinical motivation.

Our Approach

Finally the result and discussion

Me testing our prototype on the eyes of the senior LVPEI doctor.

And Image processing after the image.

And this is how an awesome week comes to end and at the end, we had a prototype which really worked and happiness.

In the End a group pic Cheese 🙂

For any more information regarding this or any of my work please do comment or mail me.

 

 

 

WTF! Vodafone

Tags

Sucks, Telecom, Vodafone, Worst service provider

Recently I was in Lucknow at my home, it was 11 pm in the night when someone decided to start “maiyaa ka jaagram”. The place where my home is just around 1 km from police station and Railway Station and incidentally, it was the same day when polling for the general election happened.

At First I was like this would stop and I waited till 1:00 AM, After that I decided to call police and let them handle this. As no Loud speakers are allowed after 10:00.

I tried to call “100” which is an emergency number and from the other side I for the automated message

“This service is not available on your phone”

I tired it again and again and some 3-4 times more and the same result, After this I called “111” Which is Vodafone customer care number.

After some 2-3 min waiting and some 8-10 key pressing I can take with some human, I tried to explain that guy, I was trying to call an emergency number and I was unable to connect and then he replied was like WOW “you phone number is not registered for national roaming I am sending you a number please send a SMS over this phone number”

I was like dude “Sharam aati he i ke nahi” (Are you ashamed of what you are saying) I am on roaming since last 15 days and when I am trying to call emergency number you are saying this service is not available because I haven’t activated my national roaming.

After some 3-4 mins of arguing he transfer my call to their networking team.

I thought he might able to help me and those idiots also got nothing to say other than some useless, senseless, time killing arguments.

One of call center executive told me that 100 number is not available in lucknow.

This was some serious shit. After that they put me on hold for some 5-10 mins and no one picked up my number and it got disconnected by itself.

 

Cool After that I tried to call 100 again and the result was same.

I tweeted this after 3 days and some one from Vodafone did picked this up and tried to pretend as if they are very helpful.

My 1st tweet https://twitter.com/anand_himanshu/status/461961944727969792

No one replied for this and so my 2nd tweet

 https://twitter.com/anand_himanshu/status/461962082502443009 and after that the 3rd one https://twitter.com/anand_himanshu/status/461966337917476864

After this finally I got reply from Vodafone https://twitter.com/VodafoneIN/status/461968618989694976

They started communicating with with over DM (Direct message) And after some 4-5 Days wait they finally decided to registered complaint  

complaint number Number for your reference is 1516889276.

After this they started calling everyday asking the same question again and agin for some 4 days.

Still no one gave any answer and everyone trying to be bond, No one knows anything and again the same call center shit all over again.

They asked me if I know the name of call center executive who received my phone, why the hell they do record our conversation?

Why I haven’t got any message that I talked with some XYZ person, which they send every time after talking with there executive.

According to Vodafone these are the problems which might happen that day,

1. There was no network when you was dialing 100 after that you got network and you dialed 111 and after that you lost network and you were not able to dial 100 again.
2. You can’t make emergency call  on number 100 from any other state other than Maharashtra.
3. 100 is not emergency number.
4. You were not inside the network.
5. You need to activate National roaming to call emergency number.

And after all this I still got nothing and It was not really that emergency for me but it could be someone who might be dying and using Vodafone network.

If someone got hurt and want to call police.

It is not even a mistake according to Vodafone.

Government should take strict actions against these guys.

What they care about is just money making huge bills and shit, these guys don’t even know anything about Emergency number and everything is running on presumptions. They care for nothing other than money bills and there social image should be clean and clear. Vodafone You suck your service suck.

Bol V1.1

Tags

Android, Application, ASD, Autism, Free, Human Computer Interaction, OpenSource

Bol is a software which was created specifically for kids with autism.

Autistic kids are not be able to speak properly sometimes totally non verbal.

Here is a YouTube video, how computer changed helped an Autistic kid in interaction with the world.

I have tried to create something similar, Bol is available for Ipad and for android.

Screen shots for bol:

Added objects

Options for objects

New object

Add new Object

Menue

For Ipad version of it you can get it from

https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/bol/id579955668?mt=8

And android version of Bol is available over

https://github.com/unknownhad/Bol-1.1

You can download it and distribute it for free. The code is also available free to download and for modification and distribution.

Download the APK and install it over android device, I tested it for Tablet though this works ok with Phone also.

Big screen size is recommended.

I hope you would like this, Do comment your views and if you need any new feature.

 

Drishti: Feel the view

Tags

Drishti, MIT Design

Drishti is a Prototyped concept, for visually impaired people by which they can feel what’s around them, and read the 2D things by converting them to braille .

Let’s 1st watch the video and then will explain what this is.

How it started and how it ended 

All this started in MIT Design and innovation event in Mumbai, Jan 2014, where some 90+ teams (each team got 4 people) assembled and every one have to implement something new and creative.

I was in “Imagining experience” group , and my mentors were Ermal Dreshaj and Nikhil Naik and special thanks to Anirudh Sharma and Dhruv Jain .

the 1st thing happened to me was to think about the idea and like always I loved it so much like my kid and didn’t wanted to get way from this, and bang my team (Imagining Experience: Team 3) didn’t liked my idea.

After this Thanks to Dhruv who told me if I love my idea then I should work alone 🙂

And I did that can I came up with the prototype, and thanks to my team and every who was there they still helped me, and that’s not just my track even people form other tracks helped me a lot.

Working of this prototype

For every pixel in 2D we got a pin.

There would be 3D camera which is worn by visually impaired person.

Now whatever comes in front of it would be converted into pattern which a visually challenged person can feel (Something similar to that of pin art), and whatever is written in 2D will convert that to Braille.

Pins can be used for getting input too, as explained in the video.

Video Created by: Ishan Gupta

Voice by: Keshav Sharma

Poster for Drishti

Bol for Android

Tags

Android, Autism Society of India, Bol, Github, OpenSource

I was be working with a project since a very long time but in the mean time I am able to (almost) complete this project which is already there in the market by the name if “Bol” and which is free.

But it was for Ipad, So I have tried to port the “Bol” over android.

All the code is open and under GPL license so you can download it and use it.

I am sorry as I haven’t tested it over real device as I got no android device so it is just tested with the emulator.

https://github.com/unknownhad/bolforandroid

You can download the code from git hub, Please do use it and do tell me any bug or problem you face like I would try to make that correct.

I will be updating this code very soon and as soon as this is going to get tested I will upload this at android market.

Stay tuned As I am working over “Bol V2”

A very special thanks to “Jeet Kumar” and “Nicky Gurbani” (http://niktrix.in) who helped me with this application.

I Am not a android guy and this is my 1st application and this came alive just because of him.

Thanks to “Autism society of India” who helped me with the research and the original Bol application is developed by them only. Link -> http://autismsocietyofindia.org/

And Thanks to ma’am “Kavita Sharma” without whom this was a very difficult task.

If you guys want the APK then please to comment I will mail you as I am not sure where to share my APK so that no one would tamper with it.

—

Regards

Gestures,games, kids and autism

Tags

Autism, Gestures, ImageProcessing

Hello

Since last few weeks I was be working over this project which is now in demo stage and want to share with you people.

I have Used OpenCV for image processing for detection of hand gestures.

The piano is created in HTML5 and CSS3

Check this demo, I know it is not very clear and I am sorry for that but the whole Idea is to use gestures to play piano .

This is more like just a proof of concept.

I find out that all kids either normal or special they got a lot of energy and these days there physical activity is getting low and you can blame this to internet, computers or video games.

It’s just just to demonstrate that would change out interaction with the computers, will make kid do physical workout while enjoying the game.

Can do this with “kinect” too but was trying to reduce the cost and I didn’t got kinect which feels like idel but which is big (in size) and costly can’t really add it to tablets and phones, if you guys like this then please leave your comment.

My next target is to port this for touch event over android and Ipad.

Why to use gestures than touch?

I feel like tablets are costly and kids might broke them and if this thing can result in protection of hardware and physical workout with the learning with games and software then why not to implement this..??

Need inputs form you people as every other thing is depend over that.

If you got any comment or question then please do ask me would love to answer them and to groove my idea  so that education would be fun and healthy.

I believe in Education should come for free , So will post this code over GitHub ASAP , so that anyone can see that learn from that and modify that .

—

Regards

Education should come for FREE.

Tags

Education, Ideology, OpenSource, Teaching

This post is more like knowledge passing thing and telling you guys my ideology  So if you are expecting something much related with “Autism” then I am sorry to disappoint you. This is more oriented towards the software and tools available for targeting special person and some of my personal views.

I am a guy who believe in FOSS(Free and OpenSource Software), So I am a GNU and MIT license advocate and I love sharing and learning. What I believe that I am not perfect and every one got some thing new which they may add in everything and anything to make it more awesome, creative and to enhance it’s functionality, and make it person or community specific thing.

Believe me none of us is perfect and when it come for something like education and teaching thing then keep the things for free and open so that others may learn form it, Enhance it’s features so that out target audience would keep on increasing and it would get more spectator, there are other things by which you may be millionaire and you may opt some good business model like other open source companies like Eucalyptus and Cloudera and earn a lot but I see no reason of keeping the software related with education closed and then to develop something for educating someone.

It’s like Irony to me education by keeping the source close.

Yes should close source your software, if you are perfect and who just pretending to listing to others talks but what they are listening is “Blah Blah Blah”

Be a little thoughtful about this and then do things accordingly.

Remember how the Legendary Linux change the world, If it didn’t be able to change your mind then try to think like that.

Go through the Projects like Drupal and other FOSS projects, which are Free, OpenSource and still doing well in market and best part is they are growing just because   they are free and open source. That’s not it some of the big companies like Microsoft are funding these guys.

Think about it twice before closing the code , that might be helping you but is it really helping the others for whom you have created it.

If you have any questions related with the article then please do paste the comment, I love comments and if I am doing some thing wrong then i love to correct myself.

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Regards

Himanshu Anand

Free tools for Autism

Continuing from my previous post, This post is about the tools/application/software available for free download and which are tried and tested and created by someone among us. There motive is not profit they just care about making things simple easier and understandable to everyone by giving what they know.

Let’s Discuss about openautismsoftware.org

This project was started by specifically targeting the autistic children and the tool is free. Project Lead by Prof.Juan who is professor at University of Iowa . He started this project with Some student,alumni and few more persons and he came up with a software named open autism software.

You can get the software from here

They have created in the very beginning of multi touch so they completed this task over Windows tablet, if you going to download this then you going to find code (which is in python) with the batch files which you have to execute to run the application.

This single software comes with 4 different kind of Activities which you may also call as Aaps and each activity focus over some different kind of issue.

For more information abut the activities and to know more about them refer this link. Here it’s telling about every activity and with which problem it’s dealing with.

After this There is 1 more important free app which is for Ipad and the name of app is BOL, Beautiful name as the term “bol” is a hindi term which means to speak and the app is fully focused over the speaking habit of the kids.

Autistic children got issue with talking so you may upload/take pictures and then save them with your voice in the background and when the kid plays them you going to listen to the voice which is be save against that picture.

This looks pretty cool to me.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bol/id579955668?mt=8

If you found this information good and do tell me and if you want to add something and find something misleading or wrong info then please do leave a comment.

Next blog post will be over my work how I am doing to help people.

Remember I love Comments 🙂

 

Autism, Technology and Me

Technology is growing very rapidly consequently now we have different kind of solutions for problem we face. Different as in, now We can talk about learning or using software which was hard once (Believe me it was once).

My Niece, 2+ years old, she was growing up  like any other normal child. She used to eat a lot and thus she started putting on weight, but we were not really concerned about this as it looked normal to us. The only problem was she was not be able to talk till yet. she used to shout when she would want to say something. she would poke her fingers into other person’s flesh when someone would not be able to do what she wanted them to.

 

One day i came to know that my niece is autistic. I didn’t know anything about it back then. Though internet was available, but i never really thought about it because it never interested me much.

 

I was just sitting alone and pondering over various things that day and all of sudden i got this urge to know more about this thing called autism. I used to believe until then , that it was some kind of mental illness and just the thought of it would make me sad.

I think most of us, who have just heard about this thing and don’t know much would think like that.

I called up a doctor and asked her what autism is exactly?  She explained it to me that is a mental disorder (Believe me, that’s what she said. No kidding). I was very depressed. But i pulled myself up and begun to think. What has happened, it’s there and it’s the fact. But can anything be done to solve this problem?

Our whole family was in same kind of depression and the only thing I remember was everyone saying “Bhagwaan ne diya hai to kya kar sakte hai” Translate “This is what god has decided for us”.

After 1 week or so my sister started to research over this, what this thing is, after all she is THE mother and she can’t stay idle.

I don’t know how much time she devoted from then till now, as it is hard to calculate. She gave up her whole carrier. A MCA post graduate lady dedicated her whole life for a kid. Till then I was just a spectator just like most of other in the family as I didn’t knew what I could do on my behalf.

Some 1 year back from now, I myself started to learn about autism,

What is autism?

What Causes Autism?

What people are affected with autism?

What percentage of known population is affected with this?

How to cure this?

How to prevent this?

Any medication?

What kind of therapies?

(I am not answering any of these questions. This is not my motive. If you want my answers for these question then tell me. I  will blog 1 more article answering these questions)

I did a lot of research and find out so many different things.

Then I felt that being a software engineer I must do something for my niece and not just her, a lot of different people like her and why just think about the person who are autistic…?

The learning curve of autistic people is comparatively slow then normal person then why not to do something in such a manner which will help every single kid out there because making things easier this is what the real aim is.

This is the story of Autism, Technology and ME.

If you got any views and comments then please to write me, all the comments are welcome.

Will post about available tools which are specifically for the autistic children.

Regards