Problems
Growers' Nation - app development
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Background
The aim of the Growers’ Nation project is to develop a free to use, scientific based global application and related outreach resources that will help get more people involved in and enthusiastic about growing produce using the available space in gardens, school/ university/ work grounds and even rooftops that is not currently being used to its full potential.
The app, currently under development, has the potential to reach a wide range of users, from someone new to growing produce in their back garden, to schools that are starting or maintaining allotments, to crop farmers in developing countries. It is being designed to reduce the barriers to growing locally by enabling people to find quickly and easily when the optimal time in their area is for planting and harvesting different produce. It will take location, soil, climate and growing condition data into consideration. The information provided will be updated using recent weather observations and the integration of weather forecasts will help to provide the optimal advice possible.
It will also be possible to demonstrate the power and potential of crowd sourcing through many aspects of this project, including: feedback about pests/ diseases that have affected the user’s produce; user input of soil conditions; feedback about harvest success and the development of a geo-located user tips functionality.
The Growers’ Nation project began as one of the challenges for the NASA International Space Apps challenge weekend in April 2012.
The Challenge
- To develop wireframe versions of the front end of the app using html5 to work on both the web and mobile devices.
- To integrate a user account and login functionality.
- To begin development of some of the crowd sourcing aspects of the project if time allows.
Issues will be released on Github
Links
Solution: http://www.rhok.org/solutions/growers-nation-app-development
Project website: http://www.growers-nation.org
Github: https://github.com/GrowersNation
Twitter: @GrowersNation
Hackpad: https://hackpad.com/V3j4u5gfSzr#Growers-Nation-RHoK
The Exeter site schedule for the weekend: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/conference/RHoK
Deploy, populate or use an open data portal for your city
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Cities publish tremendous amounts of data for the public. These data are distributed throughout a city's web presence. Many of the data are in formats that make processing difficult.
Open data portals provide a city a single, comprehensive catalog of data published by the city. Some open data portals also provide a version controlled repository for storing data in open, accessible formats
You can deploy an open data portal for your city using open source software.
You can contribute to existing open data portals by cataloging published data sets.
You can use data from your city's open data portal in new web applications, infographics and the like.
Automatic App for Volunteer Whereabouts
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Safety & Security of Volunteers is Peace Corps’ greatest priority. For this reason, having an up-to-date location tracking system for Volunteers is critical. Currently, Volunteers generally check in with Post staff to let them know where they will be via text message. On off hours, this means, a staff member with a “duty phone” receives a call or text. While in some cases, a discussion or permission must be granted, the most important thing is to have the real-time data on Volunteer whereabouts. The challenge is to track Volunteer whereabouts automatically via their phone, much like Foursquare, and map it for Peace Corps Post real-time.
Virtual Trading Company as an investment vehicle for the marginalised community
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
“Every Dream is a magical traverse of the panorama of life, each soul transcending the nature of its own desires limited only by the waning brilliance of the forerunners of its own heritage”
The 21st century generation alpha is the precursor of the universal citizen, buoyed by the digital revolution the world is being increasingly carried in their own pockets through the mobile phone and other internet devices.
It is the indictment of an insensitive global citizenship that with the vogue of Astrochimps long gone http://life.time.com/history/in-praise-of-ham-the-astrochimp and space chips travelling faster than the speed of light already a reality http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/adolescent-universe.html there are humanbeings still living in the shadows of technology that cannot even enjoy one square meal a day.
An urban poverty analysis undertaken in kenya by OXFAM GB in september 2009,an exercise i beleive can be replicated in any major city in Asia and Africa helps to put things in their proper perspective! http://www.irinnews.org/pdf/Urban_Poverty_and_Vulnerability_in_Kenya.pdf
Although poverty in Nairobi city is worst amongst those with low levels of education their determination to rise above this modern day plague is evident in their vibrant hawking activities (http://www.uonbi.ac.ke/.../postgrad-student-projects-details.php?project) and merry go round schemes(populary known as chamas in Kenya)http://www.irinnews.org/Report/88795/KENYA-Merry-.. but poor urban-dwellers face an alarming(and increasingly growing) range of vulnerabilities and impendiments to their self-determination that many individuals,governments and other organisations try to address through a myriad of economic empowerment programmes and other poverty eradication schemes that unscruplous people have exploited in the past to con gullible global citizens billions of dollars through ponzi schemes and other programmes engineered to loot donor and public funds.
The Kenya government has now in place the neccesary legal framework that can be used to tailormake enterprunership programmes that can replace the traditional hand-out based schemes for economic empowerment and poverty eradication with tailormade programmes that restore diginity to the marginalised poor through user-driven micro-enterprise.
Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs)
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
At last year's RHoK event, members of Chicago's Community Emergency Response Team formed a collaboration with the Sahana Foundation to create a community scale volunteer and deployment tracking module for the Sahana-Eden platform. This straight-forward, intuitive module will allow community-level response teams to train, track and deploy accurately and efficiently. It will allow us to quickly identify volunteers with the necessary skills (medical, search and rescue, etc) for an emergency response, improving the outcomes for the communities we serve. More information (including screenshots and specific programming tasks) is available here.
Civic App Store: Share the Apps Your City Uses
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Governments can make better use of their scarce technology budgets by working together to solve common problems with shared software. The Code for America Commons is a "community-driven civic app store" where governments can share their solutions, knowledge, and best practices. As infrastructure for the open government movement, the Commons is a community-edited resource to find out what’s working, where. By connecting the world's best civic apps , the Commons aims to stimulate better IT decision-making and the reuse of civic software code. The CfA Commons is also a work in progress, an needs your help; while it is currently tracking 657 apps in 272 cities, most deployments of most civic apps are still NOT listed in the Commons. At RHoK, you can help us get more data about civic apps into the CfA Commons, by adding apps directly or by using the API. Some useful ideas include:
- developing a "bookmarklet" to let anyone quickly add an app they discover online to the Commons
- creating an embeddable widget to showcase apps in the Commons on other websites
- developing tools that scrape other application listings online, or that discover what apps a city is using, and adds them into the Commons
Overflow App for Android-based Huawei IDEOS smartphone [Tanzania]
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Ask:
Adapt an existing Android application (such as Ushahidi or FLOW) to allow citizens and urban planning students of Tandale, an unplanned neighborhood of Dar Es Salaam, to report overflowing road side drains and culverts.
On hand at the Water Hackathon in DC and London, we will have Android-based Huawei IDEOS smartphone (the cheapest smartphone in the world). The day after the hackathon, we will fly with the phones (uploaded w/ the awesome applications that you create) and immediately put the phones to use for data collection.
The reports will go to the Ramani Tandale Ushahidi instance, and will be used to introduce citizen voice into an upcoming $75 million World Bank urban infrastructure upgrading project in Dar Es Salaam.
Background:
Roughly 70% of Dar Es Salaam, one of the fastest growing cities in the world, is unplanned. These areas lack paved roads, drainage systems, and solid waste collection points. The World Bank, working with the Dar Es Salaam City Council, is preparing to improve urban infrastructure, but needs the help of citizens and urban planning students to identify where road side drainage is clogged, overflowing and needing repair.
A network of students and residents already exists in Tandale, one of the target wards for this projects. In August, they created a base layer map that is accessible on Open Street Map. These groups are keen to put to use mobile applications that help make the base map more accessible and useful.
Help people do separate collection of rubbish
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Problem
Nowadays pollution is one of the most important ambiental problem in the world.
During the last years doing separate collection of rubbish has seemed to be the right solution, but it still difficult for a normal citizen to get used make it right.
Goal
This problem is about building a software that helps people to thow away rubbish in a "green way".
Plus
The software should use mobile devices in order to be more effective in daily life.
It should be able to give advices based on a database collecting information such as: picture, description and category.
PhoneSat: Android Apps in Space
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Challenge Description
This challenge is a chance to be a part of kick-starting the public’s access to space. PhoneSat is a low-cost Cubesat using a Google Nexus Smartphone running the open source Android platform as the main processor. Our challenge for you is to create an Android App that utilizes PhoneSat’s capabilities.
The App that you create should be designed to run during a dedicated mission phase lasting approximately one orbit (90 minutes); you could choose to use any portion or all of this time. During this phase you would have access to all of the phone sensors: magnetometer, gyroscope, and accelerometer in addition to the PhoneSat sensors and controls: thermometer, reaction wheels, magnetorquer boards, and solar panel current. You could also utilize any of PhoneSat’s existing capabilities (see below). For access to the PhoneSat sensors and capabilities, simply leave a comment line and the PhoneSat wrapping software does the rest.
Focus Apps
You can submit any App that meets the technical requirements identified above. But we are particularly interested in the following Apps:
1. **Star Tracker App.** Use the phone’s camera to take pictures of the stars and, in an automated way, determine the direction that the camera is facing based on the star field. This would greatly improve the accuracy of the attitude determination and control system providing a platform for a wider variety of experiments.
2. **Fire Locator App.** Use the phone’s camera to take pictures of the earth and then search for fires (probably based on the smoke trails). This could serve as an aid in natural disaster determination and relief.
3. **Attitude Determination App**. Use the magnetometers, sun sensors (solar arrays), accelerometers, and rate gyros to determine the satellite’s attitude state. Aim for +-1 deg per rotational axis.
4. **3-Axis Control App. ** Use the magnetorquers and/or reaction wheels to demonstrate 3-axis control. Aim for +-5 deg per rotational axis.
5. **Radiation Monitor App.** Use the phone’s camera to monitor radiation.
6. **Single Event Upset (SEU) Detector App.** Known in computing as a Soft Error, an SEU detector App would increase the PhoneSat systems’ reliability.
PhoneSat Capabilities
PhoneSat has the following primary capabilities that you could utilize: 3-axis attitude determination and control, Microhard MHX2420 transceiver, and a camera. The phone communicates with the satellite’s systems via a serial port.
Application Environment
Your model testing environment will be in space so there are a few environmental conditions to consider. These conditions will alter the performance of PhoneSat’s sensors. Half of your testing orbit will be in eclipse, which will be responsible for a thermal cycle. Atmospheric drag will be the primary source of attitude disturbance. The Earth’s magnetic field at the orbit altitude would have a similar magnitude to that at sea level. Finally, the satellite may be tumbling with the determination of an approximate attitude.
Quake Felt Report
Updated 1 month 2 weeks ago
Crowd sourced earthquake intensity maps provide disaster managers with real-time information on the intensity of earthquakes while also giving earthquake researchers valuable data to help estimate the shaking from future earthquakes. The Geoscience Australia Felt Report website and the USGS "Did you feel it" website are good examples of such crowd sourced maps. However these maps are tailored for the web browser on desktop computers.
The goal is to create a smartphone app that will allow users to report earthquake shaking intensity and building damage information via their smartphone. This would entail creating an earthquake felt report form in which the users answers a set of questions of the level of shaking and damage to the building they are in. This information is then geolocated using the smartphones GPS and submitted to a database. The earthquake intensity and damage information is then displayed on a webmap for real-time analysis by disaster managers and the public.