A Hackathon for a Better World

So what is a Hackathon? Is it three days of creating and fun combined with sleepless nights? Or just an excuse to go and network with like-minded people? What makes The Port Hackathon at CERN special? Is it because you work on real life issues put forward by international organisations such as the UN and the Red Cross? Well, as a true writer and creator I had to find out! My purpose was sentimental as well – I did an internship at CERN’s Press Office back in the year 2000 and wanted to go back and see for myself how much CERN had changed. And if beautiful Geneva had changed.

Day1 – the one where chaos becomes order

 

So here we are, gathered in Geneva, Pier14 – the Sunshine Crew – Sujata, Alex, Zdravko,  Jose-Luis, Nick, Mukul, Kitty, me (Katja), Hansdieter.  Professionals with different backgrounds, we have travelled from different corners of the world – India, Taiwan, Bulgaria, Sweden, Jamaica, Holland, Portugal, Austria/ El Salvador. All of us gathered now at The Port at the Idea Square of CERN to work on a 3-in-1 device for humanitarian aid using solar energy for three days. We started 6 weeks in advance with teleconferences every Monday evening brainstorming, deciding on the materials we need.  Which meant not too much sleep and 1 am calls for some members of the team but the project idea formed and came together – a 3 in 1 device for cooking, purifying water and heating a room for families in Nepal, all of it using pure solar energy.

Why Nepal? Because we talked to Alex Zahnd from RIDS Nepal and he could supply us with all the information we needed of what humanitarian problems to solve there. We also armed ourselves with some world statistics such as that 4 million people in the world die from indoor cooking smoke every year and an average household in Humbla, Nepal, uses 20 – 40 Kg of firewood for cooking, heating and lighting. So we thought that if we could contribute to diminishing the number of deaths with 10-20% and abolish the use of firewood, we would be really happy.

Well gathered at CERN and THE Port we wrote down the inventory we needed, scoured the CERN dumpster for parts, took apart an old air conditioning to use the air tubes for transporting water. The unfortunate part of our story is that all the parts we had ordered from Germany were delivered to CERN but they refused to accept the package. Thus the parcel was sent back to Germany.

The first day involved looking at all the available parts at CERN, cutting and welding, killing a tree to make a xylem filter, designing and re-designing our 3 in 1 device. It did also involve getting to know each other and in which areas we could be most helpful to one another.

After doing some inventory, part of the team went shopping in France with an electric car (we did like the acceleration of the BMW electric cars). So we were standing there explaining in French that we are looking for valves for 8 mm tubes, the 8 mm copper tubes themselves, clams, etc. It was good that Alex knew some French to explain all our needs to the sales assistant. Buying a pressure cooker from MIGROS was the easiest part.

Back at the CERN Idea Square the team continued to work on our prototype until 4 am in the morning. I unfortunately had an upset stomach and turned into bed early. Must have been all that stress and the numerous cups of strong coffee or just a case of a flu. Who knows?

Day 2 – when we fail a little 😦

On Day 2 I was there bright and early only to find out that most of the crew was still sleeping. I decided to help in the kitchen and cook plenty of eggs instead. I love croissants but croissants every day for breakfast is not my idea of healthy living.

When the crew assembled we started with looking into additional parts we needed, working on prototype number two, creating a filter for purification of water from three big plastic bottles, coffee filters, pebbles, charcoal and sand. Alex and Hansdieter went to buy more parts in Geneva, while we worked on the midterm presentation for the Idea Square.  All the teams’ midterm presentations went really well. It was amazing to see all the interesting projects the teams were working on and it a good opportunity for participants to ask questions and get useful feedback on their ideas.

After lunch we went to the SRB site, connected our device with the solar panels to test it. Unfortunately the sun was hidden by clouds and even though the water started boiling we could not conduct the steam to the radiators so not able to declare our prototype as a fully functioning one.  Some of the problems: the pressure cooker was fully insulated however:

–       At a certain point, the pressure cooker pressure release was shut off. At this moment, the water started to flow out of the tube (as expected);

–       Pipes were too long – the temperature at the exit was too little;

–       Insulation was inexistent – temperatures decreases very fast;

(Do not ask me – plenty of engineering stuff! But I started writing our story on site and designed the logo for the team as featured above. What do you think?)

Back at the Idea Square we reconvened to see what we can improve in the prototype and settled on trying out one with a closed circuit the next day. The evening did include going to the Antimatter lab at CERN for some members, even if it was to just get a look at it from the outside. And no, no black wholes created there.

Brainstorming further we went totally out of the box to come up with applications for our device, which included relief trucks for the Red Cross and extracting oil with the help of steam. To see how a relief truck works part of the team went to visit the CERN Fire & Rescue Brigade.

I went to have a dinner in St.Genis in France with my dear friend Geri, who I had not seen for 15 years. And yes, we had some beer and red wine. CERN and the Idea Square are alcohol free.

Day 3 – when we succeed and hope the project will get picked for investment.

The morning started with breakfast at the Idea Square and then going to the SRB site to test the new and improved prototype. This time it worked, the water was boiling, heat and steam were produced so we declared our prototype fully functioning. We had two people from the Red Cross who came to see our prototype and the solar panels at CERN, so who knows what the future holds! After lunch we worked on our final presentation, making a functioning filter, documenting all our work.

An initial idea existed to help the team from Pier 20 use solar energy for their Baby Incubator and some people from our team talked to them. An exchange of ideas is the main purpose of the Hackathon and team members talked to different participants. And exchange of cultures. I heard two gentlemen from Turkey were distributing baklava one evening, and Mukul from our team treated us with Indian spicy bread especially made by his mum.

I am all for exchange of ideas and went to Campus Biotech in Geneva to hear the final presentations of the teams working there. I found some of the prototypes there really good and quite feasible.

After our final presentations at the Idea Square we spoke to a gentleman working with Disaster Relief Operations, who claimed that if we can reduce the cost of our prototype from 150 dollars per piece to 20 dollars per piece, he would be very interested in buying. Actually, the whole idea was that residents of Humbla, Nepal (or other areas needing it) could assemble a device like ours at a very low cost. So perhaps the continuation of The Sunshine Crew project can be finding a way to reduce the cost of the device and then contacting organisations who might be interested in buying it.

The Sunshine Crew did have some after party of our own having beer from tall pipes in a pub in Geneva.  A team member had beer for the first time in his life which was a cause for celebration in itself as well. Suffice to say – it was a lot of work but we had a blast and we are looking forward to next year’s Hackathon! And yes, this Hackathon was totally worth the time and the efforts. And Geneva is as beautiful as I remember it.

 

 

The Future of IoT – Interview with Martin Willers

What is the future of IoT? Would it help us live a more sustainable life? Would the world become a better place because of IoT? I decided to interview Martin Willers, a designer and co-founder at People People – a Stockholm based design studio. Martin invites me to meet him at the company’s office on the South side of Stockholm. We sit in a space with a very industrial whitewashed brick design, mirrors and rows of books. He is wearing a beret hat and presents himself in a very matter-of-fact way.

E: Hallo Martin! How did you first become interested in IoT in the first place?

M: For me personally it probably started when I was still at school eight years ago. I used the GPS chip to make a collar for dogs, so that you can always know where your pet is. My product won a business award at the time. I am interested in technology not so much as a commodity but more as a brushstroke so I can help create valuable things for users. I am more interested in technology as enabling solutions.

E: How do you think IoT will help businesses to be more sustainable and make the world a better place?

M: If we take this Finnish company, for example, that makes trash bins with sensors, which tell the truck drivers when the bin is full. This means less fuel is used for the truck going to empty the bin, as well as saving time and resources. The truck is doing a round only when it needs to rather than emptying half-empty trash bins.

However, I believe that sustainability is more interesting when it affects people’s lives directly. Detecting disease – cancer, for example. I have had family members who have passed away because of cancer so I am very passionate about it. The new technology forces non-innovative players to start thinking about it. For example, if there were a cheap cancer sensor, everyone would want the hospitals to get that. But may be the hospitals are not technologically savvy enough to adopt IoT. They have to learn technology; there is no other way. IoT is driving down sensor costs, so two people for example, who have an idea, can design a prototype, do crowdfunding to collect money, build it, do testing in hospitals. All these things are possible now because the cost of the hardware has gone down. You see verticals such as Health, Imaging, and more structural things happening in society because of IoT. But the most important thing is that IoT should be used for something that people can relate to, such as cancer or the ability to check if your infant is breathing for example.

E: That sounds great Martin but let us focus back on the companies.

M: OK, we helped design Watty for example, a sensor that collects and analyses your energy usage, and presents you with what happens in your home – both in real time and over time. This way you will be able to understand and adapt accordingly. It can be things in the moment like “oops the stove is still on at home”. But in the long run, by highlighting wasteful behaviors Watty will also help reduce your energy bill by around 30%. So that kind of innovation investment will help companies as well reduce their energy bill and become more sustainable.

Another illustration is tech companies. Apple now is hiring many car people because they can measure when traffic goes up on the phone, detect congestions, and they earn money based on that content. Tesla, an electric carmaker is dependent a lot on battery technology and solar energy. As the price of both is going down, there is a convergence where the electric car has a business value for many. And now, as they make their car self-driving, all the sensors already exist in the car and you send signals to it over the Internet to steer it. Google is also building a self-driving car that is coming out in 2017. Uber makes the drivers part of the solution – they are a car company without owning any cars. But they say that as soon as they can implement driverless cars, they will do that, since it is the driver who is driving the cost up. So this is more Internet of Cars than Internet of Things. All these players are not car players and they are challenging the typical car players, which are so stuck in their ways. Next year there is going to be four models of self-driving cars. Volvo is releasing self-driving cars in Gothenburg. Their engineers are saying that the self-driving cars are safer than the human driven ones. The difficult part will be giving the control to something that is Internet driven, which is a huge paradigm shift. Having self-driven cars on the road and steering them in the most optimum way will help lower CO2 emissions. They are so much more financially and environmentally sound types of cars. So here you have an example of companies moving towards more environmentally friendly products and helping make the world a better place through the IoT.

E: What is your vision for the future?

M: When I think about the future I think what can be enabled by technology. I do not want to be a visionary I just want to enable solutions. You have to take a lot of things into consideration when you are painting a picture of the future. You have the industry drivers and then there is the people, political and country structures. If we take urbanization for example – we need more places for people to live and more parking spaces. But in the end there is not so much space for more parking lots in cities. So this brings us back to the Internet of Cars solution. Incentives for carbon reduction do exist; the air quality in cities will be positively affected but will that help change the laws to allow self-driving cars? I do not know. The problem is that people need to vote on that decision and there will be friction.

So when talking about a future vision, it seems very irresponsible for me to say that I have a vision on all those three levels. I can have a technology vision, where I design products that people want. I can have a society vision where IoT is enabling things to happen on a political level. I would like to look at the future where you can add solutions rather than problems. I do think that there have never been so many opportunities because technology is so cheap now and a lot of companies are looking at how they can be part of this positive change. Computers will solve problems that you cannot solve in your brain for example. There will be more and more companies that you have not thought of as technology companies utilizing IoT for more meaningful products and services. That will happen for sure in the future.

An Internet of Things Day

Meet Anna, a 40-year-old PR professional woman, married to Erik, and their 3-year-old daughter Emma. They are the kind of family who care about the environment and sustainability, healthy living and the circular economy. They live in a house with a garden in the suburbs of Stockholm. Anna and her husband Erik wake up at 6 am every morning. The temperature has dropped during the night but Eco-bee, the smart Wi-Fi thermostat, has read the temperature this morning and adjusted it to Anna’s preferred level – 19 degrees. Mr.Coffemaker is perfectly timed and starts making the coffee, while the couple shower and get dressed. Both Anna and her husband wear OMsignal t-shirts with sensors measuring their heart rate, breathing and other vitals. The sensors then send the data to their phones and will warn them if any irregular patterns occur. They wake their daughter Emma up, dress her and seat her at the table for breakfast. Emma gets to wear a Flip 2: a wearable phone and locator for kids. She goes to daycare but her parents still want to make sure they can locate her if she wanders off. As they leave the house after breakfast, Erik pulls out the Wink Relay app on his smart phone. The app  makes sure all the lights are off, the alarm and energy saving mode of the house is on, and the garage door is opening. They share their van with another family, thus sharing the cost of fuel and parking plus reducing traffic congestion and CO2 emissions. Blossom – the smart watering controller starts sprinkling the flowers in the garden as they pull out of the driveway. The controller is automated with real-time weather data and lowers their water bill up to 30%.

After dropping her husband and neighbors off, Anna automates the car to find an available parking spot using the wireless sensors embedded in the parking lots. Thus she reduces congestion as people hunting for a parking spot cause 20-30% of the traffic jams. At her work in the PR agency Anna uses Highfive: a videoconferencing device that she attaches to her phone and has already managed to have conversations with New York, Paris and Tokyo from her own work desk. The family is planning a beach vacation and Anna smiles at the lovely possibility of being able to work form her hotel room. She double-checks the location of her daughter and satisfied proceeds with her daily work. She also checks the “Pay as You Save” smart service by Enlighted which places sensors that automate, analyze, control, and report environmental data to drive energy efficiency. Anna is satisfied by the report that the company has managed to lower its energy cost with 50% this year. They also use sensors to tell them when waste bins need to be emptied, printer toners and paper refilled, all signals coming to one smart app.

By the end of the day Anna receives messages from a bracelet connected to all her calendar and social media about the events that evening. She had planned to go to her book club but switches the bracelet off and decides to have a quiet evening at home instead. Collects her husband Erik plus the neighbors in the van, and drives to the daycare following the directions of a smart navigation system helping her avoid traffic stops and long queues. After they have picked their daughter up and arrived home, Anna uses Maid – a smart microwave directed through voice and gesture recognition. Anna reads through Maid’s recipe of healthy stew suggestion, based on the oven calculating the family’s calorie requirements and prepares it. the door bell rings and Erik uses his phone to check who is at the door. It is the delivery man from Ecolådan – delivering their fresh seasonal vegetables. After the dinner is ready, the family takes all the gadgets off, has a lovely dinner together and snuggles in their comfortable pajamas. As they fall asleep the washer drier starts doing the laundry at a time when the electricity cost is the lowest. Another day in the Internet of Things!