Week 9

15/12
Had our presentation in the morning, I think it was one of my most prepared presentation out of so many. We were told to prepare for it because if we were to do to our best, mistake then can be spotted and we can improve. Indeed, mistake were spotted and I had a great lesson on presentation skills. We updated Kevin on the whiteboard application that we had discuss last week. After the update, I continued with the quartz composer.

16/12
I start to do the whiteboard application and research on the background to be overlay on top of every application including Keynote. We did not manage to do it.

17/12
I continue with the application overlay, had a hard time finding the codes for overlay because we were not familiar with cocoa programming. Ming Hong manage to find the command to overlay the application on top of everything. Find some icons for the palette like some brushes, pens, and others.

18/12
First time doing design work for an application because the past project that I have done, the design is handled by my other team members. However, I manage to design the palette and everybody was satisfied with the design. We were told to do a demo for the kids that are coming to IHPC tomorrow. Each of us were to handle a group, and we prepared for the demo. I also tried finding some patches for whiteboard application.
















This is the design for the palette.

19/12
It is "Back To School celebration" with Beyond Social Service where kids come to IHPC for a visit and learn about scientific things. We volunteer our help for that day. We were in charge of Lightdraw section where we will do a simple presentation to the kids about lightdraw. We did some preparation but we did not get to present because Kevin was scared that we could not handle the kids as the age group was smaller than we had expected. In the end, Kevin handle the presentations to the kids but we learned as well throughout the presentation such as how Kevin talks to the kids and gain their attentions.

After the kids had visited all the other stations, we helped them to complete the crossword puzzle  and went to the pantry to have lunch with the kids. We helped Jerry to carry the kids' present down to the seminar room and ushered them to the room to settle down. Then, the prize presentation starts and the kids were happy to receive their presents. Even though it is a simple gift but they were delighted and excited when they unwrapped their presents.

We had a group photo with all the volunteers and kids in the lab.  

Weekly Reflection:
Learned a lot in presentation skills and mistakes during my presentation. Explore a lot on quartz composer, it was quite complicated and not as easy as you think. Did design work and manage to create a design that everyone was satisfied with it. 

Week 8

Week 8

8/12
Today is public holiday so no work.

9/12
I watched the video on Steve Jobs presentations on Apple products to learn about the presentation skills. The whole video lasted bout 2hours, it was a great video because we can learn how Steve Jobs present his products to the audience. After the video, we brainstorm ideas on the Whiteboard application such as different ways of displaying the drawing tools and stuffs.

10/12
As we are told to do a presentation next Monday so I prepared for the presentation. As I am using Keynote to do the presentation so I need to complete asap because I don't have a Mac at home and tomorrow we are going to SiggraphAsia.

11/12
Went to SiggraphAsia.

12/12
Prepared the script for the presentation. Did several dry run with ryan, wilson and hock to pin point each other mistakes. We also told each other what can be improved in the slides. I feel that this session really help us a lot because not only we can improve on our slides, we can also correct each other mistakes.

weekly Reflection:
Learn different presentation skills from steve jobs presentation videos. Saw alot of interesting stuffs at Siggraphasia.

Week 7

Week 7

1/12
The tile display was down so we could not do anything until it is fixed. Kevin suggested that we do some research on the different data format supported for scientific 3D model. Found out some common data format in 3D model such as .3ds, .x , .msh and many other more. We also read up on Fluent which is a software used to create the 3D models. At the end of the day, the tile disp

2/12
The tile display was up so we did our testing without the hold detection. Found out that there was a problem with the frame rate. When we implement the hold detection the frame rate was 6-8 fps but after removing the hold detection the fps increase to 20-23fps. Kevin came and see the testing, we told him the problem and we discussed on some possible solutions and issues that lead to the frame rate problem.

3/12
We tested the tile display again using the RGB lightdraw code that Ming Hong rewrote. Ming Hong suggested that we should combine the remote calibration and receiver together so we do not need to run seperate program. I combine the 2 program codes together but it did not compile properly because of the makefile problem. Did some simple research on Keycode as we needed the keycode value to do some actions for VMD such as rotation, scaling , transform.

4/12
Went for NS medical checkup, took me the whole day so did not went to work. I will do a compilation of our testing, results and findings for the tile display project up till now on the next post.

5/12
Went back to work and hock manage to compile the combination of remote calibration and receiver. I missed out quite a bit because Kevin gave them a short lecture of presentation skills. We were told to give a presentation on the application that we have done which is Puzzle for me and hock, Pong for ryan and wilson. Continue some research on Keycode and Hock found a keycode value chart. Help Ming Hong to test VMD lightdraw with functions such as rotate,scale and transform.

Reflection :
Learned alot on the different data format of 3D model and some simple information on Fluent. I also learned about the keycode value which is a number value for the keyboard. There are different values for different OS such as Mac, Windows and Linux. I also learned how to run VMD and paraview and also some functions avaliable in the 2 3d model viewer.

Week 6

Week 6  

24/11

Tested the OSC to X11 because we suspected that it might be the firewall that is preventing the OSC from sending packets. We solved the problem by disabling the firewall and we managed to do it. We play around with the new DV cam and Ming hong told us about the settings for the cam to setup for lightdraw.

We went over to the tile display room and tested the new DV cam with lightdraw using MacBookPro.

Results and Findings -

1tile - Successfully detect but there are some blind spots where the light will flicker.

4tiles - Even though the camera has been place properly. Some area could not be detected by the camera. I should say we failed for 4 tiles. 

6tiles - Only some area could be detected in the center. We failed for 6 tiles also.

Updated Kevin with the results and he suggested some camera positions that we could try capturing laser from a postion where the camera is placed at a certain angle. He also gave us other suggestions.

25/11

After confirming that it was the firewall was blocking the OSC from sending, we need to configure the firewall such that OSC can send packets to the other computer. Helped Hock a little on the port opening before switching my task. I went over to lightdraw room to test the puzzle application because we need to give a presentation to Kevin on or updated application. Always get prepared is better than not.

After the short presentation given by the 2 teams, we went down to FusionWorld to take a look on the lightdraw setup. We had discussions with Kevin on the possible solutions to the setup of lightdraw in tile display. One of our solutions was to reduce the area of capture because the application that was used in tile display did not need the whole screen. The suggested area to capture was 1.5x2 instead of 2x3. Went over to tile display room to test the remote calibration but we had problems because opencv was not installed and there was errors in the Makefile. Even though Bernard installed opencv, we still could not get the MakeFile to compile in the computer.

26/11

Bernard taught us how to change the makefile according to where the opencv is installed. After trying for several hours, we still could not get it to work. We went for lunch and had a little tour around Fusionpolis. We went to the skygardens in the building and the Student Room for interns which is at level14. After visiting the room, we were glad and happy that we get to be in level 16. 

Kevin and Ming hong came over to help us with the makefile,  we solved the error by including all the things that are needed in the makefile and it can compile. We did some testing and we realize that our port is blocked by the computer so we disable the firewall for 5 mins. We were able to send OSC packets among the 2 computers. However, there were consequences for disabling the firewall which was the computer went crazy and could not start up. Bernard help us to restart the computer by going the cluster computer room. He help us to open the ports that we need to use also.

27/11

Most of the staffs were at level 15 for retreat session, so we were left alone in our lab to do our stuffs. We did not do any anything in the morning because there was a demo in the tile display room and we were told to that the room was free in the afternoon. 

We tested all the opened ports and it took us quite some time before we got to the correct port which is 53.  We could not use the remote calibration so we tried the manual calibration but lightdraw could not work properly because the coordinates that were received were coordinates of the MacBook instead of the tiles.

28/11

Tested lightdraw and remote calibration with 2 macbook and it work fine. Ming hong found out that there are some problems with the lightdraw. After he has changed the codes, we continued testing but the frame rate was very low so the movement of the mouse is very slow. 

Reflection :

I learned how to change makefile according to the installed path, add more include paths that was needed. I also learned how 2 computers can communicate with each other, like when 2 users using the application at the same time.

Week 5

Week 5

17/11
You hock completed the snapping for multi user puzzle in the morning. After that, we fixed some of the rotate corners problem. Finally, the multi user puzzle is working well. We carried on to the 2x3 tile display project. We brought one Macbook Pro and the logitech webcam over to the tile display room. We look around the room deciding where to put the webcam so that we can capture the whole screen. We even tried to put the webcam at the back of the room but there are too many frames and racks which block out some capture area. Our only choice to place the camera is at the front. So we started to set up the camera, we manage to capture the whole screen but the camera cannot detect the laser because the screen material allows light to pass through. Therefore, the camera could no capture the screen properly.

18/11
As the DV cam was not here yet, so we continued the 2x3 display by coding the receiver for the tile display. So when the lgithdraw is running, whenever laser is detected the coordinates will be send to the client computer which is the tile display terminal. We read the lightdraw codes trying to understand how the X11 works. Attempt to code the sender but fail.

19/11
Had a little team meeting with bernard on the tile display. We discussed the difficulties on the integration of lightdraw with tile display. We also discussed on the possible solutions to the problems that we could try. Bernard set us some tasks that for this week. For today, we need to test whether lightdraw can work on 1 tile instead of capturing all 6 as suggested by Harold. We went to back of the room and capture the tile using the webcam. After which we went to the front and hang the webcam on the lights and started the testing. Below is the results and findings for the 2 different camera positions.

Results and Findings :
Putting the camera at the back is impossible because there is glare from the projector which will block out the center of the screen and it will confuse the program becuase it detect the brightness of the glare and the laser could not be detected.

Putting the camera at the front is our solution but we need to hang the camera in the celing as there are audience standing viewing the tile. Therefore, we cannot place the camera on the ground with tripod because it will block the audience's way. Eventhough we manage to detect laser after changing some camera settings but the laser can only be detected at the center but not the whole frame. We suspect the calibration because we used manual calibration instead of auto therefore might cause the result. We also suspect is the qulity of the camera because we used webcam instead of the DV cam therefore the setting could not be set to our requirements. However, we will test again using the DV cam on Monday because it will be here on Monday. Below is the result of the debugging when the camera is place at the front.











20/11
We started the day by doing writing the application to receive the coordinates from lightdraw. We failed in writing the application. We continued the day by doing some testing and checking the puzzle because Cheng Teng told us that they will be using the puzzle app for tommorrow event where the staffs will bring their kids to the office and we will show them our app. From the exprience of the last demo, we decided to do testing and checking ensuring that everything is working properly before using the app on the actual day.
We actually found bugs in our program, I will use diagram to explain the bugs found.

Above is a simple illustration of one of the bug found. If the user try to snap the pieces together but the overall piece after snap will over shot the canvas which is the red part. Result of the above bug is the program will CRASH.

At the end of the day , we manage to solve the bug that is found. Lucky we did the checking before the event, I cannot imagine if we were to discover the bug during the actual event itself. It will be embarrassing.

21/11
The very first thing I did in the morning was a final check and test before the kids starts to come in. While Hock is coding the sender for the tile display. I did the testing and checking and Ming Hong helped me and we discovered another bug which was quite unexpected because I never knew that it will happen. The bug that we discovered was if one of the user is rotating the pieces and the other trying to snap. The result is the snapping will not happen until the rotation is stop. Luckily we manage to fixed the bug before the event starts. After solving, I did not stop testing and checking because I was scared that there were more bugs. Finally, everything is settled down and the check was over. No more bugs were discovered.

We were told that the kids will be coming in to our lab around 2.30. Around 2.30 the kids came in and Cheng Teng showed the kids by using a lightdraw in Google Earth. All of them were amazed by it and Cheng Teng gave them some explanation on how Lightdraw works but I don't think the kids are interested. They are more interested in trying it instead of listening. After the short explantion, the kids were given chances to try and the whole room went in to total chaos because everyone wan to play. So the drawing board was switch on because it allow more kids to play with it. We did not give them laser because we do not want them started to shine each other's eyes with it. We gave them torches and they started to draw with it. I can see that they are enjoying themselves with the drawing. Even some of the adults were having fun with the board. The second batch came in 5 mins later after the first batch has left. They played with our puzzle app and the room went in to chaos also because everyone was trying to control each other pieces. They also tried the drawing board too. After that, we went to the pantry for light snacks and for the first time the pantry is filled with kids.

After the event, we continued with our work which Hock has completed the sender and we were able to run the app on local computer. We tried the app on 2 computers but we were unable to let the app work properly. We suspected that it is the firewall is prventing the receiving of the packets. We will fixed the problem on Monday.

Pictures :













































Weekly Reflection :
Things I have learned for this week is testing and checking for an application is very important because you will never whether your program is bug or have errors. Testing and checking can never be done by one person because you might not know as others might find a bug which you did not expected. I also learned that we must always communicate with team members in a project to establish common understanding on the objectives and tasks for a project.

Difficulties of integrating lightdraw with 2x3 tiles

Difficulties of the integration

-The brightness of the 2x3 is too bright. When the laser shine on the screen, the screen is brighter than the laser.

Attempted to solve the problem by changing the brightness, consulted Bernard and he said that we can't change the brightness.

- Logitech webcam too small, therefore we need to move towards the back of the room to capture the whole screen. 

- Cannot place the camera at the back because there are no space due to the projector racks and frame.

Week 4

Week 4

10/11
We integrate the new lightdraw code with our app and it took us the whole day because we need to change some stuffs before the app can work. Nevertheless, we were able to complete the integration but it can only work for single user not multi users.

11/11
We were unable to use ming hong's method to integrate multi user for our app because we did not understand the method and some of the values that are needed such as CvSeq and more. Kevin came in and brief us on the project that we will be working on after the game app. Wilson and ryan will be working on a new app using MAC Quartz Composer. Me and you hock will be working at the 2x3 tile display which require us to integrate lightdraw on the display. I would say each project has it's own diffculty but our aim is to learn new things at the end of the day and share with each other. We were also told that after doing the tile display we will be developing an app which Kevin described it as our masterpiece for the whole internship.

At the end of the day, we were unable to integrate multi user for our app.

12/11
Ming hong came back and explain how the method works. He also help us a bit with the integration. You hock tried several ways to integrate and we were unable to integrate successfully. We tried to debug but we were unable to solve the problems.

The other team integration with multi-user work fine for them but they could only play with 2 paddles instead of 4 because they only coded for 2 paddles.

13/11
Kevin came in the morning and gave us a more detailed briefing on the project that we are working on. Bacsically me and you hock will be using linux to deploy lightdraw on the 3d viewer program and also make lightdraw work on the 2x3 display. Wilson and ryan would be using Quartz composer to develop an app.

After lunch, Bernard brought us up to the server room and gave us a little lesson on how the system works. It is basically clustering computers together and controlling them perform certain tasks. We also learn about the architecture of cluster computer and many more. We continued with the integration of multi-user for the app and we were unable to get it working properly. We can make the laser shine on the puzzle piece and the rotate corner will appear but we cannot make it rotate and drag. We hope to make the whole application work by the end of the week because the dateline is tomorrow. Hope tomorrow will be a better day!

14/11

















Kevin testing our application

Kevin came in the morning and asked us to give a demo on our app. We told him that our app could not work on multi user so he told us to demo on the single user. Kevin was not very satisfied with our developement because we did not make the app ease of usage. He was not happy with our demo because we did not prepare for the demo and the ways we do our demo. He corrected our mistakes on the way we do our demo such as getting prepared for the demo and may other more.

During lunch, Kevin told us that we need to give a demo to our boss. We had roughly an hour to prepare for demo. We did some changes to our codes and make last minutes preparation for the demo because we did not want the same thing to happen again like the morning. During the demo, we showed our boss on the app and described on the platform used to develop the app. He gave us some feedbacks and suggestions on how to imporve on our app. After the demo, Ming Hong help us a little on the multi-user part and we were able to drag and rotate for mulit user.

Weekly Reflection :
I learn about CvSeq and roughly how it works. I also learn about the method that are used in the lightdraw to detect multiple lasers. I learned about cluster computers and how they worked. I also learned about the importance of being prepared at all times and mistakes that we must avoid during demos.

Week 3

(p.s kevin if we cannot put this video, just inform us and we will remove it.)

Week 3: 

The video above can show the result and the work done for my week 3. I will summarize the work done.

This is what the jigsaw app can do:

- User can input their favorite picture by entering the file path and the number of pieces can be set by square root number such as 4,25,36 etc.

- Drag the puzzle piece

- Rotate the puzzle piece from the 2 corners

- Puzzle Pieces snap together

- Integrate with lightdraw successfully.

- Only allow single user, will continue to explore on multi user on week 4

Weekly Reflection :

I am used to IDE debugging because I can put break points and check my errors easily but since we are using notpad to code so I cannot put break points to check.

So I have to debug more effectively using print line or cout(method to output messages and values) through this process. 

Week 2

I will update the blog weekly because I am too lazy to update them day by day.

27 Oct
Public holiday.. Happy Deepavali.

28 Oct

Presented our ideas on the simple app to integrate with lightdraw. My idea was to create a game similar to iPhysics game in ipod touch and iphone. However, after some discussion with kevin we felt that the game might take a longer time to complete. Our main objective is not on the app because it is just a practice for us to learn and understand more about c programming. 

After lunch, kevin had a change in plan which we were spilt into 2 different teams and develop 2 different applications. Me and youhock were one team and we were assigned to the app Jigsaw Puzzle. Ryan and wilson developed Pong Game.  Had a little lecture on C programming and it was very boring and confusing because there are so much things to remember and learn.

29 Oct

Me and hock had some discussions on the app and we decided to look for jigsaw open sources and from there we develop in to our own. We could not find any good open source and were stuck for quite long. Kevin told us to create our own instead of using other people's codes because they are hard to read and understand. Kevin also told us to reference the source for the flow of the game.

We split the app into different parts such as rotation of the pieces, snapping and others. So i started off by doing the rotation for the pieces.

30 Oct

 Continue with the rotation method and added a method to generate random start angle for the pieces. I continued on mouse events which I did some research on the several mouse events. I create a mouse event for the drag image and encountered some problems because I not very sure about the mouse events.

31 Oct

Continue with the mouse event to drag the image. Finally, I can drag the image after some help from Ming Hong. Even though i create the rotate method but its only for the start. I need to create a mouse event to rotate the piece. Had a little discussion with kevin on the different ways to rotate an image such as placing the mouse over at the corners and do a click. So I use the method where rectangle will appear whenever a mouse is over it and user can click on the corner to make the piece rotate. 

Weekly Reflection

For this past week I have learn and understand more about c programming. I also learned that communication skills is very important for us. The reason been that we have good ideas but we cannot present it to our boss so the effort is wasted for planing and thinking. 

Day 8

We were told to think of a simple app to integrate with lightdraw. I have got many ideas but most of them were not simple at all because the time needed and all the other stuffs. We are suppose to do the app in c++ so the apps that we choose must really be simple if not we would have trouble handling them. After that, we did some research on Gtk+ and QT which are 2 different development tools.

Tasks of the day :
- Think of a simple app to integrate with lightdraw
- Research on Qt and Gtk+

Day 7

Continue with the installation of webcam when I reached the lab. I discovered that in order to let the webcam to work we need to install a package which is GSPCA. It is a graphic driver which allow the webcam to work. Installed unicap to test the webcam, initially I used camstream but the software does not work so change to unicap. Finally, the webcam is working properly and ready for the lightdraw.
Write another c hello world program and compile but this time I save the file into 2 formats which are cpp and c. I tested with 2 different commands which are gcc for c and g++ for cpp.
After lunch, we were told to install lightdraw in our pc and make it worked on a projector. Me and hock attempt to setup everything by ourselves but we tried many time and the lightdraw just would not start. Ming Hong help us and lightdraw is setup on the projector and can be used. AFter that Ming Hong teaches us on the process of setting up lightdraw.


Task of the day :
continue to install webcam on linux(work)
install livna repo to get the necessary packages to let the webcam work
Steps Taken
- added Gspca package
- added unicap software(to test webcam)
write a hello world and compile
- test using .cpp and .c
- compile and able to run both

how to install and setup lightdraw on projector

Day 6

We installed vmware in our mac computer. The vmware allow us to run different OS in the same window which means I can run Mac and linux on the same computer without restarting. Make a huge mistake which is to test the install media which took me more than an hour to verify the media. Waste of time, I restart the installation and do it over again without verifying. After installing linux on the vmware, I installed all the necessary that are required for linux. In order for lightdraw to work, the webcam have to work so I tried to make the webcam work on the linux platform. I have no problem with the webcam on Mac but when I switch to Linux I have many problems. Never complete the task so task is carried over to next day. Hope I can do it.

Tasks of the day :
install vmware
explore vmware
install linux on our mac computer with vmware
install opencv
install webcam on linux(not success)

Day 5

We were told to install opencv. We try to play around with the Linux computer by changing the theme but we could not do it with kde. We tried to install the theme manager but no matter what we do we still cannot change the theme. We gave up and went to change the theme for Gnome which is so much easier. We did it within 10mins and we carry on to do the other stuffs. We explore the linux's terminal by playing around with the command lines such as extracting the files, install programs and many more. We did our very first C++ programming which is hello world. First time do a program using text editor and compile using the terminal which is command prompt for windows.

Tasks of the day:
Learn and explore the terminal's command prompt
Install opencv and make our first hello world program
Explore KDE and Gnome theme changing

Day 4

Burn the fedora installation into a DVD and start the installation. Encountered some problems like we are suppose to burn the .iso file instead of the whole folder. Mac auto mount the iso image and we did not realize it so we ended with problems but in the end we reburn and the installation is done.
Explore on fedora and find the things to download on the computer. We had a Gnome instead of KDE so we installed KDE as well so we can switch around to explore on both Gnome and KDE.
Watch the movie on steve jobs and bill gates.

Task of the day:
- Burn and install fedora.
- Explore on KDE and Gnome
- Watch movie

Day 3

The grand opening of the building. We were suppose to come and leave at 12pm so nothing much happened.
Tasks of the day:
None

Day 2

We were suppose to watch the movie on bill gates and steve jobs. However, due to multiple demos going on in the theater so we did not get to watch it. We shared our findings and continue with the research. Our supervisor says to let us learn we must experience the whole process so we were told to install Linux Fedora on to an empty computer. However, the filesize is 3.3GB and the download itself took the whole day so we did not get to install on the computer.

Tasks for the day :
- Continue with the research on the topics given in day1.
- Installation of Fedora on to computer.

First day at IHPC

When we first reached we were told to fill in lots of forms before we were introduce to our supervisor. Each of us is assigned to a Mac computer for our project. We were suppose to develop lightdraw but due to the opening of the building and our supervisor is busy for the week so our project is slightly delayed.

Our Tasks for the day
-Explore Mac computers
-Explored our lab and know more about lightdraw.
-Research and read about linux and mac.
-Research and read on Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Stallman and Linus Trovalds