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Here's my idea

Page history last edited by mike@... 13 years, 4 months ago

List your project idea below!

 

Car Brake Light Enhancement

LED you put on the back of your car that uses an acceleromter to let other drivers know how fast you are braking.  It would be brighter or flash with a higher frequency for harder stops.

 

Non-Burning Toaster

combine toaster with smoke or CO2 detector to not burn things.

 

Elevator Game

Game where you try to make algorithms to minimize wait time for simulated elevators

 

Sim Traffic Lights

Game where you try to optimize traffic light timing

 

DIY Space Probe

Three guys based here in Baltimore are planning on building a DIY Space Probes similar to the one on p. 55 of the current issue of Make using an Android phone with GPS and an HD Camera.  The minimum goal is to create a DIY Space project, but we would like add something interesting to the mix.  If you are interested email me - diyspace@socialmatchbox.com.  If this goes well we may do something more ambitious.

Android-Based Police Scanner

A while back Android caused a "disruption" in the marketplace with the free release of its navigation app. Then Android reported how they crowdsource road congestion data. My idea is to crowdsource police speed trap data. Setup some little hardware device that can detect the lasers sent from speed guns (and possibly police RF signals if desired), then have that little device report that back to the Android device via bluetooth, then have the Android device report that back to some custom Google map that can be added as a layer via the Google Navigation app on the Android. When you get close to a speed trap your phone can make some audible noise alerting you as such. So, there's a hardware and software component to the project. I doubt I'll do any work whatsoever on the idea so anybody is free to take it.
-Yair

 

How about instead of building separate hardware, we croudsource for speed traps in the same way they crowdsource for road congestion? We can assume that when a normal person drives by a speed trap, they'll usually slow down, even if they're driving at the speed limit.

If we gathered all of the speed data in the same way they did for road congestion, we can analyze/graph it and check for locations where there's a change/drop in speed (especially if its from over the limit to under the limit). Then we can determine where there would be speed traps, road work, accidents, etc.

-Tian Han

 

iPhone + PhoneGap

Not sure what I'm building yet, but I'd like to build something with PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com/about), specifically tying in to iPhone hardware (GPS, camera, accelerometer, etc).  I've suggested a couple city data based ideas for the BmoreApps gig (http://bmoreapps.uservoice.com)  I might do the one that records bumpy roads on top of GPS location.  If anyone is interested in working with this tool or related project, let me know!

- Mike Brenner

 

Interactive art project using Processing

I'd like to create a piece where users look at a FFFFOUND feed and Processing (I would be most comfortable using Ruby Processing) which overlays the image from FFFFOUND with shapes/lines/washes of color based on some sort of biometric user input. Ideally, the user input would create their own version of the initial art piece by overlaying it with the visualized input. I would be able to work on the Processing part, but I would have no clue how to set up the hardware for measuring user data.

-Ted O'Meara

 

Build a 3D Object

  1. Snap a few photos of some 3D object
  2. Upload the photos to some website / web service
  3. The web service generates a 3D model of that object (a la Direct Dimensions).
  4. The 3D model is sent to a 3D printer, e.g. MakerBot, and you get your 3D object in the mail in a week or two or three for something like $19.95.

I was talking to Marty from Baltimore Node/MakerBot the other night, who gave inspiration for the idea. We were discussing how people could snap photos of a finger, hand, etc. and wouldn't it be neat to get a 3D version of that in the mail in a couple days. A marketing idea would be to setup a website called "buildabodypart.com" or something similar where it is dead simple for people to execute the process. It might be possible to tap into the user's webcam in order to further simplify the process by which static images are uploaded to the site. You could also do a mobile app so people could do this from the comfort of a bar or wherever else people hang out.
-Yair Flicker

 

Ignite Baltimore iPhone App

I'd like to use Phonegap, jQuery Mobile or Sencha, and HTML5 technologies to build a simple iPhone app that displays photos and videos from Ignite Baltimore.  If it works out we could generalize it for all Ignites worldwide. -Mike Subelsky 

 

Amateur Horticulturist Setup

I was speaking with some amateur horticulturists the other night and they were lamenting how difficult it can be for them to ensure that the fruits and vegetables they grow receive the appropriate amount of nutrients, water, UV rays, etc. in order to ensure a bountiful harvest. One of the guys was talking about how it would be possible to setup some hardware device driven by an Arduino processor that could have all sorts of sensors plugged into it. The sensors would measure all the vitals. The program running on the Arduino processor would be able to trigger all sorts of alerts and other notifications if, for example, water levels got too low. Alerts could be in the form of SMS, email, etc. There could be a program running on the Arduino that would be similar in nature to that running on your router - the hardware device is managed by some basic web application. As with everything nowadays you could build a mobile app interface too.

I spoke to Mark Huson about this and he said to checkout Garduino, which is basically the same idea. So I guess this isn't really a novel idea.
- Yair

 

Augmented Reality Home Tax Database Search

This idea isn't really that original, as I'm sure a lot of mobile real estate apps having AR browsing of listings. However, baltimore makes all of their home database information available.

http://sdatcert3.resiusa.org/rp_rewrite/searchtype.aspx?County=03&SearchType=street

and example data:

http://sdatcert3.resiusa.org/rp_rewrite/details.aspx?County=03&SearchType=STREET&AccountNumber=27%20%2013%20%204917%20%20%20009

 

Wouldn't it be neat to scrap this into an app, so as I'm walking in roland park, I can see how much that big house in roland park is worth, or if I'm house hunting, see that the previous owner of my house bought it for almost $100,000 less! - Ben Kutil

 

Portable Network Mapper

I don't program for the Android, but I think it would be an interesting project to try and build a network mapping tool using the platform, so you can have a mobile tool for detecting the assets on a given network. There are existing SNMP tools, but I think we could enhance that functionality to either serve as a diagnostic tool, or as a thin/low foot-print approach to network mapping. Not only would it be fun to try and set this up for the android, I think it would have use for multiple cases-- determining if you setup your network right, assessing if a sub-net is safe to be on, seeing if people are stealing your bandwidth, etc.

 

Anyone interested, please email me at nkeune@winvale.com... and if you can program Android AND have some idea about IA, then you might become my new best-friend.

 

BookShare!

I'd like to create a book sharing application. I'd love to use Rails, the Amazon API, and a barcode scanner. I believe a good starting point for the app would be to inventory the books in the Beehive to allow for check-in/check-outs of books. One of my main goals is to make it easier for people to bring in unused books by tracking members book contributions. -Paul Kauders

 

Contacts, Contacts, Contacts everywhere!

Contacts attack us from networking events (piles of business cards), Twitter, facebook, our mobile phones (SMS), Gmail, etc. Let's make an app to grab these buggers and put them in one place. Then we'll slice them up and send them off as distribution lists, Christmas/Hanukkah lists, "avoid these," etc. I think a team of 2 or three can knock this out. Hit me up if you want to join us. wanflap@gmail.com

 

XBOX Kinect + openFrameworks

(Inspired by this video of 3D Drawing with ofxKinect » http://vimeo.com/16818988)

If someone is interested in working on something cool that uses Kinect, let me know!  I'd be glad to bounce some ideas.  Unfortunately, I'm not a C++ developer at all, which is what the below mentioned library is based in.

+ Kinect is the webcam-style peripheral for XBOX 360 that takes in gestures, spoken commands, or presented images to interact with gameplay.  It uses infrared laser projector with a monochrome CMOS sensor allowing for 3D sensing. The device costs $150. I don't own this but do own a 360. If someone else is really interested in working with this device for the hackathon, I'm sure we could figure something out.

+ openFrameworks is an open source C++ toolkit with tons of demos all over github.  One such project is called ofxKinect that has some demos to use with Kinect » https://github.com/memo/ofxKinect-demos

- Mike Brenner

 

 

Geo-fence app

I've been thinking about an app/site combo for geo-fencing. Basically, you have your phone auto-report it's location, and can trigger actions based on that location. Here's some use cases: 1) I can get an alert (push-notification or sms) when my wife leaves work so I can start dinner, 2) I can set it up to automatically check-in to Foursquare/Gowalla when I enter a certain location, 3) I could have it turn on the lights at home (if I had a home automation system) 5 minutes after I leave work, 4) When my family is coming to visit from out of town, it could track their location so I know when they'll get here. Lot's of different possibilities. Would need a back-end that could handle processing the location and figuring if any actions need to be taken, a cool Google-maps based front-end where you can define the different zones and actions to take, and iPhone/Android app to report your location. The biggest issue is battery life on your phone from constant updating, but I think it could be a pretty cool technology to play around with it. Let me know if anyone is interested on working on this. I've decided to work on a different idea for the hackathon, but feel free to take this idea and run with it if you're interested.

- Zach Waugh

 

NetFlow Traffic Dashboard

I originally wrote NetFlow Dashboard as an open-source netflow collector/manager/dashboard.  Version 1 works adequately, but suffers from performance and design issues.  This will be a ground-up rewrite with the goal of making it a scalable hosted service for submitting NetFlow streams, trending activity, and event analysis.  There are two of us handling the backend/systems work, looking for a UX hacker to make it pretty.  Email me at jasondixon@gmail.com if you're interested.

- Jason Dixon

 

Spelling Addon

This is kind of trivial, but I've been thinking about it for a while, and I think it would be useful! I've realized with the advent of spell check that I repeatedly spell the same words incorrectly, over and over again. This happens because when I spell the word wrong, I right click to correct it, instead of respelling the word correctly. I think a good start would be to create a firefox addon to the spell checker, so that when you select the correct spelling, you then type it out Mavis Beacon style! Depending on time constraints, it would be cool to zoom this out and make it a desktop app which worked across all applications, but I spend 90% of my time in browser, so that's a good place to start.

-Brian Sierakowski

 

News Related - Getting New News

I've seen a lot of energy spent in "fixing news media" (the death of newspapers, etc.) focusing on delivery, how to put the content in people's hands, how to make it pretty, how to monetize, etc. I'd like to explore the other side of the flow and focus on how the news is made. See what the funnel from open acceptance to edited story would look like if you accepted input from the general public. What kind of filters / reputation systems would be required to go from unmoderated comment thread (dear god save us from the trolls) to tagged, sorted, articulate, well-edited news people want to read.

 

I know nothing about how the professional news business works; I am an ignorant savage. I think it's interesting, though, and it seems like there's still unexplored problem space. This is not a specific project, but an idea for an area that could produce lots of projects.

- Adam Bachman

 

Reader/Writer

I'm bothered by having to switch between browser tabs or windows when writing a blog post, email, Google Doc, or personal journal entry that references, describes, links to, or otherwise relates to something else somewhere else on the web. I want a web-based writing interface that gives me my work (with footnotes) in one column and access to source materials in another column. It's kind of like responding to emails. Most email clients make it easy to compose replies because they paste the contents of the original message into the text editing area. I want something similar: a tool that lets me reply to anything but doesn't require copying and pasting that thing into the new document I'm creating.

- Adam Bachman

 

Gravatar for Reputation

Gravatar lets you assign a photo to your email address so that other web based services can show your pic without having to ask you for it. What would a similarly centralized system for storing reputation (points, karma, comments, likes, up votes, diggs?) look like? Would it even be possible? Has it been done? How could it be put to use? When can we expect distributed reputation systems to fully replace democracy?

- Adam Bachman 

 

Wordle Turtle (ephemeral to physical word cloud machine)

 

We want to take conversation in its ephemeral state (spoken word) recorded through microphone, process the sound and create a constantly changing word cloud feed. This initial prototype would be the first step toward what would be a great iphone/ipad app.

 

Spoken Word -> Microphone -> processing -> word cloud -> URL/APP 

- Team Uarts MID

Comments (1)

wanflap said

at 3:11 pm on Nov 15, 2010

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