CSE 477 Capstone Presentations This year, the CSE 477 capstone course focused on technologies for low resource environments. Four teams worked on projects related to improving agriculture and education in the developing world. The final presentations and demo session will take place 3:30-5:30 pm, Wednesday, June 3, in CSE 691. For more information, please contact Richard Anderson, Anderson@cs.washington.edu Projects: Low-cost digital controller for managing recharging of Lead-Acid batteries The goal of the project is to design a low-cost digital controller that can manage the recharging of batteries by multiple types of sources, while providing "clean", efficient power to other devices. The primary use of this device is for areas with little to no consistent electrical power where Lead-Acid type car batteries are used at temporary sources of power. An example application would be in video based education where a television and DVD is set up to allow a facilitator to present educational content. The device will be able to use a Car Battery to power a range of Audio, Video, or other equipment, giving the user information on how much time the load can be powered. DG Navigator Digital Green (DG) is a research project started by Microsoft Research India that uses facilitated video instruction to teach and encourage sustainable farming practices in rural India. The DG Navigator is a "smart" remote control that assists the facilitator who is showing the video by providing prompts synchronized with the DVD and recording basic data about the show. The DG Navigator is a custom device that replaces the DVD remote control. The device has 12 dedicated buttons to control the DVD player, an SD card reader/writer, an LCD screen, and a vibrating motor to alert the facilitator when a message is on the LCD. During the video screening, questions are written to the LCD screen prompting the facilitator to pause the video and interact with the audience. The device records every button press and writes this data to a log file on the SD card. This log file allows the researchers to track which videos have been played and when the videos were paused by the facilitator to interact with the audience. Multilearn MultiLearn builds upon prior research in shared computing by using multiple numeric keypads as input devices for educational games and dividing a single computer screen into sections corresponding to each student. This setup, individual USB keypads and corresponding split screen display provides equal access to the technology, allows students to access personalized and adaptively calibrated content, and lets students simultaneously participate at their own skill level. http://change.washington.edu/projects/multilearn Automated Community Radio Much of the developing world is plagued by poverty and a lack of infrastructure which acts to perpetuate the poverty by restricting the peoples' ability to trade. Most farmers have no means of advertisement for their goods on a macroscopic level, and hence they must advertise via word of mouth. This generally restricts trading to a local level. To this end we have devised an automated community radio system utilizing radios, cellphones, and a laptop. The content of this station comes from users who call via cell phones. Users interact with a touch-tone interface to place advertisements to a specific cell phone which connects with the laptop via bluetooth connectivity. The laptop stores the messages and uses a queuing algorithm to create a radio stream. This stream is sent to the FM transmitter, the amplifier circuit, and is then finally broadcasted. There is an administrative touch-tone interface as well to support added features such as immediate emergency broadcasts. A graphical user interface has been developed to allow the administrator to setup a prioritized category system and play schedule for increased functionality.