OverFlow

Some thoughts and experiences on the Internet of Things, Saving Energy, Hacking with electronics, 3D Printing, DIY ideas, Education, Singularity and the exponential possibilities around the World!

[bobirakova]

Thank you for finding this page(it is so very old)! My current personal page, projects and ways to connect is through - http://bobirakova.com/ 

[axenovfamily]

The GSP14 class just wanted to say, ”We love you Mom!”

[bobirakova]

Hackidemia 1st of June!

Announcing our latest event in Sofia:

Hackidemia Sofia is excited to come again and load kids with some electrifying hacks for the biggest  holiday - the 1st of June - Children's Day. Together with the Smart Fab Lab - the first FabLab in Sofia and great support fromTransformatori and Sofia Tech Park, we are happy to officially announce the event.

As much as we all love soldering, the Paper Electronics workshop will guide the children to create complex circuits without using any soldering but instead by playing with circuit stickers! These are peel-and-stick electronics for crafting circuits - multicolored LEDs, alight sensor, a microphone sensor for detecting sound, a timer circuit that turns on your circuit for five seconds at a time. Also complex sensors like the touch sensor - a Microcontroller Sticker that comes set up to work as a touch sensor, but advanced participants will learn how to program the onboard ATTiny85 microcontroller to do anything they want.

We will also play with bio sensors in the DIY Bio Hacking workshop done by Georgi Chipov fromChipoLabs. Georgi is a great part of our local community and will show us how to sense our heartbeat, muscle activity and others. 

How do computers learn new things? This will be part of the topic in a Machine Learning workshop designed to show children the basic concepts behind an Image Recognition algorithm. 

The Fabrication Tools Exploration workshop will show the kids how to use different machinery and what can be made with it. We will also explore the unexpected world of wearable devices and design new and creative ways to embed sensors to turn any surface into an interactive experience. 

During the event we will develop two City Sensor stations that would measure air quality in specific part of the city. With this workshops we hope to inspire children and adults to be aware of the environment we live in and do as much as they can to preserve it.

[bobirakova]

NATURE turned into  building - La Pedrera - the zenith of Gaudi's work

Living nature is at the heart of Gaudi's building and recently in the heart of the latest technology. At the end nature has so much to teach us, that we just need to listen, appreciate and pay more attention to the world.

"Over the next decade, a confluence of breakthroughs will give us new lenses to observe the wondrous interconnections surrounding us and within us. The coming Age of Networked Matter is a world where everyday objects will blog, robots will have social networks, microbes will talk to kitchens, and forests will “friend” cities. We will look at the emerging technologies in computation, sensing and actuation, wireless, materials science, and even biology that will underpin this coming world, and interact with creators as they reimagine and reinvent the changing context and meaning of our lives."

P.S. Read about the Age of networked matter: http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/keep-the-future-weird-the-age-of-networked-matter/

[bobirakova]

Recently we saw that HutGrip can provide great value to industries that have to deal with equipment which has a lot of gearboxes. One of our first customers fits perfectly in this case scenario. If the gearbox is hot it indicates reduced efficiency or potential problem of the equipment. But you can’t really go around, touching gearboxes on the floor all day.

HutGrip provides realtime data from the critical gearboxes. Data monitoring is a great start and it gives companies a lot of visibility into the process so that they can build on that and apply different six sigma techniques to increase efficiency. However we don’t stop there – HutGrip is constantly building a realtime model of the measured data, using that to predict how it will change in the next couple of hours. This gives the operators true reaction time so that they can prevent a potential failure. This also helps them plan their production depending on the capabilities of the equipment. For example just removing the cover of the gearbox to check if there is a problem would usually take more than an hour, which means an hour of lost production time, which can cost thousands of dollars.

It is important to stay out of the critical limits as repairing an overheated bearing may take days and weeks depending on the equipment. Many times you depend on a specific part that has to be ordered from far away and even when it comes, it is not easy to do the repair. Therefore we see that gearboxes are very important and we aim to help our customers increase their operational efficiency and lower the maintenance cost.

Read the whole article here: http://hutgrip.com/blogs/a-gearbox/

[bobirakova]

Too many mind?

There is so much in common between a person running a startup and a samurai... that you can't imagine!

So, mind Your mind. Don't let it WIN over you. Lesson learned from The Last Samurai movie.

[bobirakova]

The MIT Media Lab - the model of the electric City Car that can be folded in order to take less space!

[bobirakova]

We are happy to share with you that HutGrip qualified for the European semi-finals for a featured competition by the Global Entrepreneurship Week organization – Get In The Ring.

Over 1000 startups joined Get in the Ring worldwide through the national selection rounds in the participating countries. We were selected from more than 40 entries in Bulgaria to be one of the six teams competing in the national finals. For the finals, we prepared a 5 minutes pitch highlighting the development of our product, ongoing project and future plans. We had so much material to emphasize on, so many great people we worked with and projects we wanted to mention that we had to work hard to fit within the time limits. On the evening of the finals, we pitched together with some amazing projects in front of an international jury.

At the end, the judges announced their decision and … (drum roll) … HutGrip was announced as “one of the two best overall business concepts in Bulgaria during the national rounds of Get In the Ring” and as one of the two teams to represent Bulgaria in the next round of the competition: the international clash. We were also awarded plane tickets and passes for the final event of the competition that is the featured event to close the Global Entrepreneurship Week in Rotterdam. Last year, at the same event there were 800 people participating with more than 200 investors among them. Rotterdam, get a grip! HutGrip is coming!

[bobirakova]

The power of showing the behavior of a system

[bobirakova]

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has published a report, “DHS Could Improve Cargo Security by Periodically Assessing Risks From Foreign Ports,” recommending...

[bobirakova]

U.S. Textile Plants Return, With Floors Largely Empty of People

Textile Plants Humming, but Not With Workers - A great article on how technology is transforming manufacturing in the past 20 years.

Here's what makes the revival possible:

> Curse of Long Distance

> March of the Machines

> Back From the Dead

[bobirakova]

The world as Steve Jobs saw it: When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you're life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

[bobirakova]

GigTank Impressions Day #1: 85 days until Demo Day! We need connectivity, right? Maybe we even take it for granted, especially here, in the developed world. However when you look into the industry, things are different. Think about the manufacturing industries, things are not moving so fast there. Very often people don’t understand what possibilities can this connectivity bring for them and their business. Of course there are automation systems like Samsung and IBM that are helping large enterprises take the most of their data. However that process is old, it’s not easy to modify in real time, we need a more agile way to do it. Moreover, very often small and medium size businesses can’t afford such a platform.  This is why we developed a platform to help people optimize processes and we're excited to be part of GigTank!

[bobirakova]

Just made it to GIGTANK!!!

Well, HUTGRIP made it to the awesome GigTank! I'm Bobi and I just arrived yesterday here in Chattanooga, TN. The place looks amazing, the Co.Lab is a very exciting and creative open space. Well, I made it, but my bag didn't, so I'm waiting for it now. The people are great and very welcoming. Everybody is excited about the summer long program, which starts officially on Monday.

So... wait, what is GIGTANK?

GigTank is the world's only accelerator on a living fiber network. It's based in the Gig City - Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is absolutely living in the future. The city’s 170,000 businesses and homes are connected to one another by a $300 million, one-gigabit fiber infrastructure. It’s the smartest and fastest grid in the Western Hemisphere.

HUTGRIP is one of the startups that got selected to participate in the program. Other than the actual startups there are many amazing specialists and mentors coming here for the Summer.

The place is great for HutGrip as we're very much depending on the super-fast and reliable internet infrastructure. Well, the whole Internet Of Things domain heavily relies on the Internet and of course on a bunch of other stuff. There has been a lot lately on the MQTT messaging protocol. Here is a nice piece telling the story of how it came to be: "REST is for sleeping. MQTT is for mobile". Other than this we have all these hardware components that are doing very good on Kickstarter. Hopefully they will streamline the adoption of all these new technologies and protocols. Check out for example the Arduino compatible Spark Core, they've made about $250 000 and they have just started their campaign. In HutGrip we're looking more into the Software that would help people deal with all the data that is soon going to be available. The onegigabit fiber infrastructure is already setting the scene for so many new applications of these kind! Check out what's coming next week:

If you're around, do come and say Hi!

[tomemrich]

Wearable Tech: Head & Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Think Wearable Tech is just about Pebble and Google Glass? This infographic by footwear retailer Brantano, breaks down this technology by body part to give you the real lay of the land.

Awesome to see InteraXon’s Muse on the list as well as the Apple Smart Shoe.

Source: http://mashable.com/2013/05/04/wearable-tech-fashion/

[bobirakova]

#Awesome!!!

[bobirakova]

Oh, the Places You'll Go

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..

You're off to Great Places!  Today is your day!  Your mountain is waiting,  So... get on your way!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV. Except when they don't Because, sometimes they won't. I'm afraid that some times you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. but mostly they're darked. But mostly they're darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains!

So... be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea, you're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way!

Some quotes from "Oh, the places you'll go!" by Dr. Seuss. 

Dr. Seuss is putting my mind into words! + video 

[bobirakova]

The Overview Effect

The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.