Dorkbot:65 Dorkbot Seattle 0x41 - it all adds up

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For DorkbotSeattle number 65 we are pleased to welcome two presenters who specialize in Ubiquitous Computing at the UW Computer Science department.  Sidhant Gupta will be talking about Clever Sensing for Energy Feedback & Cool Haptics, and Tim Campbell will be presenting WATTR: self-powered wireless sensing inside the home.

As always we want to thank our generous hosts at Jigsaw Renaissance, and we encourage you to support them with a donation if you attend the meeting.

Sidhant Gupta - Clever Sensing for Energy Feedback & Cool Haptics

Sidhant will be talking about a variety of technologies that he has been working on. First is ElectriSense, a clever sensing technique that uses "noise" from electrical devices in the home to identify what devices are being turned on or off in the home using a single sensor. This technology can enable energy feedback application that were previously much hard to do. Second, are novel haptic or tactile user interfaces that he has developed. These include SqueezeBlock - a mobile device that can change its stiffness (imagine squeezing your phone to check for missed calls) and InGen - a self powered haptic device.
 

Sidhant is a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington in the UbiComp lab and a hardware hacker at heart. His current research focuses on developing novel sensing technologies for the home that use minimal sensors, are low cost and easy to deploy by end-users. Healso builds and evaluates innovative electro-mechanical haptic feedback interfaces.

http://www.sidhantgupta.com/
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/sidhant/research.html

Tim Campbell - WATTR: self-powered wireless sensing inside the home

Tim will be talking about methods for sensing an event that require no external power. Rather, the event itself powers the wireless sensor. In this case, he has built a sensor for water pressure that uses pressure spikes to harvest energy.

Tim is a student at the University of Washington, completing my undergraduate Mechanical Engineering degree and researching out of the Ubiquitous Computing Lab. His academic goal is to merge physical interaction with existing computing.