DIPLOMA IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING (S53, DCPE)

4 EEE STUDENTS BEAT VARSITY TEAMS TO CLINCH TOP PRIZE AT IOT HACKATHON

4 EEE Students won First Prize (Student Category) in AWS Hackday, an IoT hackathon organized by AWS and Intel, on 10 Apr 2017. The hackathon was a lead-up event to AWS Summit 2017.

Charles Lim (DCPE 2FT), Melvin Ryan (DCPE 2FT), David Santoso (DCPE 2FT), Julian Kang (DEEE 1FT) each won an Amazon fire, 100 dollar AWS credits, AWS iot button, and stickers. The other 2 prizes offered were First Prize (Industry category) and First Runner Up (Industry category). Our student team was among about 20 mixed varsity and cross industry teams selected by AWS and Intel for this Hackathon. Teams sent were from Singtel, Dyson, startups, Non-Profit, NUS, NTU, SMU, and RP. The experience our team gained at the 12-hour intense competition among varsity students was priceless.

The winning hack, dubbed “Ah-Yee”, is a virtual family member that engages the young and old at home. It is made possible with a suite of fantastic AWS services comprising AWS Alexa Skills Set, DynamoDB, IoT, Lambda, SNS and S3. These services have been leveraged on for massive scalability through a serverless architecture. The hardware consists of a vision sub-system made with Raspberry Pi and Pi-cam, and a voice sub-system made with Echo Dot and Alexa.

Ah-Yee targets medical adherence for the ageing, and language training for the young. Seniors, who might not adhere to medical instructions due to language barriers, can now ask Ah-Yee regarding the medicine to be consumed. This is done by scanning a specially crafted label placed on the medicine package. In return, Ah-Yee would read out loud the corresponding information in dialect that is stored on S3. In the event of an emergency at home, Ah-Yee would be the first to alert family members through the use of an emergency button made with AWS IoT Button. A single click of the Emergency Button sends notifications to people of interest (hospital, caretakers, etc) through email or SMS.

In engaging the young through English language training and customizable spelling tests, the parents simply set the necessary words to be learnt through Echo Dot and the children then practise spelling those words. Ah-Yee’s main objective is to remove repetitive and menial questioning and answering in daily lives, such that family members can instead focus on spending quality time together through meaningful conversations that reflects growth from day to day.

Publish on 18 April 2017

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