Prototype ovine disease detection device takes to TV screens

Taken from: https://www.vettimes.co.uk/news/prototype-ovine-disease-detection-device-takes-to-tv-screens/

A prototype early warning system created by The University of Northampton researchers to detect lameness in sheep has featured on the BBC’s The One Show.

Problematic

Often caused by contagious diseases, lameness can result in poor growth, infertility and even death if left untreated, with the estimated cost to the UK farming industry in the region of £80 million a year.

Detecting a pattern

Associate Professor in computing Dr Al-Sherbaz said: “Our ‘early warning system’ shows real promise. Infected sheep have a characteristic limp, so we decided the best way to detect it remotely was to develop a wearable sensor.”

Smartphones proved to be the perfect data collectors for this, due to the plethora of built-in sensors.

The trio, along with PhD student Zainab Al-Rubaye, have designed software that can distinguish between healthy and lame sheep using the data collected from the phones.

Bespoke sensor

Fellow Associate Professor Dr Turner said: “Now we know we can tell the difference, the next step is to build the software into a bespoke sensor that will automatically alert the farm when a sheep starts to limp.”

The team now hopes to find a commercial partner to miniaturise and produce the sensor to a scale that is economically viable.

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

BCS Northampton: Developing Applications for the mobile environment

28th November 2017 -

Developing Applications for the mobile environment

The presentation will be held in Room NW205 of The Newton Building at The University of Northampton, Avenue Campus, St Georges Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JB

Presentation by Adam Bradley, Principle Software Developer/Co-Founder at Infinitive Group

* Adding mobile and web interfaces to existing, ageing systems though use of RESTful web services

* Supporting iOS applications in the enterprise space

* Creative ways around data privacy regulation

* Implementing custom security architectures to fit system limitations

* Choosing appropriate programming languages for the job at hand

Doors will open at 19:00 hrs, The Presentation will commence at 19.30hrs.

The presentation will be held in Room NW205 of The Newton Building at The University of Northampton, Avenue Campus, St Georges Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JB

Please park in Cark Park 6 (mention the BCS Lecture on the intercom).

Enter through the conservatory (lower ground floor) of the Newton Building and follow the signs to NW205 (second floor).  A campus map showing the location of the Newton Building and Car Park 6 can be found here: https://www.northampton.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Avenue-Campus-Map.pdf.

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Lame idea: BBC to feature ‘Fitbit for sheep’

Original at: https://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/lame-idea-bbc-to-feature-fitbit-for-sheep/

University led research features on prime time TV staple The One Show this evening, after presenter Kev Duala and the team spent a day on the farm with some of our researchers.

The popular BBC show came to see a demonstration of a nifty bit of kit being developed at the University that can detect the signs of lameness in sheep.

And One Show viewers will be able to get right in amongst the flock thanks to ‘sheep cam’.

The harness mounted camera gives the ewe’s eye view of a prototype sensor, and illustrates why lameness is such a huge welfare and commercial concern for farmers globally.

Often caused by contagious diseases, lameness can result in poor growth, infertility, and even death if left untreated, with the estimated cost to the UK farming industry in the region of £80 million a year.

The wearable tech – the development of which has involved strapping mobile phones onto sheep to collect movement data – is the brainchild of the University’s Dr Ali Al-Sherbaz and Dr Scott Turner.

And whilst shepherds once watched their flocks by night, this invention could keep a virtual eye out for problems 24/7.

Dr Al-Sherbaz, Associate Professor in Computing, said: “It was great to be able to welcome the BBC to see the progress we have made with our idea.

“Our ‘early warning system’ shows real promise. Infected sheep have a characteristic limp, so we decided that the best way to detect it remotely was to develop a wearable sensor.”

Smart phones proved to be the perfect data collectors for this due to the plethora of sensors already built in.

The pair, along with PhD student Zainab Al-Rubaye, have now designed software that can distinguish between healthy and lame sheep using the data collected from these phones.

“Now we know we can tell the difference, the next step is to build the software into a bespoke sensor that will automatically alert the farm when a sheep starts to limp,” added fellow Associate Professor Dr Turner.

The pair came up with the idea after being approached by animal welfare expert Dr Wanda McCormick from nearby Moulton College, who was looking for solutions to the problem of sheep lameness.

“Early detection means less distress for the animal, easier and cheaper treatment, and less chance of it spreading amongst the flock,” explained Dr McCormick.

“However, with farmers looking after hundreds of sheep spread over many square miles, it can often be hard to spot the painful condition in its initial stages.”

The hope now is to find a commercial partner who can help miniaturise the sensor and produce them on a scale that is economically viable for sheep farmers.

Thanking the research team, One Show presenter, Kev, called his day filming the project as “very interesting”.

You can watch again on BBC iPlayer here (available until the 18th December 2017)

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

PHP Ninja

The computing team at the University of Northampton has it's own Ninja. Tom Butler, has just his new book on PHP and MySQL published.



Overview of the book.
PHP and MySQL: Novice to Ninja, 6th Edition is a hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles, and techniques needed to build a fully functional application using PHP and MySQL. 

Comprehensively updated to cover PHP 7 and modern best practice, this practical and fun book covers everything from installing PHP and MySQL through to creating a complete online content management system. 

You'll learn how to: Install PHP and MySQL on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux Gain a thorough understanding of PHP syntax Use object oriented programming techniques Master database design principles and SQL Develop robust websites that can handle high levels of traffic Build a working content management system (CMS) And much more!



All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Yes we can help - personal reflection

In 2014 the UK Government introduced the new Computing curriculum to schools, today the Royal Society released its report 'After the Reboot: computing education in UK schools'  

There are a lot of great conclusions in this report and I think many Computing Science groups within Universities would welcome an even greater opportunity to work with schools and help here. Across the UK many computing departments are trying to help.  As an example at the University of Northampton:

• We are involved in the organising team between a coding competition that started locally for Northamptonshire but has grown outside of the county. Like many universities we working organisations such as  Code Club, working to get staff and students as volunteers. This brings mutual benefits including greater employability skill development. 
• One member is an active participant, in a Computing at School activities such as the weekly twitter chat #caschat, including guest hosting, - because they want to help if they can.
• Members of the computing team have even co-written (with those with experience in teaching in school) a chapter within a book on teaching computing in primary schools (e.g chapter 3 of Teaching Computing Unplugged in Primary Schools). 
• Running projects where simple robots are built in schools or provided them to schools to share ideas.
• Recently, a successful bid in this area was submitted that was strengthening the links with a local school, running a VR project in the school but by working and visiting the University, who is the other partner.

Can we do more? Yes, and please ask us. I know I want to work meaningfully with schools and authorities, but there are other reasons.

•  We like our subject: Computing lecturers like their subject and have skills, insights from research, consultancy and industry.
•  Recruitment: A slightly more mercenary one, is we want to have students coming through University that are even more engaged in computing.

Chapter 5 in the 'After the Reboot: computing education in UK schools' is concerned with improving computing education through research. This is an area that Computing departments can certainly help with greater collaboration with Education departments - let do this. The report, rightly points out that all of the research in computing education has been around university-level teaching (myself and many of my colleagues have published in this area). So let us get together and see how the insights we have gained can be applied in schools and equally importantly how insights gained from schools can used to inform university teaching. This is not a one way relationship, I believe we can all learn from each other. In the report, in the context of Educational researchers, "Teachers can have insights that researchers may not have", I couldn't agree more but perhaps this should also include those of us who are interested in how Computing is taught in Higher Education and allow the discussion to flow in these directions as well. Let us all learn from each other, I have learnt a lot from talking to teachers on how they teach computing.


The report also highlights "Currently, there are few incentives or opportunities for those in taught higher education courses in computer science to adopt a more interdisciplinary position." Though this a generalisation, and may apply to some institutions more than others; personally I believe greater interdisciplinary understanding would benefit the employability of computing students; so let us start then with Computing and Education producing solutions to real problem and providing a potential social good at the same time. 


I think there is a potential bright collaborative future in which schools and computing departments team up to address their common goals - we want student's knowledge and experience of computational thinking, what every educational level, to be enhanced. Let us do this together. 


All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Turning junk into an 'egg-bot' at Mozfest

Turner, S. J. (2017) Junkbots - Crumble eggbot. Workshop presented to: Mozilla Festival, Ravensbourne College, London, 27-29 October 2017.

Capturing some of the tweets about Junkbots at Mozilla Festival 2017 #Mozfest https://mozillafestival.org/ 

great Crumble session 2day at #mozfest from @scottturneruon. Micro-egg bots!!! @RedfernElec @Baggiepr Great stepping stone into CrumbleBots! pic.twitter.com/0TZ2vr4Qat

— Nic Hughes (@duck_star) October 29, 2017

@AlwaysComputing Look at what you're missing... pic.twitter.com/DrpEAy51r8

— Alan O'Donohoe (@teknoteacher) October 29, 2017

Great day at #mozfest. Till next year. Again met meant inspiring people and saw awesome ideas! Plus anyone I missed! pic.twitter.com/eL52cRIMwE

— Nic Hughes (@duck_star) October 29, 2017

Details of the activity can be found at http://bit.ly/2yZ3dZT or described below:

Crumble Junk-Eggbot

http://bit.ly/2yZ3dZT

Scott Turner

@scottturneruon

University of Northampton

Three inspirations for this project

·      Eggbot - http://www.instructables.com/id/Plastic-Egg-Bot/?utm_content=buffer9b065&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

·   Femi Owolade supported by Nic Hughes ran a session at Mozilla Festival 2016 using the Crumble’s to make a wheeled robot.

·   The junkbot project https://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/

Kit

·      Kinder Egg (without the Chocolate and toy)

·      Crumble

·      4x Crocodile clips and leads

·      Battery pack and 3xAA

·      Vibrating motor

·      Tape (lots of)

·      Pens

·      Paper

·      Scissors

·      Glue and Gluegun (optional)

Stage 1: Fix the vibrating motor into the Egg.

Put the vibrating motor into the Egg with the motor electrical connections sticking out the bottom larger half of the egg. Make sure the unbalanced load is free to move – this is bit that causes the vibrations needed to move the egg. The motor can be held in place by sticky-tack or strong tape, or glue (when using glue this is done under adult supervision only).

Stage 2: Sticking the pens on.

This is the trickiest bit. The easiest way to do is cut a strip of tape. Place two pens onto the tape ensuring the pens are the same length from the tape to the nib and the distance between the pens on the tape are far enough apart to place the egg between them.

If you are using three pens, the third pen should be placed so that all three form a triangle with equal sides, that means the egg can stand-up on a piece of paper on the pen nibs, without anything supporting it.

If you are using four pens, the other two pens should be placed so that all four form a square with equal sides, that means the egg can stand-up on a piece of paper on the pen nibs, without anything supporting it.

Stage 3: Add the battery pack and go.

Using two wires connecting the battery, to the motors. Remove the nibs and set the bot off. It is hopefully vibrating and shaking and scribbling lines on the paper.

To see one in action go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRlntdmdQRo

Stage 4: Crumble

Disconnect the battery connection (the connections on the motor can stay as they are). Connect the USB cable to the Crumble. To the right of the USB connect there are two connections marked + and -. Connect a Red wire to the + connection and the other end to the red wire of the battery pack. Connect a black wire to the – connection and the other end to the black wire of the battery pack.

Stage 5: Connect the Egg!

On the Crumble, on the right-side there are two motor connections connect the Motor to these connections. Don’t worry about which of the motors wires is need you swap them around later.

Stage 6: Programming it – Making the bot moves.

The software can be found at https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble-software/ it includes how to set it up on your own machine.

Start the Crumble software. Drag from the left the Program start, motor, and wait blocks. Now join the up start block at the top and the motor block next and the wait block last.

Your code should look like this.

Click on the stop within the motor block. It should change to forward. Now you are ready to make it move. Press the green arrow and with the battery pack on, it should (hopefully) keep moving.

If you put a second motor block after the wait block with the stop in the block. It such then stop after 1 second of moving.

Stage 7: Making it do more.

-    Drag a do-until block in (found in the control menu).

-    Go to variable menu and add a new variable, I have used t, select the block marked let=, and drag a t into the blank space.

-    Drag an increase block onto the screen and drag a t into the blank space.

Go to the operator menu and drag onto the screen an = block, go back to variables menu and drag a t into the first space on the = block and click on the second space on the block and type in 5.

Now for the challenge put all these together to copy what is shown below. Now, put the egg-bot on the paper, with the pen lids off, press the green triangle and the motors should be spun in different directions.

This is a junkbot so it may just cause the bot to move a slightly different directions but hopefully it should just draw some squiggly lines.

© Scott Turne

Attribution-ShareAlike

CC BY-SA

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon