Kochi :

An engineering student, who developed a device which ensures safety of KSEB workers engaged in hazardous tasks, has won the first prize at a project contest based on the theme ‘IoT With Open Source Hardware’.

The contest was held as part of the FOSS Young Professional Meet. The meet was organised by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) here the other day.

The device called iPost or Intelligent Electric Post was developed by Shyam Pradeep of Government Engineering College, Thrissur. He won a cash prize of Rs 50,000.

iPost has an in-built facility to control the power line with a simple circuit fixed on the safety gloves of the worker. iPost can also be used by KSEB is the functioning of streetlights. It informs KSEB office whenever a streetlight malfunctions and this could help in rectifying the defective streetlights quickly.

The first runner-up prize of Rs 25,000 each was shared by two teams – National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology, Calicut, for their project ‘Citywide Water Quality Monitoring’ and TCS team which developed the product ‘iBot’, a social cognitive robot.

Kerala State IT Mission director K Mohammed Y Safirulla presented the prizes to the winners at a function held at Mascot Hotel in the presence of ICFOSS director Jayasankar Prasad.

Delivering the valedictory address, Safirulla said that Kerala was a frontrunner in the use of Open Source software. ‘’Those who had participated in the meet should use their expertise in creating new devices using free software,’’ he said.

Earlier, during the day, experts in the domain of open source computing spoke on the topics related to open software.  Christy Jacob, data scientist, TCS, spoke on the topic ‘IoT Data Analytics’. He said that the Internet of Things had brought about revolutionary changes in the way business is conducted.

Amit Dev, senior, Principal Applications engineer, Oracle, spoke on the topic ‘IoT protocol’.The challenges and opportunities of using Internet of Things in various sectors were explained. Mathan Raj of SECO and Shahim Baker of Grey Technologies spoke on the topic of ‘Open Source Hardware’.

Contest held for projects

using open source hardware

Safety device for KSEB

workers wins 1st prize

Device developed by engineering college student

Device can also control functioning of streetlights

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / News> Cities> Kochi / by Express News Service / December 28th, 2015