Live report from the bed: sickness in Bragas house!

“Live report from the Bragas house: at least 2 or 3 have been reported sick in the last 2 weeks!”

Jup, and I had to join them so it seems because I’ve been in the bed for 3 days now. This means no research, no party and no doing sports but only exploring every single inch of my bedroom. Not exactly the most exciting time of my Erasmus but maybe it’s better to deal with it now than missing one of the surf lesson I subscribed for in the following few weeks. Ow, and I also finished my first film roll last weeks so I hope to have some pictures by the end of the week, at least if I can get rid of that nasty fever. Film roll? Uhu, no digital pictures for me this time. The battery of my Sony dsc f828 digital camera gave up just before I came to Porto. But I knew I still had this old Canon AT-1 camera laying around somewhere so I thought to myself: “Is there any better moment to learn analog photography, really?”.

Afbeelding

And without getting too fanatically about this camera: it’s more advanced than you would think it is: it has an electronic shutter, a light intensity meter which guides you when selecting the shutter speed and aperture of the lens, and it also features a auto-release function which allows you to make self-portraits, I should definitely try to check that out! 😉 Off course there also the possibility to select the shutter release time: from, well I don’t know exactly, but it’s a very short time, until: forever. So yes, you have manual shutter functionality just to take these long exposure pictures of the city by night. Sharpness and aperture can be set through the lens and the ISO value that some of you may have stumbled upon on your own digital camera is actually a way of defining the sensitivity of the film roll you choose.

But enough of this, read the manual if you want to learn more, it’s a great camera and it has the charm of analog photography: you have only few photos you can take with one film roll so better do it good, plus you will only know the result afterwards. It’s actually quite funny how people already are so used to digital photography. The first thing they do when taking a picture with this camera is looking at the back how the picture looks like: there is nothing there!

So, pictures soon, unless I did it all wrong, Xau!

Ambient Assisted Living 4 All

Afbeelding

It is no secret to you that the group of people at the age of at least 65 is continuously growing. We live longer, but this also has its impact on assisted living and retirement homes: people never required so much help from nurses and other educated people to support them in their live. The Ambient Assisted Living for All project I’ll be working on is an IT system which aim is to support people who can still live more or less on their own but require additional help for some of their daily tasks. My exact objective is to set up a gateway device which collects data from remote sensors. Once the data is collected it can be interpreted and/or be send to remote servers and services in the local LAN and internet. The data which could be collected by the gateway could be for example is simple as monitoring the pressence of someone through a radar detector or monitoring the health of a person through his heartbeat. As gateway device I’ll be using a Raspberry-Pi computer, communication between the Pi and the difference sensors will be done via the ZigBee protocol (wireless radio frequency) and XBee modules. Depending on how fast I get through this project I can try to implement different types of sensors and for example make a  web interface around all the attached sensors (display the data).

Aside of that, assisted living is actually a lot more than just monitoring some stuff:
Afbeelding

It can not only help elderly people but also people with disabilities like those who are for example in a wheelchair, or in general people who just need some extra help living on their own. AAL can help them not to forget taking their medicine, it can monitor the lifestyle and health but it can also add make sure the people feel less isolated by offering social services and entertainment. The AAL4ALL system is also aiming to connect the AAL4ALL gateway to remote medical services and patient files in order to automate and aid when medical assistance should be provided.

The picture below shows how, not AAL4ALL precisely, but IT in general can help in the daily tasks of people:
Afbeelding

However, my main task will be to set up the sensor gateway and to set up the ZigBee communication. Later you learn more on how I did this and how this is done precisely.

Settling down and stuff

It’s been… let me think… 21 days already! Arriving at night packed with 30 kilos on your back was the worst experience I had so far, and it wasn’t even that bad. From then on, things only got better. In 2 days I found myself a nice and affordable house to stay in for the next few months. It’s a typical Erasmus house, we’re here with 15 and we’re located in the old city center: all bars and pubs within walking distance! Who lives here? 4 Italians, 3 Austrians, 2 Brazilians, 1 Spanish girl, 1 British girl, and 4 Belgian people with myself included. I didn’t know anyone from before I got to Porto, but actually there’re a lot of Belgians in this city, it’s really surprisingly for such a small country. There is even someone from my house who goes to the same school as me in Belgium! So until now I’ve actually spoken Dutch most of the time, unfortunately, but I’ve subscribed for Portuguese courses so once I pick the basics I hope we can switch to Portuguese instead of using English, Italian, German or Dutch in our house. Or maybe I should get myself a Portuguese girlfriend, no?
Until know I’ve mostly just hung around in the city: some sightseeing, shopping, or relaxing at the beach… or explore the city by night… aaaah the good life!
Today was also my first day of school. Going to school with a massive hangover is maybe not the smartest thing to do, neither is it the most pleasant thing I did so far but all together I’m glad I can finally start working. I’d like to tell you some more about what I’m actually going to do here, I’d also like to show you some more Portuguese culture and historical buildings but I’ll do this in another time, it’s time for a nap now!

Xau Belgica!