Over the past few years, I have been creating prototypes of ideas that I find interesting. Mostly to see what I can build, and to understand a new technology. Sharing some of the prototypes that I had worked on:
- Tweet Storm Recorder (twtstrm.com) – {Bootstrap, JQuery, AWS, Perl, Twitter API}
- Arduino Wi-Fi Shield – {OAuth, Twitter API, Embedded Systems, Arduino}
- Social Restaurant Review – {Drupal, Python, Facebook API}
- Tablet-based Restaurant Ordering – {Android app}
Tweet Storm Recorder
(Bootstrap, JQuery, AWS, Perl, Twitter API)
This was available on http://twtstrm.com. As the latest tweet storm phenomenon takes hold, there is a need to record tweet storms so that they can be referenced to later, as you would a blog post. This site records such tweet storms.
All you have to do to record a tweet storm is to mention @addtwtstrm in response to the last tweet in the tweet storm.
Arduino Wi-Fi Shield
(OAuth, Twitter API, Embedded Systems, Arduino)
Most of the Wi-Fi shields that were around for Arduino provided elementary Wi-Fi functionality. On top of that, they were quite costly. Worked on this idea with Amey. The aim was to create a Wi-Fi shield, using Marvell’s awesome Wireless Microcontroller platform (“brag”: that we developed 😉 at Marvell), that is much powerful and costs about 20-30$. The shield will not just provide socket API interface as was provided by most shields then but provided more sophisticated interactions like TLS, Twitter/Google API integration.
For a prototype, we built this Wi-Fi shield. Thanks to VP Joshi for his help with the hardware. Ported OAuth 1.0 on the shield for twitter integration. Integrated with the twitter API such that a user can authorise the shield to tweet from an account, or send DM from a twitter account. Most of the messages on this handle are written by this Arduino Wi-Fi shield: http://twitter.com/testkedars.
We demonstrated the shield at an IoT Meetup in Pune, and at TechShop San Jose meetups. People loved it and encouraged us to do a kickstarter campaign.
Social Restaurant Review
(Drupal, Python, Facebook API)
The aim was to build restaurant review website but that is aware of your social network. Since you know your friends, you can understand their ratings much better than a general rating. Your social network can also recommend dishes for a particular restaurant, so you can order them. As a prototype, created a Facebook Application.
As a quick prototype, reused Drupal’s poll module. Had to learn a bit of python for this. Then used Drupal’s Facebook plugin to gather your friend list. Once a FB user authorises the app, the user can review restaurants that are part of the system. You are also shown lists of restaurants with overall ratings, ratings within your network and your own ratings.
Tablet-based Restaurant Ordering
(Android app)
The aim is to equip restaurants with tablets and an app that lets you place food orders. The tablet is placed on each tablet. It flashes pictures of various items in the menu, or could be used to serve ads about local events. For the user, she can see what her order is going to look like, thus ordering something that she likes better, also the app allows you to perform customizations to the food as per your wish. For the restaurant, including artistic pictures of their menu items would help in boosting sales.
As a quick prototype, created an Android app that reads an XML file (which will be downloaded from a central server to fetch menu updates) and shows you various menu items. The user can select the menu items and then place order. At this time the app shows the receipt of the order to the user.
