Drone for Good

Drone, technically known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Unmanned Aircraft and in other words as a “Flying Robot” is an aircraft remotely controlled through software working in combination with on-board sensors and GPS. Used initially for intelligence gathering and as a weapons platforms by the military in situations where manned flight is considered too risky or difficult.

But today drones are also used in wide range of civilian rules. Started by the Amazon in 2013 for delivering items drones are getting in more and more business activities including customer service, maintenance and even capture the news. 

Widely in use for capturing photographs, drones are now also getting their part in food delivery and in coming days the delivery time of Pizza will be reduced from 30 minutes to 15 minutes and without the hassle of traffic jams. Using drone for delivering cargo or food will also result in less traffic on the roads and generating zero pollution.

By using drones the regular inspection of wind turbines, power lines, and pipelines can be done and save on high inspection cost and timely identification of a fault. Not limited to this, drones can also be used to supply medicines, blood and other equipment between hospitals, within the city or to a far and remote locations. These drones can also be used in providing civil security and protecting the public from threats such as terrorist attacks as well as in successfully identifying crimes. With its low noise level, these drones can be used for discrete and almost silent surveillance and keep watch over everything from high in the sky. This will allow police to monitor illegal money hand-overs, protests, public events, etc. without being seen or heard.

The most important task in which these drones can be used is in the search and rescue operations. As in a case of fire, these drones can help firefighting team in providing an overview of the situation and know the exact locations of the persons stuck in the building, forest or a field. Not only that by installing gas measurement device, the smoke composition of a fire can be known so a strategy can be made to the rescue. In situations where manned flight is considered too risky or difficult these drones, if made more powerful, can be used to lift injured person from snow covered mountains, floods, from a sinking ship or from the polar zone.

This positive change in drone usage will place a great impact on this earth and help to make life more secure and easy.

Voice Assisted Automation………"Let there be light"; and there was light.

After the generation of electricity in the 19th century, the evolution of technology started and with this started the inventions and development of different electric and electronic devices. These inventions like the mobile phones, smart television, coffee makers, refrigerators and much more started to become part of our daily life and change our lifestyle on this earth.

Until recently, all these devices are either controlled by remote control to turn a device ON/OFF, increase the volume of a multimedia player or change the channel of the television with the push of a button. Motion detectors and light sensing devices are also playing an important role in controlling lights for saving energy, and turn them ON and OFF only when needed. But all of these devices are either timed controlled, sensor controlled or by the touch of a button this means that control is completely based on the physical involvement of the human. 

The life’s going to change again, and now there is no need to schedule that lamp to turn on at the sunset or using your smartphone to turn it off after you’ve climbed into bed, simply tell your smart home to turn the lights off. It might sounds like some fiction from “Star Trek” or “The Jetsons”, but this has now become a reality with the introduction of Voice Assisted Automation.

Voice Assisted Automation enables you to control all electrical equipment and peripheral devices by means of just voice commands. You just require to connect your devices like lights, television, air conditioners with a “digital assistant device” and say the magic words and your command. For example, if you have to turn on the lights of your room you just have to say the magic words “Let there be light”, No, No not these magic words, the magic word for your digital assistant will depend on the brand you have purchased. For example, if you have purchased “Amazon Echo” you have to say the magic word of “Alexa” and then the command. So to turn on the lights you have to say “Alexa, turn on the light” and there will be light.

There are many digital assistant devices now available in the market like Amazon Echo, Athom Homey, CastleHub, Insteon, Ubi, Jibo and more coming up. Running there dedicated software these devices can respond to the user’s voice commands and intelligently activates, deactivates and changes the state of the appliances via an RF-signal, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. You can change the thermostat setting of your air conditioner while sitting on your couch, turn on your coffee maker while in bed, and open the garage door while still sitting in your car and many other tasks with just a voice command. With the fast development of the Internet of Things (IoT), which seeks to connect everyday devices and appliances with each other and with their users, the “digital assistant device” will play an important role, by allowing you to control all your devices with just a voice command.

These digital assistants not only control lights, switches, and thermostats but can answer questions, reads Audiobooks and the news, reports traffic and weather, gives info on local businesses, provides sports scores and schedules, set timers and alarms, stream music and much more using internet connection.

With an already considerable list of benefits that is only going to grow with the advancement of technology, this is just a beginning. And with the availability of the “digital assistant device” and the compatible electrical equipment in the market, this field promises to get only more interesting in the future.

Internet of Things (IoT): What????

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing Internet infrastructure.”

WHAT?

WHAT IS IT?

Ok, Ok! I understand this is a difficult definition. So what is IoT or Internet of Things? It is simply the network of physical objects accessed through the Internet. A scenario in which physical objects (Coffee Makers, Refrigerators, Cameras, Television, etc.), animals or people are provided with unique identifiers an IP address and capable of transferring data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. This provides communication between multiple devices so that a Refrigerator can inform the user through his Smartphone if it is out of eggs or the compressor is malfunctioning or if the Coffee Maker is out of coffee beans or the car engine is having a problem, every device can talk to each other through IoT.

Some of the devices that are now part of IoT are security systems, thermostats, cars, electronic appliances, lights in the household, alarm clocks, speaker systems, vending machines and more. So, how can it help us? Consider that we have computers that are connected to each device in our house and they gather data from these devices. How easy it will become to track and keep count of everything and we will be able to know in advance if we run out of eggs or before our fruits or veggies get spoiled or that can of mushrooms get expired, even we can know in advance if it’s time to change the engine oil. How comfortable it will be if we reach your house and found the comfortable house with already adjusted temperature and the coffee ready.

Here's the scenario: As you approach the front door of your house, a remote control built into your key unlocks the door. The door's wireless radio messages the network, which prompts the hall light to turn on. The house thermostat, which was lowered after you left for work, returns to a comfort zone. Hence as defined by Paul Williamson, director of low power wireless for semiconductor maker CSR: "A true Internet of Things is coordination between multiple devices."

Every day we see new examples of applications that connect objects to the internet and each other: from cars connected to traffic lights that fight congestion, to home appliances connected to smart power grids and energy metering that allows people to be aware of their electricity consumption or connected pedestrian footpaths that guide the visually impaired.

For health care IoT can be used as a practical application in primary and elderly care. Now people can have their blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rate remotely measured and transmitted it to their residential community health center saving time and cost of travelling while improving medical outcomes.

Internet of Thing is not a technology of the Future it is here today and we are getting surrounded by it. According to Gartner, there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020 and by then the physical world will become one big information system. 

2020 Mobile Communications Technology

 Mobile Devices are becoming more and more bandwidth hungry. After the introduction of the first internet service on mobile phone in 1999 that uses the 2G network with the data transfer rate of less than 20Kbp, the use of 2G phones became more widespread and people began to utilize mobile phones in their daily lives. The live streaming of video and audio on handsets started with the introduction of 3G network a network that can support data rate of up to 2Mbps. But soon it is realized that 3G network would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications and hence result in the introduction of 4G network in 2009, a technology capable of transferring data at the speed of up to 100Mbps.
Since the introduction of 1G (1st Generation) in 1981 it’s been observed that a new mobile generation has appeared approximately every 10th year. The 2G (2nd Generation) network was rolled out in 1991, the 3G (3rd Generation) in 2001 and the present 4G (4th Generation) in 2012, except for the improved versions that were launched in between these time lines like 2.5G or 3.5G. Based on the above observations, some sources suggest that a new generation of 5G (5th Generation) standards may be introduced approximately in the early 2020s.

As described by the Ericsson the 5G solution will not consist of a single technology but rather an integrated combination of radio-access technologies. This includes existing mobile-broadband technologies such as HSPA and LTE that will continue to evolve and will provide the backbone of the overall radio-access solution beyond 2020. But it also includes new complementary radio-access technologies for specific use cases. Smart antennas, expanded spectrum – including higher frequencies – and improved coordination between base stations will all be crucial to fulfilling the requirements of the future. Additionally mobile-broadband technologies will expand into new deployment scenarios, such as ultra-dense deployments, and new use cases such as different kinds of machine-type communication.

Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment provider Huawei predict that 5G will deliver peak data rates of over 10Gbps, 100 times faster than today’s 4G networks. But one of the main benefits of 5G over 4G will not only be its speed but the latency. At present, latency of a 4G network is between 40ms and 60ms, which is low-latency but not low enough to provide real-time response. 5G’s prospective ultra-low-latency could range between 1ms and 10ms, this ensure that when you hit a button, the remote server responds instantly.

It is predicted by the analysts that there will be nearly 50 billion connected devices worldwide by the year 2020. These devices includes (but not limited to) smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, fridges, cars, augmented reality specs and even smart clothes. Some of these devices require significant data to be shifted back and forth, while others might just need small packets of data to be sent and received. The 5G system will be capable of understanding and recognizing this bandwidth requirement for each device and allocate it respectively, thereby not putting unnecessary strain on individual connection point.

The 5G system will help operators meet the long-term vision of unlimited access to information and sharing of data available anywhere and anytime to anyone and anything.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G

http://www.ericsson.com/news/130625-5g-radio-access-research-and-
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Stamp Collecting, The Lost Hobby

There was a time when there was No Email, No Facebook, No Skype, No SMS or MMS so how people communicate with each other, how they greet their friends on Birthdays or tell their parents about the experience of their 1^st day in college far away from home, That was time when people use to send letter greeting cards to their loved ones and friends through mail service. Write a letter on a piece of paper or a greeting card, place it in an envelope, write the address, paste the stamp on the envelop and drop it in a post box and the letter received at the address after two or three days.

So what was the Stamp that was pasted on an envelope, it is a printed piece of custom-made paper that shows a national designation and a denomination (value) on its front and a gum adhesive on the back for pasting. There is a sample picture from my collection.

US 20 cents introduced during 1984 Olympics

At that time stamp collecting was a popular hobby by the people how are interested in history, geography, art and world culture. It was more documented that a first postage stamp was introduced in United Kingdom on 1^st May, 1840 by the name “Penny Black”, with profile of Queen Victoria printed on it. And from then starts the hobby of stamp collecting.

Stamp collecting was a simple hobby at that time you just have to gab all the envelopes that comes with a letter, every envelope has one or more stamps pasted on it, carefully removing the stamp from the envelope since it is pasted with gum on the back you just have damp with a litter water from the back and remove the stamp then put it in an album. At that time there were stamp collecting albums available at many book shops. Even at the beginning one can keep the stamps in a paper bag too. I started my collection by keeping the stamps in the envelopes and then when I have collect a big bunch of stamp I bought an album and put all the stamps in them.

And if you have more than one piece of the same stamp you can exchange it with your friend or a person how has the same hobby. In this way it also becomes the source of increasing your friend ship circle. Even there was stamp collector’s community at that time.

At that time stamp was a great source of providing knowledge about that country from where it is issued. You can learn about the currency of the country since every stamp contains a value a price printed on it. For example if it an stamp from United Kingdom its value will be in penny or pound, if it’s from United State it in cent or dollar, from Saudi Arabia it’s in Halala or Riyal. In this way one can lean which currency is used in which country and what is its symbol. May different methods were used by countries to represent the issuing country’s identification for example the stamp of United Kingdom is identified by the picture of Queen on printed at the corner of the stamp, United States of America by US, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia identified by KSA and Russia (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) by CCCP (Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик) printed on it. Even the languages of the country can also be identified by the printed matter on the stamp.

Countries used to issue some special stamps on different occasions like their Independence Day, Birthdays of their Leaders, at the time of anniversaries and even during Olympics. Hence stamp collecting was also one of the ways to learn about occasions and history of many countries. Some stamps have special marks or miss printed and for collectors they are like treasures, those who knows the value of these type of stamps may pay a big amount of money to buy them.

I started collecting stamps when I was twelve years of age, many of my friend and relatives helped me a lot and have a good collection at this time, some old and some new. Thanks to everyone who helped me.

I think stamp collecting is a good hobby and those who love to learn about different countries, history, art and culture should adopt it.

You can see some of my collections below and more on my Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Postage-Stamps/307256486117184

• Issued by Federal Republic of Germany with the denomination of 60 Pfennig

• Issued by Pakistan Post on the Anniversary of Lahore Islamic Summit with the denomination of 20 Paisa

Issued by Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the denomination of 150 Halala