Author - Kal

Project Loon for Sri Lanka

August 29, 2015

4 min read

We have all heard about the Project Loon.

What do the most of us know? Well… it’s something to do with internet and balloons, and it’s coming to Sri Lanka! Yup spot on.

And there were some humorous political talk on the subject (They should prohibit that Gonwansha on public media!! At least for the sake of science) This is a post intended to bust the myths and give a very very simple idea on what the Loon is all about.

Project Loon is a network of balloons. As per Google, following are the main intentions of the project that did their first pilot test just 2 years back, in 2013.

– Connect people in rural and remote areas
– Help fill coverage gaps
– Bring people back online after disasters

Each balloon can provide connectivity to a ground area around 40 km in diameter (roughly 1250km2) using the wireless communications technology, LTE. Balloons make a network up in the sky and connect the rural subscribers and relay wireless traffic from cell phones and other devices back to the global Internet using high-speed links. Loon can’t operate alone. They have to partner with local telcos who own licensed cellular spectrum.

Large areas with low subscriber density that are too costly to be covered by the other existing means can be covered by Loon.

A Loon balloon looks like a large jelly fish. The inflatable part of the balloon is called a balloon envelope. Google engineers were challenged with air leaks that affect the duration a balloon can last in the sky and a lot of work had to go in to the design of the envelope. Currently it can survive around 100 days in the air.

A small box containing the balloon’s electronics hangs underneath the inflated envelope, similar to the basket carried by a hot air balloon.
This box contains circuit boards that control the system, radio antennas to communicate with other balloons and with Internet antennas on the ground, and lithium ion batteries to store solar power so the balloons can operate throughout the night.
Electronics are powered by an array of solar panels. The solar array is a flexible plastic laminate supported by a light-weight aluminum frame.

But nothing is holding the balloons right? Won’t they just float away with the wind, leaving us wondering “Where have all the balloons gone?”
This is where the Google smarty-pants have come up with a smart design. The balloons are floating in stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes and the weather (approximately 20 km above the Earth’s surface). Here there are many layers of wind, and each layer of wind varies in direction and speed. Loon balloons go where they’re needed by rising or descending into a layer of wind blowing in the desired direction of travel.

What kind of benefits will Loon offer to Sri Lanka?

fig6

Sri Lanka is an island with an area of 65,610 km2, less than half the size on New York. If we’re going to get all around “balloon-coverage” we’d need 52 balloons.

However the fact to remember is that we are already a technologically advanced nation (J J) with a wide broad band coverage and world’s lowest mobile broadband rates (Someone should put that in tourist brochures, Come to SL and enjoy dirt cheap internet while basking in sun!)

In SL 80% of the population has broadband coverage (Voice coverage is 100%), considering all telco operators. The remaining 20% live scattered in very rural areas and their internet requirements are questionable to say the least. When it comes to the area, around 60% has broadband coverage.

Will those of us, who are already covered, get any additional benefit from the project? Speed, rates, congestion solutions may be? The answer is “no, not really”.

If that is the case, there is a question of why. Why Loon for Sri Lanka?

It does help place the country with some good names, Google, latest technology etc. Helps build the brand value of the country as a whole and also of the telco providers who join hands with the project. Sri Lanka is already featured in many news articles, forums with the initial plans made public. It will help build network, make friends and hopefully pave the way for some more good things to come our way in technological fronts.

You can find more info on my blog too.

Inside Intel

June 26, 2015

Kal

Communication

1 Comment

4 min read

We usually get awkward glances when we say we work at intel. There has been a few instances where a few of our co-workers were asked to check out broken laptops and another funny anecdote where one was asked for help in a Unity Plaza shop mistaking him for a computer sales guy because of his company t-shirt. This explains why some of us are reluctant to wear the light blue company t-shirts in public places.

We work at Intel and we have email addresses that goes as @intel.com; we have access to all Intel employees via Lync; our leaves and expenses are handled via Intel internal systems and we have access to Intel intranet. No, we do not repair computers or we cannot sell a chip to you! Honestly speaking, we know nothing more about the Intel chips than the fact that they are inside our computers. Yes, we do have an office in Sri Lanka and it’s in the HSBC building in Bamba. No, we are not sales people or hardware experts; we’re software engineers and we write software, in fact we’re continuing the same kind of work we did during the good old Aepona days.

Intel acquired Ireland based company, Aepona, 2 years back. We also wondered why would the chip giant has anything to do with an API business. Little did we know that Intel was one of the biggest software companies in the world. This article on Forbes shed some light into the matter. In fact, the security giant, McAfee, was acquired by Intel as well.

A peek inside 2014 annual report of Intel gives us a better picture of what Intel’s business consists of. Software and Service Group, known within Intel as SSG, is the segment to us, previous Aepona employees, are attached.

The above are the operating segments of Intel as of 2014. But don’t be deceived by the equal sized squares, the revenue earned by the segments give a better idea of the size and the financial significance of the respective segments.

PC client group is leading the way with a high percentage, but we can see that the percentage revenue from it is slowly but steadily declining and the other segments are slowly gaining.

Intel was founded in 1968 by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. If you have heard of the famous Moore’s Law, it was Gordon Moore who came up with that. Intel is a derived shorter version of the term “Integrated Electronics”. Within a year Intel released the world’s first metal oxide semi-conductor (MOS) static ram, the 1101. Before long, in 1971, Intel created the world’s first commercial microprocessor chip. With the success of the Personal Computer (PC) microprocessor became the primary business of Intel and is still going strong today. “Moore’s law” which says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit will double in every 2 years, is based on an observation made by Gordon Moore. It has become a target for Intel and the reason for the law to be valid up to today is because Intel has driven innovation fiercely to achieve this target. In fact, Intel’s mission statement goes as “Utilize the power of Moore’s Law to bring smart, connected devices to every person on Earth” This year,2015, marks the 50th Anniversary of Moore’s Law.

Infamous “Intel Inside” marketing campaign was launched in 1991 and Intel became a familiar name in every nook and corner of the world. As of today Intel stands as the 12th Most Valuable Brands in the World and #12 on Forbes World’s Most Reputable Companies. Currently Intel has 107,000 employees across 170 Sites in 70 Countries and is included in the 100 Best Companies to Work For by Fortune Magazine. Renée James, President of Intel was named #21 on Fortune’s List of Most Powerful Women in Business and #37 on Forbes 100 List of Most Powerful Women in Tech.

With the dawn of the 21st century, Intel faced threats to its dominance by its rising competition, notably AMD. Fall of the PC and the rise of the mobile is another reason behind the slow down. These reasons are behind Intel’s move to diversify and explore different markets and we see software and IoT highlighted in the roadmap of Intel.

There was a series of acquisitions which helped expand SSG and they include Virtutech, McAfee, Mashery, Aepona and many more.

Hopefully Intel’s software business will grow in leaps and bounds and our neighbors will not give us confused looks when we say we work for Intel 🙂

First Ever IOT Community And First Ever IOT Meetup In Sri Lanka

March 10, 2015

Kal

Events, Web

Add comment

12 min read

Colombo IOT community was founded in November, 2014 with a vision of educating and supporting innovation of IOT in Sri Lanka.

Being true to the futuristic vision of Intel, Intel Sri Lanka was the driving force behind the first ever meetup conducted by the community on 21st January 2014 as the sole sponsor of the event.

We had a packed audience of more than 200 IOT enthusiasts with both industry and academia well represented.

Introductory session was conducted by Kasun Dilunika, Tech Lead at Intel Software. Kasun was instrumental in this initiative from the very beginning and is in the process of building an IOT enabled smart switch to solve a household problem he experienced.

He explained how the evolution of internet progressed from Internet of Places, Internet of People and finally to Internet of Things, with 40 billion devices expected to be connected by Year 2020.

Micro controllers and sensors are the two main driving forces of IOT. There are many to choose from with different capabilities and varying sizes. Want to connect your house keys to internet, anyone?

Kasun answered a question that was surely in the minds of many who attended the meetup. There were home automation solutions etc years back. Isn’t it the same old thing that has come in a new dress as IOT?

IoT devices have 3 main capabilities; Control, Compute and Communication. We call them 3C (ccc) devices. Unlike their pre-IOT era siblings, today’s IOT devices have all 3Cs as a single unit in a small form factor. Earlier devices mainly lacked in communication aspect. With Raspberry PI, Arduino, Intel Edison and Galileo, programming to hardware has become a child’s play. (We’re serious! Check this out http://www.raspberrypi.org/resources/make/)

Come up with an idea, it was said. It doesn’t have to be world changing, mind boggling complete with a nuclear reactor and a particle splitter. Kasun explained how our friend Jagath Makumbura came up with an idea for a Smart Susan after having chicken gravy spilt on him when using the turn table (lazy Susan) at a Chinese restaurant. Jagath’s Smart Susan was also on display during the meetup.

We’re sure many young minds were inspired by Kasun when he invited everyone to come up with their own project ideas and insisted on the fact that those who do will be guided by the Colombo IOT community. We truly hope that it will ultimately result in a product with “Made in Sri Lanka” label on it.

It was exciting news for the potential IOT innovators that 5 best IOT project proposals will be given Intel® Galileo Gen 2 microcontroller boards each.

Chamara Ratnaweera (Senior Architect at Intel Software), Chandana Kithalagama (Senior Architect at Intel Software) & Banuka Amarasinghe (Senior Software Engineer at Intel Software) presented “Kumana IOT Project”, a unique demonstration of IOT in a practical scenario.

Kumana is a national park in Sri Lanka which was severely affected by drought in 2014. Many animals were dying due to the lack of drinking water. Efforts taken by park authorities to deliver water to water holes from bowsers were not very effective. An initiative was taken by Intel Sri Lanka employees along with many other environmental enthusiasts to provide drinking water to the animals. Idea was to install a solar powered water pump to draw water from a tube well and fill a watering hole with it.

It was completed successfully. We were happy, animals were happy; but there was a small problem! The equipment was located in a remote area inside the thick jungle and there was no way of getting any information on how it was functioning. We didn’t want the water to be pumped when it was raining, we wanted to know if any of the equipment was malfunctioning and we knew Sri Lankan elephants are known to attack anything foreign! We couldn’t possibly get an elephant to telephone us if anything goes wrong.

Chamara got the bright idea of implementing an IOT solution to solve all of the above.

A sensor array would gather environmental data (ambient light, temperature, humidity) and other relevant data such as voltage generated by the solar panel, amperage flowing through the system, water flow rate from motor to tank and water level of the main water hole for animals.

Sensor Data Aggregator (SDA) would periodically consolidate the sensor data at a particular point of time, process them and send it to onsite controller module. An Arduino board was used due to the ease of handling low level devices, low cost and low power consumption.

It was decided to use SMS as the communication channel since the onsite deployment is in a remote area.

Handling communication by sending out the data SMS and receiving and processing control SMS and also issuing control signals to the motor is the responsibility of Motor Control Module. A Raspberry Pi would run the show in this module and the decision to use a Pi was inspired by the fact that it’s better at working with high level languages like Python.

Central Processing Unit (CPU) hosted in cloud complete with an analytical module decided when to send a control signal to stop/start the motor and when to alert the stakeholders of a possible breakdown.

CPU provided an API to extract data and control the system.

A fancy UI application called the API exposed by the CPU and displayed it in a nice dashboard and provided control functionality, and of course you could access it via the internet on whatever smart device you choose to view it from.

Chamara, Banuka, Jagath, Sachindra, Chandana, Buddhi, Madhura, Kushan and many others contributed in successfully building up the prototype that was on display during the meetup.

Aruna Dissanayaka, Director of Engineering at Intel Software, took the audience on a global tour in his key note speech, highlighting on the need for IOT in major cities to cater their booming population. He explained that having enough IP addresses is not sufficient for the exponential growth in IoT devices. Standards would have to adapt, for example IP stack doesn’t suit most IOT devices.

Kolitha Ratwatte, General Manager, Intel Software Sri Lanka, whose immense support helped make this event a success, concluded the meetup speaking about the way forward for Colombo IOT community.

A Q&A session followed with many interesting questions raised by the audience.

This is the story of the first ever IOT meetup in Sri Lanka sponsored by Intel. It might be a small step, but as they say “A journey of a thousand miles must begins with a single step.”Colombo IOT community was founded in November, 2014 with a vision of educating and supporting innovation of IOT in Sri Lanka.

Being true to the futuristic vision of Intel, Intel Sri Lanka was the driving force behind the first ever meetup conducted by the community on 21st January 2014 as the sole sponsor of the event.

We had a packed audience of more than 200 IOT enthusiasts with both industry and academia well represented.

He explained how the evolution of internet progressed from Internet of Places, Internet of People and finally to Internet of Things, with 40 billion devices expected to be connected by Year 2020.

Micro controllers and sensors are the two main driving forces of IOT. There are many to choose from with different capabilities and varying sizes. Want to connect your house keys to internet, anyone?

It was exciting news for the potential IOT innovators that 5 best IOT project proposals will be given Intel® Galileo Gen 2 microcontroller boards each.

Chamara Ratnaweera (Senior Architect at Intel Software), Chandana Kithalagama (Senior Architect at Intel Software) & Banuka Amarasinghe (Senior Software Engineer at Intel Software) presented “Kumana IoT Project”, a unique demonstration of IoT in a practical scenario.

Chamara got the bright idea of implementing an IoT solution to solve all of the above.

It was decided to use SMS as the communication channel since the onsite deployment is in a remote area.

CPU provided an API to extract data and control the system.

Chamara, Banuka, Jagath, Sachindra, Chandana, Buddhi, Madhura, Kushan and many others contributed in successfully building up the prototype that was on display during the meetup.

Aruna Dissanayaka, Director of Engineering at Intel Software, took the audience on a global tour in his key note speech, highlighting on the need for IoT in major cities to cater their booming population. He explained that having enough IP addresses is not sufficient for the exponential growth in IoT devices. Standards would have to adapt, for example IP stack doesn’t suit most IoT devices.

Kolitha Ratwatte, General Manager, Intel Software Sri Lanka, whose immense support helped make this event a success, concluded the meetup speaking about the way forward for Colombo IoT community.

A Q&A session followed with many interesting questions raised by the audience.

This is the story of the first ever IoT meetup in Sri Lanka sponsored by Intel. It might be a small step, but as they say “A journey of a thousand miles must begins with a single step.”

Happy Women`s Day

March 8, 2015

Kal

Uncategorized

1 Comment

3 min read

I’m a female tech lead.

That’s enough to set me apart and I truly wish for the day it won’t.

Some will ask, “Are you blind? Don’t you see that all tech companies have so many female employees?” From them I ask “How many women leads and architects do you see in them?” And they will shut up!

Why is it that we have very few females in the senior end of dev track? We do see so many female sw engineers. Does that mean the glass ceiling is at the lead level?

Ok. Stop. Why do we even bother? Women in SL get a nice education, attend universities and hold so many positions. They get a nice paycheck, make decisions, drive their own cars, and travel on their own. Does it really matter if we don’t have many females in these very specific roles?

Let me tell you a story.

There was this 17 year old girl who did not get a nice English education as her brothers did, and was married off to a 42 year old man against her will by her father. If a woman can read a medical prescription, isn’t it enough? he asked.

Well, that girl is well over 80 and is my grandmother.

Look at the difference two generations have made. In the first generation it’s enough for a girl to know how to read or write. In the second generation it’s enough for a girl to have university education and in the third generation it’s enough for a girl to have a well-paying job.

Here’s another story.

In the 1940s the record time for running a mile had reached 4:01 min. It was believed by doctors and scientists that it was physically impossible to run a mile in less than four minutes. And no one did until 1954. In 1954 Roger Bannister broke the 4 min barrier and set a new record in Olympics. Interesting part is not him breaking the record, but another one breaking it after a month and half a dozen breaking it within the next few years.

Both stories are about stereotypes, norms, paradigms, whatever the term we like to use. Once the barrier is broken, once the paradigm is changed, the norm will change.

Most evil of the stereotypes are the ones that exist in our own heads.

Happy women’s day to all the lovely ladies who silently do a battle in their own fronts without even knowing that they do so.