My experience with IBM Watson IoT Bluemix

My experience with IBM Watson IoT Bluemix 

                                                                                       at RevolutionUC 2016

A Little about me and my team

Hello people,

My name is Sayali and I am a Computer Science Graduate student at University of Cincinnati. I currently work as a Ruby on Rails Web Developer at Massachusetts General Hospital. I love to dance, sing and meet new people. That’s me trying to figure out what to do at the event.

My team included Suprabha, Laxmi, Vamsi, all Computer Science Graduate students at University of Cincinnati. We participated in RevolutionUC 2016, a hackathon for students across the midwest. It was here, that we met Gayathri, a Business Development Executive at IBM, who introduced us to IBM Bluemix, after which we decided on using this platform for building our prototype for the Hackathon. This is how we looked after working for 12 hours.

(L-R) That's my team -  Vamsi, Suprabha, Laxmi and me!

A simple, yet useful application of IBM Bluemix- Face Recognition and Safety system!

Attending the information session for IBM Bluemix, got us thinking of how we could use this platform and build something useful for the Hackathon (Ohh yes, until this point, we were clueless about what we were going to do for the Hackathon). Our main focus was to create something,which would make an individuals life easier and secure. We ended up with the idea of making a home security system called Face Recognition and Security System. We made a prototype that  captures the image of a person at the doorstep and recognizes if the person has access to the house and also sends a message and image URL to all the family members if the person at the doorstep is someone not from the registered list of house members.

To build this prototype we used IBM Bluemix, Python, JavaScript, Twilio, a cloud communication platform and Kairos Face Recognition API. The prototype involved using Kairos to simulate the actual existence of a camera and verification of identity. Kairos API was used to store images of the family members and also compare images to recognize if the person is registered as a family member. Success or failure of recognition was passed as payload to determine the acceptance of commands from the person at the door. Failure of recognition would trigger a message to the registered number using Twilio along with the captured image. Success would also trigger a message to the registered number, registering the command to open the door.

My overall experience about IBM Bluemix

We were unaware of this platform until we met Gayathri at the Hackathon and attended a workshop conducted by the IBM team. After the workshop we were more interested in working on this platform, that makes things so easy. We felt the platform is user-friendly and the learning curve is not that steep.

We  experimented with the existing services in IBM Bluemix to send messages and also convert voice to text or the vice versa. The platform has various services to offer, which helped us in building a working prototype within 30 hours.

We were thrilled to know that we received the “Best Use of Watson IoT Bluemix” award. Look at our happy faces!

The winners for the "Best Use of Watson IoT Bluemix" award