Blix

I am currently part of a team working on a home automation project called Blix. Our goal was to create a device that can communicate with any electronic device via Short Message Service (SMS) and the internet. We decided to use a blender as a proof of concept. I connected the blender to a microcontroller which was then connected to my Lenovo laptop, running on an Intel processor. To make this happen, I used MySQL, Postfix, and PHP. Postfix was used to send and recieve the messages, PHP was used to connect to the controller and talk to the database, and MySQL was used to keep records of users.

We had a tight budget, so I chose to use open-source software, including a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) server. I used a laptop based on the 945PM chipset. Intel’s support of Linux allowed my setup to be quick, pain-free, and cost effective, which resulted in minimal downtime. We had a showcase in Cambridge where showed how our system works to potential investors. During the showcase, I did not have access to an Ethernet port, so I had to host the server using Wi-Fi. If the wireless connection had failed or dropped, our presentation would have been ruined. Luckily, my Centrino-based notebook never dropped the connection and our presentation went as smoothly as possible.

Science, Technology, Work/School

Ari uses a laptop powered by  

Intel® Centrino® processor technology