CyberTech News

NEWS RELEASE FROM RADIO ARCALA

The Finnish Amateur Radio alliance Radio Arcala (OH8X) has been studying the potential of promoting Amateur Radio in a variety of Virtual World environments by approaching the millions of young people who spend their time increasingly in well-known internet locations, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Second Life and others. The OH8X group early on bought an island (private server space) and built a complete virtual amateur radio station in Second Life.

After learning the limitations of commercial settings and available tools, they soon found out that there is a need for open architecture and improved tools. Hence they decided to have a key partnership in development work to create an open platform called RealXtend. It has gained a lot of ground among those working on next-generation Web 3D applications. The future World Wide Web is definitely heading in that direction.

While involved in the RealXtend platform development project, they are also busy working on their own Virtual World radio station, the first of its kind. The features include a meeting place for the Arcala team and their visitors to meet and operate the simulated OH8X/CU2X stations in the Virtual World from any place in the real world. Each and every feature of the real ham radio station is modeled, and interaction between the Virtual World and the real world connects them together.

“Everything sounds complicated at first glance”, says Juha Hulkko, OH8NC who spearheads the project. He adds that the young people of today spend their knowledge and their time in these virtual settings. So, it’s up to us to have a look at virtual space as a way of approaching the youth in their own familiar surroundings.

“We have been encouraged by the experience of seeing others enjoy the free platform introduced to boost application development”, says Juha, OH8NC. Just recently, a cluster of universities in the United States joined the Immersive Education Initiative which in turn has selected RealXtend as their platform to initiate their future distance learning in Virtual Reality. This confirms that taking Amateur Radio there is in line with the evolving world in a setting where young people ultimately meet for fun and education.

Juha, OH8NC and Martti, OH2BH will be co-speakers at the Visalia DX Convention, sharing their OH8X strategy and taking you on a tour to see first views of Amateur Radio in virtual space and to taste some of the applications.

(See also previous CTN article about Radio Arcala: Remote control of a radio station using realXtend)

OpenSim, realXtend amateur radio, immersive education, radio arcala, Real Life control, realxtend 0.4, RL control, Second Life, www

CTN wrote last week that SHASPA was launched, now we have more information to share.

SHASPA is an innovative platform and set of services that a blend of emerging technologies such as wireless sensors, social networks, virtual worlds and electronic games can plug into to create applications which integrate, visualise, monitor and manage the physical and virtual environment.

SHASPA has been devised by a partnership between Swiss entrepreneur Oliver Goh and the Serious games Institute at Coventry University. Today’s technologies in 3D immersive environments enable us to better visualise and understand the world around us and the SHASPA platform provides creative developers working on the integration of physical and virtual worlds to develop and share new applications which foster better energy management, greater understanding of physical processes and the creation of intelligent shared spaces capable of delivering high value services to individuals working in those spaces. Over the next coming weeks, SHASPA will be announcing a number of showcases across the globe.

I am going to install SHASPA to my own home as soon as I get the needed hardware in place and I will report the results here. The installation means that the home as a physical place will get a virtual counterpart. The virtual home should not be mixed with mirror reality systems, where the virtual space is meant to be an exact copy of the real space.

The aim of the installation is to have a SHASPA powered home that will be:

• connected with other SHASPA homes (using the Opensim grid mode – I can pay a virtual visit to my friend’s home)
• controlled and observed from the virtual world, or from my mobile phone (how much use this is depends on how well the house is sensored)
• sending a twitter feed on important events. (temperature dropped below recommended minimum, etc)

SHASPA is not limited to home use. The target group contains also enterprises, offices and basically any real estate. CTN is going to write more about SHASPA in the near future.

Download SHASPA presentation slides here (20 Mb).

OpenSim grid, network, Real Life control, shared spaces, shaspa, virtual home

SHASPA is an intelligent shared space. Intelligent shared spaces are locations (physical or virtual) which deliver a set of highly personalised services to and build / manage relationships between entities (individuals, devices, systems, agents or combinations of these) active in those locations. Intelligent shared spaces act as hubs to social and business networks and support their sustainable development both environmentally and commercially.

Shaspa was launched just last week. I am in talks with Shaspa and I expect to soon post more info about what it is.

OpenSim, Uncategorized ambient devices, augmented reality, energy management, environment, network, Real Life control

Centria is the R&D unit of the Central Ostrobothnia University of Applied Sciences. Our staff and students have used realXtend since summer 2008.

What have we accomplished using realXtend?

1. Games
 We have developed a virtual version of the Finnish board game Star of Africa, and ported a board game called Galactica Battle Farce, developed by Ville Malila.

2. Building
We have built a virtual model of our school building in the realXtend viewer without any external 3D-software.

3. Importing external data
Using a coordinate transformation functions previously developed at Centria we brought GPS-data to rex and used them to move objects on a 3D-map of Ylivieska. A model of the building our Ylivieska branch works in has also been imported to rex.

4. x1o experiments
X10 can be used to connect the real life environment with rex. Some small scale x10 testing has been done, using light modules and motion detectors. The x10 testing has been done taking advantage of the examples released with rexserver. For example, motion detectors can be used to show alarms in rex.

5. Phidgets and ZigBee
Recently we have used Phidgets with realXtend. Phidgets are sensors or input devices which can be used to move objects in rex. Phidgets include various sensors including humidity, accelerometers and RFID readers. ZigBee sensors, such as a ZigBee accelerator for controlling prims, have been integrated with Rex too.

Other interesting projects at Centria

Centria has developed a 3D-map engine for mobile devices and desktop. It uses OpenGL and runs smoothly on the Nokia N95 and other similar mobile devices. Several ongoing software projects at Centria are involved in sensors, sensor networks, GPS and other technologies related to location awareness and ubiquitous computing.

Our goals in realXtend

The current development goals of Centria in realXtend are to test and develop other home automation systems than x10 and participate in the development of the mobile realXtend viewer. One home automation techonology we might use is Z-Wave. It is a low-power wireless technology designed specifically for remote control applications.

For more information:

Ville Autio (firstname.lastname@centria.fi)
Tel 00 358 44 44 92 626

realXtend 3D models, centria, game, gps, nokia n95, opengl, phidgets, Real Life control, rfid, ubicomp, x10, z-wave, zigbee

[via radio arcala]

A virtual radio station was built using realXtend 0.31 platform. It was connected to a real amateur radio station to enable remote control.

The text at the web site states that: “In this live demonstration new techniques of Internet and the first ever global community of amateur radio will allow mixing the edge of virtual world and real life when operating remote located HF-radio station thru virtual world. In demonstration virtual world is executed with realXtend, next generations open source platform for virtual worlds.”

radio Arcala antennas, aerial view

This kind of use of virtual worlds for real world control is also demonstrated by Implenia, a swiss construction firm. I believe that the real world control cases offer interesting possibilites for virtual worlds in the future. One of the realXtend project’s core missions was, and still is to enable good interfaces between real and virtual, to enable applications just like this.

realXtend Real Life control, realxtend 0.31