To begin week 1 I arrived on campus and got settled in. I made sure to know where the building was before I had to be there, so I would not be late. I met my mentor, Professor Leilah Lyons, and she explained to me the entire EcoCollage project that I would be apart of. (Explained on the homepage) I also talked to Tia, the main graduate student in which I would be working closely with, and she informed me on the tasks I had at hand. For my first week she wanted me to get used to the different programs that I would be using, breaking and fixing code, and seeing what my skill set exactly was. Personally I wasn't ready to code, nor did I have the true desire to do so. However, the entire project as a whole was very interesting. The virtual graphics, experimentation, gaming designs, and so on were all very interesting. 

Once Tia would leave during lunchtime, I then began to learn how to transcribe videos. Watching a group of students experiment with the prototype game board, I had to write the times when they began speaking, what "color" had spoken, what they said, and the ending time of their sentence. These segments were about 12 minutes long and took normally two to three hours to transcribe. These were very tedious and frustrating, but it still beats coding for me.

Within the first week I'd say the program I learned the most about was InqScribe. Different ways I could set shortcuts, the best ways to hear a person speak, listening to different play rates (faster or slower), and for some amusement I'd make them repeat over and over what they had said and put it into a little song like version. I also had to work with xCode, which had Java Script in it. Coding, once again is not my favorite thing to do, but the application that we had downloaded opened an iPhone on screen and ran a simulation exactly like an iPhone. I had to click an app to open it, hold it to make them all shake so that they could be deleted, and could even close the running apps. Although very interesting, I still had to look into the developed code and try to see what the pieces did. She told me that I should explore and be able to break and fix the different code segments. I was definitely lost and am glad I could transcribe videos, no matter how time consuming these were.

Working with Program xCode

• Learning the different coding techniques
• Learning what's possible to create with xCode
• Learning what controls what

Working with Program InqScribe

• Transcribe Videos
• Watch Student's reactions to Garden placement
• Learn the strategies of the students
• Do students grasp the concept of the placement?

Beginning week 2 I met a new partner who attends UIC and is interested in being a part of the EcoCollage. Considering the now known fact that the other attendant is no longer able to make it to the project, his assistance will be much appreciated. Although Leilah is out of the office often she was here and very helpful for the first two days of this week. She explained further to us that we would no longer be trying to use the iOS applications to project the gaming board, instead we will definitely be using an overhead screen projector and trying to figure on how to simulate the game. So, instead of using xCode we will now be using the program Eclipse. 

We had a meeting with other members of the EcoCollage team and collaborated on the different scenarios that could be incorporated into the game. What would really matter to the community when trying to place the items to stop flooding, what can really draw their attention so that the game is not boring to them, and what will help players better understand each aspect. Listening to all of the ideas helped me to see what matters to who, such as people with basement flooding problems, commuters who deal with flooded streets, and the special "rose gardens" that would be ruined if flooded. It really helped open me up to see the different perspectives and understand why people would/wouldn't want to install these different items.

Definitely got a reality check on what researching is. How I need to understand what I am reading better and summarize down my readings to let others know the more important information without having to read the same amount. My goal in the readings that were assigned was to find the best way feature detectors. Which would be used best for the program we are attempting to create.  

Began downloading Eclipse

Testing Sample Code

Finding Threshold

Seeing if it's possible to track multiple colors

During week three I jumped into the coding aspect of the internship. The goal was to create a program that would show the threshold of a picture and be able to find green objects. It took about two to three days to figure this out and with help from my co-volunteer we got a lot more work accomplished. He helped me focus more on the project and made coding a little more interesting. He is trying to learn more about coding, so the more he learns, the more he refreshes my memory on what I had learned in class before. This also helps teach me some new things I may have not learned or remembered. Once we finally got the threshold to recognize green, we then were told to focus on trying to put boxes around the green objects. This took a lot more work.
While playing around with the boxes we took different pieces of code and combined them with the code we have now. With this new coding we eventually came upon three different screens. The original, the threshold, and the screen where it was trying to put up contour lines. The screen with contour lines was very interesting in that it changed original colors to very odd colors; however it did put boxes around the green images. Once this had been figured out I was assigned a new goal.

My goal was then to be able to only look for the green images once a button had been pressed on the keyboard, be able to hit escape to exit the running program, and to try to get the boxes onto the threshold image. The easiest assignment is to hit escape to exit the image, so that is the one I shall work on first, and will continue on to the next ones. I was only able to complete the task of pressing the escape box to get out of the running program. The rest of the week was spent transcribing videos and seeing what other types of programs could be used with this project.

Tia, Hamlet, and I also went to visit the Innovation Center where another partner of the project was working on different parts as well. He showed us numerous scenarios as to how to show the different types of systems on the map. The swales, rain barrels, green roofs, permeable pavements, and even sewer drains. One of the programs worked off of certain patterns and another worked off the size of the square. When placed on the table the project would place an image on the screen stating what type of system it was. This was a very interesting project and began sparking many ideas and questions. This helped lead into week four. 

During this week Hamlet and I continued to work on grabbing the position of the threshold object whenever a specific button was pressed. We first had to figure out how to track the object that was displayed. Once we figured that out it was simple to capture the positioning at the press of a button. The only problem with the thresholding program is that it can only track one image at a time. We also got the contour boxes to go around the object of choice. However because this program only thresholds and tracks one image at a time we needed to find another that would be more helpful. 
We were assigned to watch a video where a man worked with Visual Basic on taking a picture and then the program would match the image and moving object from the camera. We had to convert the code from Visual Basic to C++. We finally got the program to run properly and were able to take a picture of whatever we wanted and have the camera match and track the image. This program worked well until it came upon images without corners. I tried to create a picture with a paw print, heart, and check mark, but it was grabbing the points and couldn't really focus on the rounder parts of each object. So we tried another program.

I believe the third program works with SURF as well. This program ran very smooth as well. It grabbed the important points in the picture that was projected on screen. It could grab multiple objects, which was a plus, however we needed to have it grab objects that were in a certain vicinity. This was just grabbing objects that seemed important to it. For instance it was circling my pupil, iris, and eye. It also had a very long range.

During this week we also had a meeting with everyone who was working on the project. Whether they were on Skype or in the meeting room. We talked about different pieces that could represent the objects at hand. Questions were brought up about how big the map size should be, who were prospective candidates for testing the new simulation, what types of materials would be used for the objects, and more. This was about a two hour-long meeting with many different questions, concerns, and variables that were brought up.  We now have new goals for next week and will hopefully be moving to a new lab so that we can better test our simulations.

Finally During the week I got to take the objects that Matt had made and test them in the SURF program that detected main features. Also creating contrast between the pictures with their original and then making a black and white. There were major feature detection increases from the original picture to the black and white picture. This was a pretty simple way to end the week.

During this week we began to test the shapes with the overhead camera in the LSRI lab. We feel as if the overhead camera gives a better demonstration and also allows us to have a more accurate reading as to how far the camera must be from the objects to get an accurate reading. We soon began working with the SURF coding more so that the program would run better. We wanted the program to be able to grab the object it detected and set it in a different window after clicking a specified button. It took a while, but we finally got the piece working properly. Once we press a button it now takes the image that it is searching for and finds images related to it and sets them off in separate windows. Our new goal is for it to be able to properly select the images and the main features for each shape.

We had a meeting with Matt, our designer and he showed us different materials that would be possible to use in the project. There were wooden pieces from different cuts of wood, such as birch and butterwood. These shapes all varied in sizes as well, from ¾ of an inch to 1¼ inch. This was to test how easily human hands could pick them up and how visible they were to the computer. Once we finished with the meeting we headed back to the ERF lab to finish up a little more coding, and then I began to transcribe more videos. 

To begin the 6^th week we started to combine the threshold code with the SURF code more. The code is now able to search for a specific color and image that is given to it. We have the program working well with a few bugs where it crashes every so often. Our main goal is to move the equipment from the ERF lab to the LSRI lab so that we may begin testing with the overhead camera. This should allow better detection for the SURF program to run off of while there is better lighting and a clear distance between the camera and object. We walked over the equipment to the LSRI lab to discover we had no table for the computer to sit on. So we came back to the ERF lab so that I could continue transcribing. 

We eventually made it back to the LSRI lab so that we could begin testing the program. We set up the overhead camera by taping it to a pole and making sure it was parallel to the floor. The original camera had something wrong with it, so we couldn't use that one and had to use a wide-angle lens camera. With the wide angle lens the camera has a bigger surface area to look at. It was my job to test which square sizes could be picked up and what the range was for the sizes. Tia had already finished a chart so that I could fill in the information easily.

I began testing the pieces and at first it was going smoothly. The two larger squares worked just fine, the 1.75 and 1.5 inch squares. Anything after that became a little fuzzy. Looking on the screen I could tell the camera was having problems picking up the pieces, so I started to tamper with the lighting of the area, brightening and dimming the lights to see if it would help the problem. No matter what I did it still seemed to have trouble, so I looked closer at the screen to see if it was an immediate problem. It looked as if the table was reflecting the lights weird. So, I then tried to use something smoother and less reflective to cover the table. The only thing I could find in my workspace was a large piece of cardboard, and I believe the squares were too close in color to be discriminated by the camera. I tried moving the squares in several different areas and even in just the plain middle of the table to see if it would get picked up, but nothing. I decided that since I couldn't find the others I might as well try finding the exact points for the first two that were found.

This week was short because it was the Fourth of July, so we were only in for three days. I felt as if there was a decent amount of work completed, but there is still much more to be done.