CB00881 Smart Cities

Last post of mine you'll see here. I promise. At first I didn't quite know what to expect from this class. I just knew Smart Cities sounded interesting, at least to me. And so I jumped in. We jumped in. Little did we know where things would end up turning... actually, at first I wasn't convinced about working with students cross-nationally, I just believed whatever project we did could be more easily managed and within conditions that would harm our progress as least as possible if all our teammates where geographically at the same place. However, the opportunity came and we took it. All this, as you may very well know if you've read any of my other posts here... which I really doubt, and don't blame you. Even I question myself most times as to WHY I'm writing all these posts. Anyways... This post is supposed to be about what I learned during this whole semester, so let's get right to it. At first it was a mess, honestly. We were thinking to do things...

Enough about out project. Let's talk about something else. What do you think about when you hear the words “data leak”? For me personally, controversial hacks to famous social networks and online stores come to mind. But that’s the thing, that’s not the only data you should be worried about leaking... there’s a lot more information about you out there than you know. There’s a lot more research going into this than you think, too. One’s presence on the Internet, trace, contributions and records can be called our Digital Footprint. For you to be reading this, you must certainly have one too. For an increasing majority (me included), this footprint extends way beyond our awareness, spreading far beyond boundaries with (or without) intention. This footprint is commonly broken down into active and passive traces, data exhaust is part of the latter. Rather than being data that people consciously create, it’s data that people unintentionally generate, unaware that it res...

This week we set out to continue tackling the uploading of data to the Arcgis platform, it has become more of a hassle than we could've anticipated. More so when using REST for data upload. Both using the desktop application and the web map, it's as easy as cliking "add" and selecting a csv, so more tinkering is still needed. We also had a meeting with the Alberta team and they seem to be on the same page with us, as far as development goes. They're experimenting with loading the data from an Arcgis map to their own app. One main point both teams came to is about exactly what data actually has to be stored in Arcgis, and the schema we should use to have the most relevant info in Arcgis without overloading the data. Also, the ways in which we're planning to identify each place across databases. Something that might be useful to store is the type of place that each point represents, so that we can organize them into layers that group similar types together. ...

Writing all these posts down takes some time, wow. Specially if we really want to make them worth reading. But honestly, it's starting to feel like just following a strict, obligatory protocol than anything else. A bunch of the time spent writing these down could most certainly be better spent in actually doing the things we plan for, instead. Just saying. Anyways... Right now our plan is to continue on top of what we accomplished last week. Most buttons are not really functional yet, and a lot is just demonstrative. Hopefully by next week the user will be able to move across and interact in ways of adding info to our system. Also, Patrick from the Alberta University is trying to get us on a meeting to discuss some aspects of this all. So we might as well be on the look for any news. image obtained from https://tealswan.com/teals-blog/something-to-look-forward-to/

And here we are again. Another week gone by. Assuming you're somewhat interested in what that was for me, take a sit and read on. Though I'm betting you're already sitting. Excuse me if these posts are a bit repetitive, but it's very likely for them to be. We are required to post both a team update and a personal update each week, so of course these two will share lots in common. For me, my work this past week for this project consisted in researching different ways one can communicate with Arcgis services, deciding for one, and then throwing it away after working with it a bit. The second choice though, and current one, has resulted to be a lot more promising for our needs: their REST API. But as has been mentioned in my previous post , usability-wise we've found ourselves looking for answers in places outside of their official documentation. So I've been looking at ways to solve this. I can't think of a good way to end this post properly, so I'l...

Hey there! hope you're having a nice Saturd... wait, it's Tuesday now? Hmmm then I guess this comes to you later than expected, then. Although, are you really in a state of expectation for these posts? I mean, you probably landed here just out of curiosity, or boredom. And thus the date for this is not really that important at all... okay, enough of that. We can still relate to you the facts of last week in the same way. Because, well, last week continues to be what last week was. And will forever be. We advanced the platform up a few notches, mostly with regards to use cases like logging in/signing up and navigation indicators across the different views. Here's a sneak peak: What do you think? don't you dare say that Minerva isn't the cutest thing you've seen today. We also spent some time connecting our components even further, like sending landmarks to Arcgis. This has proven to be more complicated than we thought, simply because their documentat...

Continuing on where we left off , we've changed our plan. Trying to figure out work-arounds STEPS is really no different, functionality wise, to just uploading the landmarks data ourselves to an Arcgis map. So, this week we'll divide our responsibilities as follows: Luly: front-end for our web platform Chuy: data scrapping for Edmonton landmarks Martell: sending data to an Arcgis map using Golang The whole point of this is that by the end of the week, our platform will be both more visually appealing, easy to use and functional. And with this, I think the perfect time has come, once more, to quote the wise Leonard Snart... image obtained from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/11/16/bf/1116bfb84800e4490ec2255a441452e7.jpg

So, as mentioned in my last post , this week was... busy. To say the least. Too many projects pulling our strings, deadlines and requirements for which we had to prioritize our goals. For this project, that meant simply putting it aside briefly. Temporary pause. It truly would have been of no use to try and split our attention even further, our progress wouldn't have been much here, and would have instead just lessened even further the time we did have for our exams and other projects. I think it was the right move, and shall continue pushing now. The view is now clear and we can continue working without that many things on our way... full steam ahead! image obtained from https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2851/8848919204_9eca083c52_b.jpg

This week went by quickly. Jumping from one task to the next, its end suddenly came and we were left wondering what time we had actually dedicated for this project. Turns out, we didn't. Partials took us by storm, and twisted our time management skills to their limit. Some things had to be put aside. And sadly, this project was one of them. But, breaks aren't always so bad. This helped us take a breath and gain a new, fresh look now back at it all. And that's all there is. Not much else left to say. image obtained from https://www.reviewtrackers.com/procrastination-productivity/

This week we plan to continue developing our back-end side of the project. Mostly though, we'll be centered on figuring out how to use the Steps API previously developed by the Alberta team so that we add there additional info and media for important landmarks. The thing is, right now the Steps project is structured around "sidewalks", routes. We're not yet sure how we'll add landmarks, perhaps as routes that start and end at the same coordinates? The documentation for Steps is not very clear for where we can add this information. Hopefully we'll figure out a way, or a workaround, soon. image obtained from https://searchengineland.com/founder-openstreetmap-good-better-google-maps-already-192089

As mentioned in the last post , a couple things happened this week... first, there's no final project anymore for the Software Quality and Testing course, so we can shift our focus towards the most crucial parts of the project. Not leaving testing aside, just lower priority now. We had another meeting with the Alberta team, we were instructed to focus on creating the platform through which landmarks can be added and modified, as well as some multimedia scrapping for these places. All this, through the Steps API. Some changes were made in the front-end for displaying the map with points, as well as our Go API. All looking good, much work still to be done. image obtained from http://www.quoteambition.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Teamwork-Quotes.jpg

So, you probably came here because you're interested in what it is I did this week regarding this project. Otherwise, you really must've not payed attention to the title. I mean, it's pretty self-explanatory. Hoping you're not here by accident, let me explain what this week was all about then: partials. Mostly projects, actually. And I'm expecting this coming week to be very similar. Yay. I think we were all pretty busy, but still found some time to advance on what needed to be done here. For one, in the Software Quality and Testing class now there's no final project... so, the part of this project that was dedicated for that now is going to be much more flexible and for the most part, easier on us. We can direct our efforts on the other areas. On Friday we had a meeting with the Alberta team, where a few things were clarified. Among them, that we should focus for now on having the platform where data is going to be added and modified up and running. We...

This week, as explained in my last post , we made some final decisions on the technologies we'll be using for the part of the project we'll be in charge of: web/backend. All these decisions were made mainly according to the requirements of a class I'm not part of, but the rest of the team is. For this reason, and for us not to overstep in each other's way, I will be focused on the Data Analysis part of it all, or as specifically detailed by our client: developing analytics  features so that the platform administrators can see how the platform is used, such as (for example): how many assets we have, within an area? when were these contributed? what channel and which individual is the biggest contributor?   how many people did this tour? how long did it take? For me to start actually working on these features, though, a few components of our architecture will have to be ready first. Perhaps we can start agreeing on how the data is going to be structured in our...

This week we finally have a clear sight of what we need to do and how we are going to do it. Below there is the preliminar arquitecture for our project with the different technologies we are going to use: We are going to use Heroku to host the whole project, Postgress for our DB, Go for the API and VUE for our web client. Travis is used for CI and solid still has a grey area defined for it as we dont know exactly how much we are going to implement. We are also going to be splitting our work load so that each of us focuses on the different areas, Martell will be focusing on data analysis, Lucia on front-end design and implementation and Jesus on API integration. From the other courses we will have a group focusing on creating tests for our project. The Go API will probably have a TDD focused approach, while front end tests will be developed after those parts are done. On the Web development course we are focusing on the Go API and postgress integration as well as mounting the s...

This week we plan to start working on a few of the things we've been going about back and forth with the Alberta team. Specifically, and on track with what's planned to be delivered on the Web Development Lab class, a map with points shown from the Datos Abiertos Jalisco platform. This, through a very basic API. We also have planned to integrate Github with travis-CI for testing automation. Eleni (UofA) has also mentioned a few other responsibilities of our team that hadn't been considered before: ingesting/scraping data to populate the back-end database developing analytics  features so that the platform administrators can see how the platform is used, such as (for example): how many assets we have, within an area? when were these contributed? what channel and which individual is the biggest contributor? how many people did this tour? how long did it take? So when the time comes, we'll want to incorporate these tasks into our planning. ... ... ....

Hey, you. Hello. As you may have seen in my previous post , we now have more concrete details about how we'll go about building this project. And to reach the agreements we now have with the Alberta Team, for me this week has mainly been about staying up to date with our communications through email and discord. Also, I'm starting to formulate some ideas in my head about how this project could easily relate to other courses I'm now taking... but, there's also the possibility that this project turns out to be way simpler than we thought. Which would be good, but we still want to end up with a good result that real people want to use. I've also been digging more about how the Google Local Guides community works, since those mechanisms and strategies could light the way for us to do something similar. Motivating people to contribute to this project won't be easy. Aaand I guess that's it. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

This week, following our meeting on Monday, our communication with the Alberta team has been more constant. They've let us in some of the details we missed from our video meeting and informed us of some specific requirements their clients have. We've also been discussing with them about which technologies we've used in the past and feel most comfortable with. This has led to some agreement on the most part, deciding that (mostly) we'll be taking on the web development side of the project and them on the mobile client. We were also presented with a general idea of what this app is planned to look like: With all this in mind, we've decided as a team to go with the following system features: visualization of points of Interest in map routes creation with multiple points of interest, in order routes can be approved or dismissed by other users information about MiBici stations for routes information about points of interested can be edited by users automat...

Today we had a meeting with the Alberta team, finally meeting them face to face. Virtually, at least. There, people from the city of Alberta gave a slight overview over what they require, giving us the following conception: - A web-based system through which people can contribute with geographical locations they think worth visiting, as well as walks that take them through certain locations. - A mobile client for guiding the user through people-generated walks. - The mobile application should work with and without internet connections. - Users should be able to create an account. - Users can have favorite walks. - There should be a Completed Walks section and a Certified Walks section. Connection and audio issues prevented us from hearing the whole thing in the meeting, but we did get a better idea of the project as a whole. We will be receiving further information about the project through a summary of the meeting provided by the students of Alberta. In the meantime, ...

Sooo this week, as "team lead" for our Mexico team (working with one of the Alberta teams), I reached out to Warren Thomas (team lead in Alberta) and we both introduced ourselves and spoke a bit. He seems like a very nice guy. And as slow as things might seem right now, I think we're still on track for what comes next. That being, whatever that exactly is that we'll find out on our meeting with the clients in Alberta that actually require this product. From our end, and as has also been mentioned in our team post this week, we have continued researching on the technologies and strategies with which the project seems to be planned so far. Yes, this post is technically required to be one page long, but... this is all I got for you right now. Really. So, I'm not going to write more mumbo-jumbo only to stick to that requirement. I don't want to waste your time reading more than you should. Except... I just did. And continue to do so, if you're reading th...

This week we continued with our planning (or rather, understanding) of the project. We went a little back and forth through email with the Alberta team, and agreed on meeting this coming Monday through Google Meet. We also continued digging about what the current landscape looks like for a project like this, what its prospects could be. Our internal communication as Mexico team has continued going well, despite not really knowing yet exactly what the real-world clients in Alberta will want in the end. image obtained from http://allisonwiese.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/So-What-Are-We-Going-To-Do.jpg