The School hosted a local programming contest in conjunction with UKIEPC on Saturday. Students and staff are pictured tackling problem sets throughout the day. Results and contest standings can be viewed on the UKIEPC Scoreboard. Aetherstore who sponsored the 2014 event, once again offered their backing, we thank them for their continued support.
Images courtesy of Graham Kirby.
The School had another successful Coffee Morning and Raffle organised by Ishbel Duncan today. September 25th is the UK’s annual biggest coffee morning in aid of MacMillan Cancer care. Some of the home baking on offer is pictured below. There are still some cakes and biscuits on offer in the coffee area. Donate generously.
Thanks to all those who baked, donated and ate. We raised £142 for MacMillan Cancer Support.
This is the first part of a 4-part workshop. Details are as follows:
Date and time: 24th Sept 4.30PM – 6.30PM
Venue: Jack Cole 1.33A/B
Workshop Leader: Shyam Reyal (smr20)
Sign up here: http://goo.gl/forms/RfnaQhZSB2 (Only 3 days left)
Workshop 1A (24th September) Contents:
Some points of discussion are highlighted below:
Future Workshops:
Workshop 1B – 1st Oct
Workshop 1C – 19th Nov
Workshop 1D – 26th Nov
Our ultimate objective is to see our students secure more, high quality internships/job placements in high-end tech companies and/or start-ups!
This workshop is targeted at honours and masters students. However, keen sub-honours students and PhD students are welcome. We believe it is never too early or too late to start looking for internships and developing your skills. Refreshments will be provided!
Contact aef6@st-andrews.ac.uk for more information.
The Academic Skills Project – sponsored by the School of Computer Science and CAPOD – will commence in week 2 and run every Thursday evening in JC 1.33a/b, with workshops covering a range of topics from internships to writing technical reports. The workshops will be targeted at undergraduates, but postgraduates are welcome to attend. For details for each workshop, please see posters on the notice boards, and sign-up sheets for each workshop session will be available on notice boards two weeks before the workshop session. For more information, contact aef6@st-andrews.ac.uk.
The School of Computer Science of the University of St Andrews is organizing the next Scottish Programing Languages Seminar which will be held on Monday 15th June 2015 in Lecture Room 2 of the Gateway. In the meantime you can keep up-to-date by following the SPLS website.
For further enquiries please contact Frantisek Farka.
The School of Computer Science welcomes Mel Woods from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.
Abstract:
Blue heritage plaques pepper the UK landscape expounding officially validated narratives celebrating past events, people, and buildings. This seminar will discuss a novel method that draws on this specific cultural context to generate reflective, nano-stories, documenting them through populating a place, physical space, and an online data repository. The guerrilla blue plaque method was designed to support people to reflect on possible futures, in this instance the theme of future cities. The seminar will demonstrate how using critical design artefacts can help support understanding of future hopes, needs, and goals for individuals and communities. It will also discuss the method as a feedback mechanism for participatory design, citizen engagement and emergent outcomes from the latest deployment.
This work was initially developed as part of a UK arts and digital media festival and exhibited recently at Microsoft Research Lab, Cambridge at RTD 2015.
Bio:
Mel is Reader at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. In her research she has developed and explored interaction between people to support discovery, foster creativity and affect. Throughout her academic career she has sustained a critical enquiry in art and design, creating digital artefacts, interfaces, prototypes and exhibits using novel methods and evaluation techniques.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.
Congratulations to Ruth Hoffmann and Jonathan Ward who passed their PhD vivas earlier this week. Ruth is pictured with Dr Tom Kelsey (internal examiner) and Jonathan (top left) with his PhD supervisor Dr Adam Barker. We look forward to celebrating their achievements at June Graduation.
The first real test of the CNC Router milling a printed circuit board took place this week and the results so far are very encouraging.
The PCB design is part of a suite of hardware required for a research project. This involves the development of a Science grade Arduino we have called Scienceduino , it will be used to log analogue data with a high degree of accuracy and traceability , in terms of readings and time logging. The picture of the complete PCB shows the complexity and general layout of the components , these will be mostly surface mount. Surface mount technology is being used to help reduce the overall size of the system and to allow automated manufacture.
The microscope webcam picture shows a circular pad which is 1.0mm in diameter , track width of 0.35mm and track spacing of 0.35mm. The copper flakes in the gaps on the PCB will be cleaned away with water and detergent. So all in all this is good news for the School’s ability to manufacture PCB’s for various research projects.
A new CNC Router has just been undergoing its initial testing and calibration procedures. Its purchase was jointly funded by the School and the Research Groups of Professor Al Dearle , Professor Simon Dobson and Dr Miguel Nacenta. The router will be used for the manufacture of printed circuit boards , it can also be used to machine Plastic and Aluminium parts for research and student projects using suitable 3D CAD software such as FreeCAD. All the software used thus far has been Open Source and is as follows LinuxCNC for the machine controller , KiCAD for PCB design , pcb2gcode for the conversion of the Gerber file generated by KiCAD into GCode for the CNC Router. This allows one to manufacture PCBs using the copper isolation method , this is done using the Router cutter to create individual tracks on the blank copper PCB material using the generated GCode of the PCB design.
The image above shows a newly made PCB that has been routed and is also drilled ready for electronic components to be inserted.
