• Entry on the DevCSI wiki – http://wiki.2011.dev8d.org/w/Main_Page
• Sign up for a judging panel on the ‘Challenges’ chart on the wall at the back of the Basecamp hall

Good luck!

Among other interesting applications, Kinect has been used to track hand movements to assist blind people, track movements of musicians to pan their audio signals in the correct stereo image, and Ben is currently developing an idea for Cambridge’s Chemistry department to use body movements to control protein growth simulations – many possibilities!

Apparently there are quite a few software components needed to hack the Kinect, and installation sounds quite tricky, but once done libOSC (OpenSound Control) and OSCeleton can be used to map body frames to generate depth information and place limbs in 3D space, ready to control whatever you want.

Later today Ben (and his lovely assistant) will be demonstrating how to control the Ardrone by stretching your arms out and pretending to be an aeroplane

Today’s programme again includes a series of Lightning Talks and Ask: panel sessions, as well as more Arduino hacking workshops and a look at hacking the Kinect interface for controlling (among other things) an Ardrone flying machine!

Loads of other sessions are running today throughout the venue, covering everything from CSS to Apache, more Molly and Dexy, as well as ongoing challenges from yesterday. There has been a buzz of busy coding… deadline 2pm

A practical demonstration of his experience applied to problem solving, focusing on particular challenges within his example widgets and sites.

Ana talked about her Dexy project – http://dexy.it – a tool for automating documentation.

Owen covered the institutional implementations of Lucero linked data. Owen is looking at linked data as a way of managing and linking everything from course materials and descriptions to buildings information and research projects. Some interesting examples from a recent research project from the OU Arts Faculty, segued to an overview of how resources like Wikipedia can be used to enrich this as linked data, enabling search and reuse of the OU’s information and data.

A brilliant way to get a concentrated information dump on a new subject.

Iona Makiola and Lee Scott are at Dev8D for the second year, putting into practice and showing the results of skills learnt at last year’s event. Lee has brought a mini version of his larger laser harp – an Arduino-based device using off-the-shelf components to provide 8 interruptible beams, giving 8 MIDI triggers which he uses to control Ableton Live, but could be used to trigger or control many many different types of device:

Lee and Iona have come to Dev8D from Birmingham City University both to pick up more knowledge, but also to share some of their experiences and successes. While Lee concentrates on the technology, Iona’s approach is more chaotic – applying technology in ways it’s not designed for, and pushing its creative limits. She doesn’t read the instructions.

Making little synthesisers out of Arduino processors connected up to light sensors and speakers are some avid experimenters controlling pitch with light sources – hands and torches: results are like little digital theremins:

Next stop – Jean Michel Jarre!

• Mobile Campus assistant for iPhone (developed by my colleagues at the ILRT!) gets honourable mentio, and similar mobile apps running at Oxford
• Tech: Django and Python version compatibility
• Device compatibility – Android, Blackberry, iOS
• Webkit dominance
• Kindle compatibility
• CSS3 and html code

These Ask: sessions are certainly fast moving and animated! Moving on to more general discussion of the mobile platform…

What can’t you do on a mobile device is a key question – these devices change everything, as stressed at Google Think recently.

Panel discussions are 30 minute Q&A morning sessions focused on specific topics – High Performance Computing, Mobile Web, Linked Data, Preservation Tools and Documentation covered today.

There are also some challenges posed by some of the participants and sponsors – JISC, Molly, Elsevier among others – from specific coding, programming, metadata etc challenges, to very open ‘make a contribution to our project’.

Challenges are open to all, with plenty of shiny prizes!

Chris is wrapping up the intro in his official role as ‘Bouncy Dev8D Enthusiast’ with entreaties to interact and collaborate, and make the most of the time here. Message received.