WEBVTT

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here in the studio today we've got project owl who were the winners of the

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2018 call for code and they're pulling back the kimono to show us

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their ducks so ducks are small transmitters that

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allow a huge wi-fi mesh network to be deployed quickly and easily

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now they're not the kind of thing that you would use in your house but they can

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be invaluable during a disaster when cell service or other essential

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communications infrastructure might be

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down so let's take a look at how they work

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while also giving a big thanks to call for code founding partner ibm for

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sponsoring this video

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project owl started as a submission to call for code last year and call for

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code is a global challenge inspiring developers to create sustainable

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technologies to help communities prepare for and respond to natural disasters so

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the team was actually inspired by the floods caused by a hurricane in houston

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and the idea was to create a wi-fi network that could be distributed by

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what is essentially a bunch of rubber ducks so when the flood comes in

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a fleet of these ducts could just be dropped into the water and they would

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just float around and allow users to connect

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to an emergency wi-fi network now

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to be clear the goal was never you know

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like look out at t because we got this

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amazing fast wi-fi like it doesn't even

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give you an internet connection but what it does do is allow people to connect

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with an emergency response center and share crucial information like their

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location if anyone needs medical attention and so on and so forth

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so let's look at how they got this to work

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um this right here is a duck it's a shockingly simple device

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we've got an arduino dev board that's equipped with a wi-fi chip a lora chip

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and an antenna this is the actual housing they won't look like this

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and the way that these work is that in every deployment there's one

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main duck that acts as the primary connection point so that'll maybe be

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located in an emergency response shelter or at a hospital then from there the

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satellite ducts can be spread out around to send messages or relay them back to

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the main duct so the user would connect to the wi-fi

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on the nearest duct to their location and then their messages would be sent

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over lora which is a long-range low-powered transmission standard that

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allows the satellite ducts to maintain their connection from distances that are

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much further than traditional wi-fi

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thing is though even with lora you can't get too far away from the main duck and

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this is where another really cool thing about project owl comes in

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so a bunch of these satellite ducts can actually connect together to form a

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cluster duck creating a kind of mesh wi-fi network so

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if each duck has a range of about 400 meters the distance they can cover adds

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up really fast a dozen might cover a

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small community and as you get more that area just keeps on increasing

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so um why don't we try it out

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charlie here is part of project owl so he's going to turn on the main duck

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which we have over at the end here so just open it up and click it on and

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i'm going to turn on one of our satellite ducts

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so i click this it says mama online and

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then each of these is run off a battery pack that's super simple it's just three

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double a's that'll power it for up to 12 hours and in the future they figure

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these could be powered completely off of solar energy

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all right so we should be in business let's see just how well this is going to

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work in an emergency i fire up my wi-fi here got my screen recording running we

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go ahead and see sos mama emergency

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portal i think if i saw that in an emergency i would

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probably connect to it and boom

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owl emergency network on espanyol you're

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connected to the owl emergency network sending an sos message will send your

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gps location to first responders and emergency message you can add details

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about your emergency and the closest facilities to you are located at

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willowbrook shopping center where'd you get that from you guys just picked something

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okay that is a nearby mall indeed and perhaps a place you know they've got a

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big parking lot that could be set up with tree edge of sorts so i can go ahead i

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can add some details uh first name where are you what's your emergency flood

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landslide trapped building collapse and violence

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um it's really bad we need first aid food

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evacuation financial aid hygiene for sure

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all kinds of good stuff in here we go ahead and send our sos and we can send updates

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as well pretty cool stuff

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of course though this is linus tech tips and a simple little demo like that here

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in the studio is not going to be enough for us we supposedly have enough

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satellite ducts to cover a small community so uh

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let's do it shall we so for our hypothetical example here uh

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some kind of emergency has taken place let's say

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a flood and we have fled to high ground actually it's not even that unrealistic

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fun fact our office is located right adjacent to an enormous flood plain

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so the more you know so basically we're up

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here we're panicked we're scared and we have

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no connectivity whatsoever either because it's been taken out or because

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everybody's spamming it at once and signals are not going through

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so this right here is our main duck and it's connected to the wi-fi right here

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and this is sort of our base of operations for the afternoon so in order

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to cover as much air as possible we've got one of our satellite ducts right

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here that is going to go up and hopefully not be obstructed by any

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buildings or stuff so should we let it go

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yep oh that's that really wants to go

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god

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i'm just going to pop a couple more around the neighborhood to get

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nice coverage of everywhere so on

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mama online and well let's just put it like right there

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i guess

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perfect

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hey

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all right so i've got a bunch of them around the neighborhood has anything popped up yet

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nope look right there oh damn it linus

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survived what the hell does he want

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uh hello oh no way

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burger fries man you're a life saver

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there's no ketchup in here

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now although our example had a bit of silliness to it this is a very serious

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solution to a very real problem and our demo did show how easy it is to create a

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nice big network to bring connectivity to those who might have lost it

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so thanks to support from ibm project owl has actually been able to expand

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this and even do a field test in puerto rico so if a disaster like hurricane

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maria happened again they would be able to get connectivity quickly back to the

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island and there are lots of other potential uses like setting up basic

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networks in places that currently have no cell service whatsoever or even just

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using the lower tracking of the ducts to help find disaster relief supplies once

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all is said and done it is shockingly common for things like tents and

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shelters or even portable toilets to get put down amidst the hubbub and then

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kind of forgotten where exactly they are

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so none of this would have been possible for project owl without the boost that

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they got from call for code so here's the thing guys if you have an

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idea that you think could help communities prepare for respond to and

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recover from natural disasters then submit your solution into the 2019 call

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for code we're gonna have that linked below where the top prize is 200 000

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and additional support from ibm and their partners to make your solution a

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reality so thanks to ibm for sponsoring this video thanks to project owl for

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coming up here and thanks to you guys for watching

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if you guys dislike this video you can hit that button i guess but if you liked

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it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the

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stuff we featured at the link in the video description okay it's more of like

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a community thing i don't know we probably have community managers that watch this channel sure whatever at the

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link in the video description once it's available also down there is our merch

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store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you

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should totally join i don't think the fishing line's going

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to break i don't know you could just give it like another couple hundred feet

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wanna just tie it to the park bench sure okay it's really tight

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wait did it take off yep it's off oh it's it's oh there it is

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oh okay

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um uh well oops

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so that's gonna end up in chilliwack somewhere well let's not cry over spilt

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milk yeah i think we could honestly just cut that whole thing out