here in the studio today we've got project owl who were the winners of the
2018 call for code and they're pulling back the kimono to show us
their ducks so ducks are small transmitters that
allow a huge wi-fi mesh network to be deployed quickly and easily
now they're not the kind of thing that you would use in your house but they can
be invaluable during a disaster when cell service or other essential
communications infrastructure might be
down so let's take a look at how they work
while also giving a big thanks to call for code founding partner ibm for
sponsoring this video
project owl started as a submission to call for code last year and call for
code is a global challenge inspiring developers to create sustainable
technologies to help communities prepare for and respond to natural disasters so
the team was actually inspired by the floods caused by a hurricane in houston
and the idea was to create a wi-fi network that could be distributed by
what is essentially a bunch of rubber ducks so when the flood comes in
a fleet of these ducts could just be dropped into the water and they would
just float around and allow users to connect
to an emergency wi-fi network now
to be clear the goal was never you know
like look out at t because we got this
amazing fast wi-fi like it doesn't even
give you an internet connection but what it does do is allow people to connect
with an emergency response center and share crucial information like their
location if anyone needs medical attention and so on and so forth
so let's look at how they got this to work
um this right here is a duck it's a shockingly simple device
we've got an arduino dev board that's equipped with a wi-fi chip a lora chip
and an antenna this is the actual housing they won't look like this
and the way that these work is that in every deployment there's one
main duck that acts as the primary connection point so that'll maybe be
located in an emergency response shelter or at a hospital then from there the
satellite ducts can be spread out around to send messages or relay them back to
the main duct so the user would connect to the wi-fi
on the nearest duct to their location and then their messages would be sent
over lora which is a long-range low-powered transmission standard that
allows the satellite ducts to maintain their connection from distances that are
much further than traditional wi-fi
thing is though even with lora you can't get too far away from the main duck and
this is where another really cool thing about project owl comes in
so a bunch of these satellite ducts can actually connect together to form a
cluster duck creating a kind of mesh wi-fi network so
if each duck has a range of about 400 meters the distance they can cover adds
up really fast a dozen might cover a
small community and as you get more that area just keeps on increasing
so um why don't we try it out
charlie here is part of project owl so he's going to turn on the main duck
which we have over at the end here so just open it up and click it on and
i'm going to turn on one of our satellite ducts
so i click this it says mama online and
then each of these is run off a battery pack that's super simple it's just three
double a's that'll power it for up to 12 hours and in the future they figure
these could be powered completely off of solar energy
all right so we should be in business let's see just how well this is going to
work in an emergency i fire up my wi-fi here got my screen recording running we
go ahead and see sos mama emergency
portal i think if i saw that in an emergency i would
probably connect to it and boom
owl emergency network on espanyol you're
connected to the owl emergency network sending an sos message will send your
gps location to first responders and emergency message you can add details
about your emergency and the closest facilities to you are located at
willowbrook shopping center where'd you get that from you guys just picked something
okay that is a nearby mall indeed and perhaps a place you know they've got a
big parking lot that could be set up with tree edge of sorts so i can go ahead i
can add some details uh first name where are you what's your emergency flood
landslide trapped building collapse and violence
um it's really bad we need first aid food
evacuation financial aid hygiene for sure
all kinds of good stuff in here we go ahead and send our sos and we can send updates
as well pretty cool stuff
of course though this is linus tech tips and a simple little demo like that here
in the studio is not going to be enough for us we supposedly have enough
satellite ducts to cover a small community so uh
let's do it shall we so for our hypothetical example here uh
some kind of emergency has taken place let's say
a flood and we have fled to high ground actually it's not even that unrealistic
fun fact our office is located right adjacent to an enormous flood plain
so the more you know so basically we're up
here we're panicked we're scared and we have
no connectivity whatsoever either because it's been taken out or because
everybody's spamming it at once and signals are not going through
so this right here is our main duck and it's connected to the wi-fi right here
and this is sort of our base of operations for the afternoon so in order
to cover as much air as possible we've got one of our satellite ducts right
here that is going to go up and hopefully not be obstructed by any
buildings or stuff so should we let it go
yep oh that's that really wants to go
god
i'm just going to pop a couple more around the neighborhood to get
nice coverage of everywhere so on
mama online and well let's just put it like right there
i guess
perfect
hey
all right so i've got a bunch of them around the neighborhood has anything popped up yet
nope look right there oh damn it linus
survived what the hell does he want
uh hello oh no way
burger fries man you're a life saver
there's no ketchup in here
now although our example had a bit of silliness to it this is a very serious
solution to a very real problem and our demo did show how easy it is to create a
nice big network to bring connectivity to those who might have lost it
so thanks to support from ibm project owl has actually been able to expand
this and even do a field test in puerto rico so if a disaster like hurricane
maria happened again they would be able to get connectivity quickly back to the
island and there are lots of other potential uses like setting up basic
networks in places that currently have no cell service whatsoever or even just
using the lower tracking of the ducts to help find disaster relief supplies once
all is said and done it is shockingly common for things like tents and
shelters or even portable toilets to get put down amidst the hubbub and then
kind of forgotten where exactly they are
so none of this would have been possible for project owl without the boost that
they got from call for code so here's the thing guys if you have an
idea that you think could help communities prepare for respond to and
recover from natural disasters then submit your solution into the 2019 call
for code we're gonna have that linked below where the top prize is 200 000
and additional support from ibm and their partners to make your solution a
reality so thanks to ibm for sponsoring this video thanks to project owl for
coming up here and thanks to you guys for watching
if you guys dislike this video you can hit that button i guess but if you liked
it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the
stuff we featured at the link in the video description okay it's more of like
a community thing i don't know we probably have community managers that watch this channel sure whatever at the
link in the video description once it's available also down there is our merch
store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you
should totally join i don't think the fishing line's going
to break i don't know you could just give it like another couple hundred feet
wanna just tie it to the park bench sure okay it's really tight
wait did it take off yep it's off oh it's it's oh there it is
oh okay
um uh well oops
so that's gonna end up in chilliwack somewhere well let's not cry over spilt
milk yeah i think we could honestly just cut that whole thing out