Demonstrations

Humanizing Technology with VR

We’ve been using VR in the classroom over at the ACE Project Space to help students improve their presentation skills. Using this tool along with encouragement from our instructors, students have gone from terrified to terrific in less than a term. Take a test drive and see for yourself the difference VR makes!

Simplifying Project Management with Ralphware

With the high number and variety of industry projects entering the ACE Project Space every term, our resident project space instructor, Ralph Dueck, found a need to provide a quick, simple, effective, and repeatable way of managing agile projects using the Scrum methodology with students and their clients. See how Ralphware has been used effectively over the past two years to keep students on track in a fast-moving project-based environment.

Using Online Learning to Create Mentorship Opportunities

The competency-based education (CBE) model has been used at the ACE project Space to provide students with opportunities to develop and prove their skills. The focus is less on lectures and more on experiential education and mentorship. Instructors in Applied Computer Education are updating their courses to enable their course content to be taught in online and blended learning formats. Learn how you can incorporate online learning in the classroom while freeing up time for providing in-class mentorship opportunities.

About the Conference

DisruptED Future is a two-day conference where the local tech industry and educational institutions meet to inspire the next generation of innovators. The conference is being held at the RBC Convention Centre located at 375 York Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Pauline Gerard, Deputy Director, IISD-ELA and Corporate Secretary, talked to our BIT, BTM, InfoSec, and PTEC students about the challenges the IISD is working to resolve in protecting and cleaning up our fresh water resources and species right here in Manitoba. Lake Winnipeg, which is the 11^th largest fresh water lake in the world, is under threat due to excessive pollutants entering the watershed. The lake also serves as the sole source of potable water for many northern communities and supplies a significant commercial fishing stock. Gerard called for students’ help in assisting the organization in signing up to develop technology-backed ideas and solutions to stop further degradation of our precious fresh water resources.

Pauline Gerard, Deputy Director, IISD-ELA and Corporate Secretary describes AquaHacking

Gerard guided students through the process of developing sustainable ideas by working on a common challenge affecting the agriculture sector today: providing agriculture producers with cost-effective solutions for managing drainage and the climate. The students were split into groups to discuss ideas around how the problem could be solved. One student from each group shared their idea to the audience. Ideas involved Internet-connected sensors, apps, and more.

The five challenges the IISD is working on for Lake Winnipeg include:

• Providing agricultural producers with cost-effective solutions for water and land management
• Assessing fish populations and health using non-invasive techniques
• Preventing microplastics from entering the lake
• Enabling local testing of drinking water quality in remote northern communities
• Financing sustainable development initiatives by connecting individual and group funding sources

The AquaHacking Challenge is an 8-month long competition for the best ideas, connecting teams of innovative people with mentors from industry and workshops to create innovative and sustainable solutions. Technology-minded youth between the ages of 18 and 35 are encouraged to register to be part of a solution team for this competition, which starts in February with winners declared in October. Winners will receive part of a $50,000 prize pool to fund further development of their solutions.

To learn more about the AquaHacking 2020 Challenge for Lake Winnipeg and how to participate, visit https://bit.ly/HackLakeWpg or stop by the IISD booth on January 31^st during the DisruptED Conference at the RBC Convention Centre.

ProCS came to the ACE Project Space with a vision to provide builders with a customized building information modeling (BIM) solution available from anywhere around the world that employees can use to work on and discuss building designs. The BIT and BTM students assigned to the project were able to transform the solution concept into a tangible product suitable for demonstration purposes.

Optimizing performance to build a quality product

The BIM project started last term at the ACE Project Space with a working demo on a local machine. The next stage was to deploy the solution to a cloud provider that client companies and their employees could access online.  The students learned how to test online performance and use their teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills to improve the BIM solution’s overall performance.

Deliverables

The ProCS team completed the following deliverables for the project during the fall term at the ACE Project Space:

• Online BIM viewer
• Administration page
• Bug fixes

What our students are saying

“Working with the team for this project, my duties revolved around the role of a Project Manager. Learning the way how the industry works was quite a new experience for me. I learned being professional and punctual. I learned how to keep up with targets and deadline and prioritizing the tasks according to the requirements of the client. Doing standup meeting, discussing the problems being faced by the team members and sorting them out by involving the client and project sponsor into it were some of the daily done tasks by me. Another important thing that I learned from the experience working here was how communication is the key to solving any problem being faced by any team member.” – Dilraj Marwah

“Working as a front-end developer in the BIM project, I got to learn and experience working with other team members and how the joint efforts of the team members get the project to the end point as the client wants it to be. To work as a front-end developer, I learned working using react and python languages. Also at parts of the project, I had to go and work on the back end to develop some of the functionalities that the client wanted to add to the viewer and learning how to work on code that has already been developed, analyzing, understanding it and working with the other back end developer was quite a great learning experience.” – Owen Beatty

Technologies used

• JavaScript
• React
• Python
• Django
• MongoDB
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Brent Wennekes, Director of Business Development (Manitoba) at Mitacs, described how their Accelerate program pairs entrepreneurs and companies working across all sectors of the economy with student research opportunities. Mr. Wennekes provided details about the funding model and the application process, which include a $7,500 contribution from a business in exchange for a $15,000 research award from Mitacs to support a research student intern for four months. Mitacs funding has spearheaded many of the four-month projects delivered at the ACE Project Space.

Mitacs funding recipient and CEO of ioAirFlow, Matt Schaubroeck, described his experience of having leveraged Mitacs funding while working a full-time job to kickstart his new venture. Mr. Schaubroek’s company is building an AI-supported solution using a network of temperature sensors to provide building owners and tenants with the data they need to increase energy efficiency. The research student embedded at the ACE Project Space as part of the ioAirFlow project was integral in building a marketable solution that won stage time at the Falling Walls Lab pitch contest in Berlin.

Stephen Lawrence, ACE Project Space Coordinator, shared the opportunity and process that lend to entrepreneurs the application development skills of fourth term students at the ACE Project Space with support from Mitacs. Mr. Lawrence described how the mutually beneficial relationship provides students with valuable real life project experience while providing entrepreneurs with the ability to bring their ideas to fruition.

To learn more about how to bring your business ideas to life at the ACE Project Space, please contact Stephen Lawrence, ACE Project Space Coordinator or visit our ACE Project Space web site.

Project Term: Winter 2019

Applied Computer Education and the Creative Arts departments at Red River College formed a special collaboration to create a video game that showcases how the artistic and technical skills students are developing can be combined to create a video game. BIT, BTM, and Digital Media Design (DMD) students worked together to create Rusty Steam, a 3D side-scroller game prototype. DMD prepared the creative assets for the game while the BIT/BTM students incorporated the assets to develop the game.

Developing the game

The main objective of the project was to develop a playable video game to be delivered for PC in collaboration with the Digital Media Design program.

The students successfully developed a fully functional prototype of a video game using the Unreal Engine 4 game engine. To build the game under tight constraints, the team followed the Agile methodology using story maps and Kanban to identify and manage the game scope.

The project was divided into one-week iterations or sprints. Since the students had no prior knowledge of how to use Unreal Engine, the first few sprints were dedicated to learning how to use the engine, after which the students transitioned into actual prototype development.

What our students are saying

Lessons learned: “Proper Communication with team members, using Unreal Engine 4 as a game development tool, the workflow of how games are made (from planning the mechanics to building the prototype to show off what it can do), and the Agile Process, such as daily standups and the use of the kanban board.” – Frederick Bayona

Lessons learned: “Agile methodology, team management with different backgrounds and experience, communication between different teams, dynamics of the game development industry, game development tools and processes, such as small iterations, cross-functional teams and deadlines.” – Artur Nakashima

Technologies used

• Unreal Engine 4
• Visual Studio 2017 C++
• Perforce (Source Control)
• Photoshop CC 2018

Jumping over lava pit

Walking through chamber

Project Term: Winter 2018

As a second iteration through the ACE Project Space, the Tooliaba project sought to create more functionality for this sharing economy style service website. Tooliaba’s goal is to satisfy a niche of users who can rent the hardware tools they own out to others and also rent tools they don’t have.

The driving reason behind the Tooliaba project is that many people have tools that go largely unused, perhaps they purchased them for a one-time do-it-yourself project. Whatever the reason, tools are expensive to purchase. As a tool owner, why not recuperate some of the purchase costs? As a renter, you may only need a tool for a day and neither want to purchase the tool or prefer to put the cost of renting a tool into your neighbor’s pocket instead of a big box store’s rental service. The Tooliaba site seeks to connect these users together.

Our students took on a number of tasks during this project. Working with an existing codebase, they familiarized themselves with the existing solution and worked on fixing existing bugs in the website and implementing a new redesign of the website including making the site responsive. It is worth mentioning, that this project benefitted from the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) expertise from a team of Creative Arts students. Collaborations like this really help our students realize the value of UI/UX on technology projects and see how they bring value to each other’s roles. Thank you to Creative Arts for this opportunity.

Our students also developed a series of new features for the site functionality. A new messaging system lets users connect with each other and clarify ambiguities, a new payment procedure facilitates payment processing through the website. They also fashioned a request, accept, and denial system for users to confirm rental requests.

For the admins, our team created a back-end portal where administrators can edit user roles. The Tooliaba site is also now complete with a fully functional WYSIWYG blog and an FAQ page.

Technologies used: Mailgun, CodeIgniter, jQuery, Visio, Balsamiq, Bootstrap

Tooliaba site Messages Page

Tooliaba site Tool Rental Page

Tooliaba site Tool Search Page

Project Term: Winter 2018

The Building Information Modeling (BIM) project was sponsored by one of our own ACE instructors, where students worked with an experimental building at our RRC Notre Dame Campus to explore enhancing building sustainability and reducing waste.

Building Information Modeling itself is the process of managing digital models of physical buildings, which can be used to plan, design, and operate facilities.

Compared to other building life-cycle phases, the operation and maintenance (O&M) phase of a building’s life has higher costs associated with it than other life-cycle phases. This is often a result of information management and accessibility hurdles that hamper the efficient operation of facilities. Findings from the NIST indicate that every year, $15 Billion in losses occur as a result of inefficient systems. Not to mention that maintaining an accurate facility model or having architectural involvement over minor changes to buildings costs significant money.

The BIM project is a visualization-based process that allows facility managers to maintain buildings in cost effective and timely efficient manner. This platform integrates BIM software like Revit and performance Measuring and Monitoring (M&M) systems for enhancing building sustainability and reducing waste. Using this platform, facility managers can maintain an accurate model of their facility without the involvement of architects for every minor change.

Our students used Revit software to visualize an display a 3D model of their experimental facility into a web application. Different sensors exist within the experimental facility, including: Building Structural Health (BSH) monitoring sensors; Building Energy Consumption (BEC) meters; and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) M&M systems. The team also made use of outdoor environmental data being tracked using third-party systems like Environment Canada and Weather Underground. The experimental facility itself is equipped with over 60 sensors recording live data.

To acquire current data from BSH sensors, the raw data was uploaded to vendors server and processes data was downloaded as an XML file. For BEC consumption meters, consumption data produced from commercial devices were recorded directly on a computer in the experimental facility and formatted into an XML file. As there was no web API available to transfer this data, the students developed a program to transfer the XML file to a cloud platform. For indoor environment data, readings from the first system are downloaded by web API provided by vendor; as radon M&M systems had no web API, another linkage program was developed to copy and transfer readings to host. The developed prototype is used to demonstrate how the live data from different M&M systems can be integrated into BIM Model of Experimental House.

Our students were able to represent live sensor data on a 3D model of the experimental facility through an online web application. They chose to present the information through an online application so that visiting users don’t require very powerful computers to get the most out of this BIM system.

Many different types of data can be viewed in a single web page, presenting up-to-date and accurate information that can be used to diagnose and assess a building’s performance. At the end of this project, there were plans to expand the prototype to be used in the new Skilled Trades and Technology Centre at Red River College’s Notre Dame Campus, making it a living lab and innovation hub for future RRC students.

The team would like to thank the Paul Charette-Manitoba applied Research Endowment and the office of Research Partnerships.

BIM Site Login Page

BIM Model page with sensor graph

This project presents its own challenges, not only is EEG data notoriously difficult to interpret, but there are more than 20 different signals that vary over time in many different ways.

By using machine learning algorithms on the EEG data, we intend to be able to predict feelings from the EEG data. In order to do so, much work must be done wading through the data and deciding which parts of the data are relevant to predicting feelings. Different ways of transforming the data, and summarizing the data must be tried before a machine learning algorithm can be used to make predictions.

The knowledge gained by building a successful algorithm could be used to more accurately gage a person’s feelings: using a computer; watching a movie; or reacting to commercials. This may have practical applications in consumer focus groups or even in the field of psychiatry.

To find out more about DEAP, their dataset can be found at the following link: http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/mmv/datasets/deap/

Project Term: Winter 2018

A collaborative project between the 3D Computer Graphics program and the ACE Project Space, this project saw an intersection of creative and technical students collaborating on creating a full-featured virtual reality experience.

The project sponsors were instructors of the 3D Computer Graphics program at Red River College in the department of Creative Arts – their students, mostly graduates of the Digital Media Design program, designed and built out creative assets to support the project.

The opportunity for ACE Project Space to collaborate with the Creative Arts came about serendipitously. Originally, the instructors at Creative Arts reached out to some instructors in Business Information Technology (BIT) to assemble a team of volunteer BIT students to help out the 3D students with some visual coding. While there was a fair amount of interest from BIT students, there was some initial struggle to get all of the players organized.

Partway into the Winter 2018 term, a unique opportunity presented itself from the ACE Project Space. A different project at the ACE Project Space had been put on hold, a mutual decision amongst all stakeholders. It was by chance that some folks at the ACE Project Space were already involved with the Escape Room project, so the team of 3 BIT students and one BTM student were available to work on the Escape Room project instead.

Everybody was very excited about the project. A small team of BIT instructors was eager to help the project team pick up new knowledge – from learning Blueprints Visual Coding to thinking about the mechanics and design of Escape Room games. One of our BIT instructors happened to co-own one of Winnipeg’s escape rooms and helped the students think about the logic involved with the project.

Our ACE Project Space Students worked collaboratively with the 3D team in designing the puzzles within all 4 escape room scenarios. Gameplay is intended for 4 players at a time, where one of the players is immersed in the VR world.

The scenario: An RRC instructor is lost in time, it is up to the 4 players to solve the escape room puzzles to find the instructor. Each player has a turn at ‘travelling in time’ with the aid of the VR headset to solve 4 puzzles – in 4 different classrooms – each tied to a different scenario in time. The team of 4 players has to work together, using clues from both the physical world of the classroom and the VR game.

The puzzles for each level/classroom are a different experience. The team visits 4 different areas: a Pirate Ship, an Alchemy Lab, a Dystopian Future, and a Cyberpunk Sky Bar.

Our students were able to take the models and assets that the 3D students developed. They had to learn from the basics of different object interactions and event handling. They were able to breathe life into the game, adding in interactions, controls, and controlling behaviours. It was an interesting experience for the students to use a different kind of version control on this project.

Due to the massive nature of creative projects and the sheer number of creative assets, one cannot simply use a tool like Git for version control – our students learned to work collaboratively with the 3D students in sharing up-to-date assets using Perforce for version control.

They also had to shift their thinking when it came to programming. Working with a 3D environment was rather different from anything our students had experienced in the BIT curriculum.

The 3D instructors showcased the final project throughout the Spring of 2018 on campus.

Technologies used: Unreal Engine, Blueprints, Perforce, Photoshop, Maya

Read more about this project on The Projector’s site:

RRC students make the virtual a reality

Stills from the game:

VR Escape Room Still – Alchemist’s Lab

VR Escape Room Still – Cyberpunk Bar

VR Escape Room Still – Pirate Ship

VR Escape Room Still – Dystopian Future

VR Escape Room Still – Dystopian Future (Engine)

Watch some of the playthrough here: