[OpenRelief Developer] Welcome from Shane

[Shane Coughlan]

Dear Andrew, Daniel, Lars and Rob

Welcome to the OpenRelief list for discussions around development. We will work on two things in this list.

One is the development of hardware-based modules and transport systems that underpin the delivery of OpenRelief solutions. This ranges from getting a submersion detector working through to refining the airframes and control systems of drones.  For the moment we will be focused on getting a set of modules ready that can be deployed with or without UAV transport systems in a disaster situation. Our goal is to have an earthquake detector, a submersion detector, a radiation detector, a weather station and a radio transmitter ready for a formal launch of this project in June, and they will be accompanied by two off-the-shelf drones which can be used as test platforms and the basis of our own transportation platforms going forwards. The designs for all our hardware will be hosted on SolderPad:
http://solderpad.com/openrelief

The other thing we will cover is the software needed to make all this hardware useful in the real world. Some of this stuff already exists, such as the UAV control software for autopilots or the Sahana Eden disaster management system that we should make sure all our solutions can sync with for GIS, but other technology will be developed in-house. For example, Dan Bell - an expert in OpenCV - is working on smoke detection, road detection and people detection for the UAVs so that they can be more useful in the air. All of our original software will be hosted on Gitorious:
https://gitorious.org/openrelief

There is another mailing list where outreach around this project is covered - outreach at openrelief.org - and I can add you to that list if you want. However, while this list will focus largely on hardware and relatively low-level functions for now, the other list will focus on the user-facing side of things.  It will be explaining the concepts behind OpenRelief (PR) and designing the experience people have with the solutions we are developing (UX). As we gradually intersect we can cross-post between lists, and perhaps eventually shift UX over here too - it really depends on what works best in keeping traffic for each expert low and focused.

Thank you again for expressing your interest and willingness to contribute to this project.  Your help will be invaluable in turning some good ideas into some great solutions. 

I'm going to hand over to Karl here on the development side. Karl, perhaps you could run people through some of the ideas you had regarding how the modules could largely be made from Arduino-based technology?

As a way of a taster, I have a few notes from a previous overview discussion. I will send them in another mail.

Regards

Shane