Google Cloud Vision API to detect vehicle plate number

This is why every organization engages artificial intelligence & machine learning. Once they have an “extensively trained” model that has a very good performance, they start selling it. Example: I tried Google Vision API to detect vehicle plates. The accuracy is amazing! Put many CCTVs on the roads, feed the image streams, predict the plate … Read moreGoogle Cloud Vision API to detect vehicle plate number

InfluxDB compression

I’m always amazed at how people improve data storing technique, e.g., Influxdb, a time-series NoSQL database, that not only responds to a query very fast (even aggregation in a long time range) but also draws a substantially less amount of storage space. My smart home project, which collects almost 200 measurement points every 10 second, … Read moreInfluxDB compression

Combining neural network and GPU in Google Cloud Platform

Imagine we want to recognize/identify an object in the images streamed from camera feeds (such as to recognize thief/suspect at the immigration checkpoint, airports, stations, etc.). To do that, the convolutional neural network (CNN) is currently the most used method. Such popular CNN architectures such as LeNet, AlexNet, VGG, GoogLeNet, ResNet, YOLO, etc. could be … Read moreCombining neural network and GPU in Google Cloud Platform

Mailbox checker

As an online shopper, I need to regularly check my mailbox, 5 floors separated from home. It is really annoying to check whether a new delivery arrives. I came out with this mailbox checker solution that should draw low power (less frequent battery replacement, >6 months) and small (portable). To detect mailbox door activity, I … Read moreMailbox checker

Syncsort DMX-h & IBM SPSS Modeler

Two other popular data processing platform in the IT world are explored, i.e., DMX-h and SPSS Modeler. 1) DMX-h I was an extensive user of this beast software in 2009-2012. It is an amazing ETL platform, I used to process terabytes of chunked files which was completed in a short time (compared to a relational … Read moreSyncsort DMX-h & IBM SPSS Modeler

My first experiment with Zigbee

Instead of buying an expensive and proprietary Zigbee gateway, I bought a Zigbee sniffer that could be “changed” to be a universal gateway (https://lnkd.in/dj9HwBF). The cheapest Zigbee device I could play with is the Ikea Tradfri lamp (~7 euro). But it’s more worth than buying a full set of Ikea smart lighting (cost > 25 … Read moreMy first experiment with Zigbee

Zwave+ vs. WiFi-based IoT devices

There are at least 4 competing IoT connectivity technologies that have already numerous rolled-out products in the market, i.e., RF-433 MHz, WiFi (ESP8266-based devices), Zigbee, and Zwave+. The first two have abundant cheap products, the other two have limited vendor-independent commercial products. I saw a lot of Zigbee & Zwave vendor-locked devices at IoT Expo … Read moreZwave+ vs. WiFi-based IoT devices

Data science & ML (commercial) tools: their competitive landscape

In the last post, I mentioned the Gartner’s magic quadrant as well as the competitive landscape of BI products. KDnuggets covers the data science & ML products in their article (https://bit.ly/2Pococi). Some interesting observations: 1) KNIME & Mathworks increases their completeness of vision in the last 3 years. KDNuggets quotes KNIME “With a wealth of … Read moreData science & ML (commercial) tools: their competitive landscape

Competition landscape of business intelligence products

Gartner’s magic quadrant is a well-known benchmark to check current competitive standing of a certain IT product. The report is released every year. Gartner maps the “ability to execute” on the y-axis and the “completeness of vision” on the x-axis. Then, they made 4 categories (a quadrant) based on their position, i.e., 1) Leaders (High … Read moreCompetition landscape of business intelligence products

Precision agriculture for a rural area with limited connectivity

Among many hyped agriculture technologies under industry 4.0 umbrella I’ve ever seen, this Microsoft solution, namely FarmBeats, appropriately addresses Indonesia’s geographical challenges. As a solution architect, what I like the most from the presentation is that how they synthesized the problem and designed a solution for it.Here are the summaries of the challenges:1) limited connectivity … Read morePrecision agriculture for a rural area with limited connectivity