Margherita

Inspiration

On 30th Nov. 2015 Chennai was hit by a massive flood which left thousands of people stranded. The rescue operator were helpless as these floods had brought down the telephone towers.

What it does

The prototype for this hachathon helps in connecting with the relief help groups using LoRa technology. LoRa is a low power technology which has a range of 21 km and can work without the use of any transmitting tower.

How we built it

The LoRa module was integrated with the Raspberry Pi to communicate with the wireless module. The Raspberry Pi had had WiPi dongle to help connect the android phone (acting as a receiver) to communicate over WiFi. On the transmit-ion end the keyboard was interfaced with the Raspberry Pi to send data in the form on text. Two Raspberry Pi with onboard LoRa module were used (one acting as a receiver and the other as a transmitter)

Challenges we ran into

The team had no prior experience with sending/receiving UDP packets using C++. Custom code had to be self written for the hack.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In such a short period of time the team collectively was able to establish a connection between one user and the other sitting at a distance of 10km across the city.

What we learned

The idea is only 5 percent of the entire project. Implementing it in the correct manner is what makes a difference.

What's next for Teli-Help : Connecting people during disasters

We are planning on building the portable module which could be integrated with any android phone and send GPS locations with their need. Transforming it into a product and making a business out of it will be another challenge.