COMPETITION / THAILAND ICT CONTEST FESTIVAL 2007

ICT event attracts 1,400 budding scientists across the country

SASIWIMON BOONRUANG

The National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) recently staged Thailand ICT Contest Festival 2007, which attracted over 1,400 science and computer projects created by students from 300 academic institutes nationwide.

The festival introduced a number of niche categories, such as the National Software Contest, Young Scientist Competition 2007, Electronics Circuit Contest and Computer Controller and Network Service category.

Following are three of the projects judged as being among the best.

RFID box with Wireless LAN capability was developed by Titi Pipatthanawong, a fourth-year engineering student from Kasetsart University. It won first prize in the application category for university students.

The device can be used to secure a door and uses a card reader to send an alarm when a door has not been properly shut. The administrator can also monitor the data record for when people go in and out, and cancel the rights of RFID card holders if necessary. The card can also be reconfigured via a web interface.

"This is a further development from an older version that needed a cable linking to the controller," Titi said, explaining that in the past records could not be recorded.

He said this system is more convenient for the administrator as they can control it remotely and wirelessly.

The application has already been used to control the entrance to the Intelligent Wireless Network Group (IWING) lab of Kasetsart University and is expected to be further put to use around the campus.

"The student cards have been already embedded with an RFID chip," the developer noted.

Input at the Speed of Thought is a Thai OCR (optical character recognition) program by Natt Piyapramote, a Matayom 6 student from Sarasitpittayalai School. It won first prize in the application category for students.

Last year the 18-year-old student from Rachaburi province won the first prize of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF 2006) for his Image Binarisation Software project.

Natt explained that this year's project helps users to deal with documents more efficiently as they don't spend as much time editing text.

"With a digital camera and the software program, user can do document imaging easily and fast without a scanner," he said, pointing out that scanners take time to record each image.

The Input at the Speed of Thought program receives an image from the digital camera and adjusts the text image so that it can be printed or filed.

The program claims 90 percent accuracy for Thai language, and the young developer is now spending his free time improving the software for greater accuracy in both Thai and English.

"Braille Music - XML Translation" is a project from a female team of fourth-year computer engineering students at Prince of Songkla University. The team of Aphisada Inthasara, Ladawal Meepansane and Darika Maneechai won the award for a development project for people with disabilities.

The three girls realised that blind people have difficulty when it comes to dealing with musical notes, so used existing technology to improve things.

"Our project builds on work from the Braille and Assistive Technology research group of the university, which has developed software and hardware for people with disabilities that enables them to use new technologies," Ladawal said.

The Braille Music - XML Translation software transforms standard musical notes into Braille and means that users no longer have to rely on expensive software.

"This software is more promising than the foreign ones as it has an option of Thai language," she explained.

The team applied the C++ language, a C complier and Windows XP operating system to run a program called TaBazarll to create a Music XML file. The hardware comprised two PCs and a USB MIDI keyboard controller.

Ladawal noted that the requirements for the project actually came from a research project from Rachasuda College.

Restaurant Manager won a consolation prize and was developed by Puriphop Srima, a Matayom 5 and Komkrit Purisat, a Matayom 3 student, both from Assumption Ubon Ratchathani School.

The software comprises a server and client. The server runs four key functions: a staff database, users accounts, profit/loss analysis, and Menu record. The client comprises cashier, PDA, menu order and record, and a menu display for the kitchen.

"My parents run a restaurant business and we had a problem in managing the service flow in the restaurant," Puriphop said, adding that though some restaurants have used gadgets to offer a better service, they still had many problems, particularly in the kitchen and the order queue.

Restaurant manager was developed to tackle such problems.

The program has already been tested in the "Kanom Sen" restaurant, a Thai style rice noodle shop, said Komkrit.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Sunday April 08, 2007