1. What is International Space Apps Challenge?

The International Space Apps Challenge is an international mass collaboration focused on space exploration that takes place over 48-hours in cities around the world. The event embraces collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing relevant open-source solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in space. This is the fifth time it is being organized worldwide. This year there will around 20-30 challenges on Earth Theme in five challenge categories: Earth and us, Ideate and Create, Planetary Blues, Warning Danger Ahead, Ecological Neighbourhood. NASA is leading this global collaboration along with a number of government collaborators and around 200 local organizing teams across the globe.

  1.  NASA’s International Space Apps Challenges in Kathmandu

Mercycorps Nepal and The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), under the framework of SERVIR Hindu Kush-Himalaya, bring you International Space Apps Challenge 2017 in Kathmandu for the fifth time facilitated by Robotics Association of Nepal[RAN] and  Nepal Engineers’ Association supported by Young Innovations Pvt. Ltd and Kathmandu Living Labs and others.
This year Robotics Association of Nepal(RAN) will be organizing 5th International Nasa Space app challenge here with the same vision and objective and take the local solution developed during the challenge to the international stage . RAN has been supporting YIPL for successful conduction of NASA Space App through mentorship to the participants, promotion of the event to the engineering community. RAN believe this year NASA space will be more impactful through more number of local solution as well as global challenge. We are targeting to win the international space app challenge as well.

  1. Objective of organizing Space Apps Challenge in Kathmandu

RAN have decided to organize 2017 edition of Space Apps Challenge based on the community RAN has developed so far in this past 7 years and positive feedback and support  we receive from last year organizer Young innovation Pvt. Ltd themselves. The way participants had worked together in different teams to compete for global challenges, bringing in perspectives and insight from the local level was an experience NASA space app organizer can share proudly. This also gives enough room for organizing such events regularly and at a larger scale so that we can inspire a bigger crowd to participate in an international event such as this one.
At the same time, we have observed that these events are extremely important in bringing stakeholders from different sectors to work on issues that matter to people in our context.
Following the theme of Space Apps Challenge, we see a great prospect in this year challenge of allowing participants to work on various local issues that can perhaps be continued by relevant agencies even after the event. We believe that this would open opportunities for participants to create local apps with which they can benefit from along with the agencies and public. We also want to take this event as an opportunity to link young students and professionals with electronics and computing background to establish linkages with technologists, environmentalists, use data that can be made available and come up with prototypes of applications that can be scaled up.

  1. What are the challenges that this year’s event will focus on ?

There will be different challenges put forward Earth and us, Ideate and Create, Planetary Blues, Warning Danger Ahead, Ecological Neighbourhood. The challenges will be published right before the hackathon. In addition to these challenges, local challenges will be developed for the participants in collaboration with ICIMOD and Mercycorps. Those challenges will be accompanied by necessary data and will be defined in collaboration with our partner organizations and network. Participants taking up the local challenge will not be able to take part in the global competition. However, they will get an opportunity to refine their apps and prototype  even after the event with the support of organizers.

Local Challenges:

  1. Cost effective Irrigation technology for sandy river banks
  2. Cost effective water supply for uphill settlement above river
  3. River Shifting trend analysis and projection
  4. Early Warning System (EWS)  for Creep Landslide
  5. Agricultural Drought Forecasting
  6. Sugarcane potential area mapping and flood hazard modeling
  7. Develop Real Time Wind Early Warning System

Local challenge details:

Judging Criteria:

  1. Impact: How much impact (quality and quantity) can this project have? Does it solve a big problem or a little problem?
  2. Creativity: How creative is the approach? Is the project new and something that hasn’t been attempted before? Is it something that isn’t being addressed by the market?
  3. Product: How well does this project fit the needs of the challenge it addresses? How user friendly is the technology? Is it a complete solution or does it have a long way to go?
  4. Sustainability: How good is the plan for next steps? How prepared is the project team to continue their work beyond the event? Is the project organized in a way so others can take the project to the next level?
  5. Presentation: How well did the team communicate their project? Are they effective in telling the story of the project and why it is important?

What are the perks for the participants?

  1. Rs.30,000.00 for Champion
  2. Rs.20,000.00 for First Runner up
  3. Rs.10,000.00 for Second Runner up
  4. $100 Amazon Web service credit for each and every participants
  5. Global champion team can get chance to visit NASA Launch (TBD) Event.
  6. Chance to work with ICIMOD and Mercycorps if feasible prototype will be obtained as a result of the NASA Space Apps. Last Year, Team Smart Nepali was funded by ICIMOD for the development of Low cost Early warning system for Landslide.
  7. T-shirt, Certificates, Lunch, Dinner all free of cost. Great Right!!
  8. More details on prizes will be announced soon!

Happy NASA’s International Space apps Challenge Kathmandu 2017!!

Winners of NASA’s International Space App Challenge Kathmandu 2017

Winner: Team RAIT

1. Dipak Niroula
2. Denesh Neupane
3. Besh Prakash Danuwar
4. SubinPradhananga

Image may contain: 7 people, people standing

Objectives:

  1. To know the current moisture level of agriculture field and forecast drought and irrigate automatically
  2. To make agriculture smart, productive and efficient by using digital technology.

Features of Project:

  1. The system has a LCD display which shows current moisture level of field, temperature, humidity, water pump on/off state, irrigation pump on/off state, exhaust fan on/off state with GSM technology for information and control. Although the whole system is automatic, farmer can also interfere the process according to the need.
  2. Moisture level detection of small and large field using robotic technology which can measure moisture value of different place of a field log that data in memory card, analyzing the data and automatically controls irrigation pump according to moisture level data and water level data of reservoir.
  • Controlling the motor of reservoir according to the water level of it automatically. I.e. turning water pump motor on when reservoir has less water and turning motor off when reservoir is fully filled automatically.
  1. Measurement of temperature and humidity of field and controlling these environment variables using exhaust for small scale farming like vertical farming, artificial greenhouse .
  2. Use of GSM technology so that farmer or owner can get information about temperature, moisture, humidity, water level of reservoir and primary source of water, irrigation pump state, reservoir pump state, exhaust fan state etc. Using these information, farmer can take action according to the data received.
  3. Farmer can send the message to run or stop the feature of the system like sending “s” in message to turn irrigation pump off etc.

For commercial farming, we have developed a system based on Internet of thing so that there will be more graphical user interface and data analysis tools with computer vision system.

Runner-Up: Team Virtual Space Exploration

  1. Sudip Ghimire
  2. Barsa Lamichanne
Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling

Short Description:

This application helps understand how Earth, satellites and other space instruments look from the satellite. We can see the orbit, satellites and space-debris and instruments data.

Project overview:

Background:

Since now, there are lot of general people who are facing problems finding out data and information given by different space probes and earth observing satellites. Lot of researchers, students and enthusiasts try to experience the tour to the space, but real tour is too much expensive and hence not practical to everybody. So we tried to make an application that helps us virtually ride abroad one of the earth observing satellites and collect data and information from there.

Challenges and Features of project:

  • Graphical representation of Current position of satellites
  • Graphical representation of satellite orbital
  • Information given by different instruments of the satellite
  • Beautiful view of Earth from/with satellite
  • Beautiful view of moon changing its position and phase
  • Beautiful view of sunrise with halo
  • View of International space station [ISS] and Space debris
  • Transit of other satellite and ISS

2nd Runner-up: Team Innovators

1. Irina Sthapit
2. Rumi Rajbhandari
3. Sushma Giri
4. Ashmita Tandukar

Image may contain: 4 people, people standing

Solution : App name: Food Cycle

Project details:

They made an android app named “food cycle”. This mobile app aims to decrease the wastage of leftover food and help the hungry people. The world produced enough food to feed every single person but so many people have to sleep empty stomach. On the other hand, so much edible food is being wasted by restaurants and hotels. Hence, this app creates a bridge between these two parties who have excess edible food and the ones who don’t have food to eat. Furthermore, this app also has a platform to give away inedible food for making compost or briquettes.
Their app consists of mainly three sections: Eat, Help and Compost.
If people want to donate edible food they can login and add details of their restaurant/hotel, location, type of food and quantity they have.

If people want to eat food, they can login, select the restaurant/hotel from which they want food and request for food. After which, they will get a unique code so as to reserve the food for certain amount of time. If they fail to collect the food within that time limit, the food will be distributed to another request person.

If people want to take the inedible food, the process is same as eat, they have to login first, then request for the leftover for compost purpose.