Turning your phone into a virtual-joystick

-
Image
Update: I kept working on this and I have released it as a package for Windows, Linux and macOS. Check it out: https://github.com/zenineasa/joystick/releases/tag/v1.0.0 -- During the days when I was pursying my master's programme, my friends and I used to occasionally go to a classroom in the university, turn on a projector, connect devices like Nintento Switch or Gaming computers and loads of joysticks, and play different simple multiplayer games; MarioKart was my favourite. From time-to-time, when I get together with people, I ponder that it would be a good idea if I bought such devices. Indeed, I do have a laptop, which could easily run such games; SuperTuxKart is similar enough to MarioKart and it can run on Linux, Windows and Mac. However, I do not have joysticks with me at the moment. Therefore, I think it would be a good idea if I simply worked on a project that would enable using our phones as joysticks. From a high-level, the plan is to host APIs on a NodeJS server that wo...
Post a Comment

Regarding a Covid-19 related project that I worked on a few months ago

-

A little over a year ago, I had written a blog post in this blog titled "COVID-19 Disease Spreading Simulation". That was something that I worked on in a very short time frame. A few months after that, during a conversation with an old professor of mine, Dr. Jimson Mathew, we discussed modifying it further to create something really interesting. We started working on creating "A Framework for COVID-19 Cure or Vaccine Distribution Modeling, Analysis and Decision Making" in October 2020 and finished creating it and drafting a research paper about it in the first week of November 2020. We had submitted this to the Journal of Simulation, but the reviewers rejected the paper citing more information recently. Of course, we will be editing the paper and re-submitting it; however, I thought it would be better if I uploaded the project in the public domain so that anyone who would like to use it can do the same without having to wait.

I have made this available on GitHub. The following are respectively the links to the source code and the hosted version.

https://github.com/zenineasa/frameworkForVaccineAndCureDistribution 

https://zenineasa.github.io/frameworkForVaccineAndCureDistribution/ (You may have to zoom out a bit to see the entire grid structure)

What we have created here is a framework where you can define region boundaries and their permeability, and have people as actors being generated in the scene. There are hyperparameters to determine the number of people in a region, the number of people who are initially sick, the point in simulation from which vaccines and/or medicines get distributed, and its frequency and quantity as well. People can easily tweak the JSON file that is loaded in the webpage to have different layouts and different hyperparameters.



To generate the aforementioned JSON file, I used a script to do the same. I wanted to generate a hexagonal grid (honeycomb), as I was inspired by central place theory. Central place theory is an economic theory that attempts to explain the different hierarchies of human settlements across an ideal homogeneous landscape.

For the sake of simplicity in capturing the data, I have added UI buttons to take a screenshot as well as export simulation data that is captured over time. There are buttons to pause and play the simulation as well.

In the folder named 'resultsAndAnalysis', I have added in all the simulation data that we exported using the button that I stated above for various hyperparameters that we designed. The corresponding JSON files for the hyperparameters are also available in the folders.

I hope someone who is looking for something like this will find it useful.


Update from November 2023:

I just submitted a preprint to ArXiv describing this project. Check it out!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09984
https://vixra.org/abs/2311.0085

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First impression of Lugano - Mindblowing

-
Image
I started off from Zurich at around 7.30 in the morning. There was a direct train to Lugano from Zurich HB. I vaguely remember my internet searches on the cost to travel from Zurich to Lugano via train to be about 30 CHF, but in reality, taking the ticket from the station, it costed me double of that. I don't know if the tickets have surge prices or something. Anyway, the journey was nice as I was able to see some beautiful places along the way and I think I had a chance to go through Gotthard Base Tunnel, which is the longest tunnel in the world. Getting down at Lugano station and looking out, I saw one of the most beatiful scene that I have ever seen. I am not sure if I could describe that properly in words, nor do I think the following photograph that I took justifies how it looked to me in person. I had to walk down a lot of stairs from here with the heavy bags that I had, only to realize that I made a wrong turn at some point. I was informed that instead of going back up, it w...
Read more

Thinking about developing an opensource P2P social network

-
It has been a while since I made a blog post. I have been occupied by my academic work and I found using my past time on non-blogging related activities more rewarding. However, since it is summer break now, and I have mostly run out of things to do, I decided to get back to being creative and work on some project. Recently, I have been floating an idea about creating a social network that practically eliminates the requirement to have servers and databses. From a high-level, the idea is that users can host their profile on their phones and their connections can query data about the profile, send messages, form groups, and make wall post which can be viewed by anyone who is connected to the profile. I have seen a research paper summarising quite a few projects that has attempted to create something similar. However, I observed that these would at least have a server for authenticate a user; to tell confirm if the user is who he says he is. I believe this can be eliminated by allowing u...
Read more

Created a video to help people get started with HexHoot

-
Image
A few days ago, I decided to make version release for HexHoot on GitHub, as I think it is important to differentiate something that is more stable and something that is under development. Having versions that people can download seem to be the best move to do the same. Following the same, I shared it with people over LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. One of the feedbacks I received over private messages was asking me to provide more information on what it exactly is and how to use it. Although all these information are written in the documentation and the website, it appears to be that people like to watch videos explaining the same. Therefore, in the past couple of days, I have been performing screen recording and doing voice overs. Interestingly, during this process, I found a couple of issues with the software, and I fixed those. The following is the video. Please do provide your feedback on this project. It would be lovely if any of you are interested in contributing to the same. Y...
Read more