We’re somehow convinced that this problem statement came after Imran spent a day in the shopping mall with his girlfriend 

He wanted to be able to make something for shoppers to be able to navigate easily in a huge shopping mall, so went on to create Incarto — an indoor map for a shopping mall.

The process to get started was simple and interesting. The outline of the map was created from the image. Then it was exported into SVG and rendered onto browser. The SVG map was then changed using the D3.js framework to make it interactive.

Imran wanted to get started on the Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) format while tinkering and writing some code around D3.

Chennai’s Express Avenue shopping mall was chosen, because of the availability of an online map that makes it easier to sketch an accurate SVG and also because Imran was quite familiar with the mall.

He came up with the following map,

The stores get highlighted on click of the ‘types of store’ filter

The project is currently in it’s early stages is hosted at Github. You may contact Imran to work with him and contribute to this project.

Originally Published on October 24, 2013

With the introduction of open source hardware, the internet has been pooling up with fun projects to tinker around using hardware components.

One such is the LED 8x8x8 cube project that is an array of LEDs to create beautiful visual display by timing the LEDs. Being digital, this project is easier to implement than using analog.

The LEDs are multiplexed and controlled in an array using a microcontroller. More details and instructions can be foundhere.

It is quite fun to tinker and get it started in 36 hours. Anyone up for tinkering this in the next edition?

Hattip: Hasan Ali Khan

[via Instructables]

Originally Published on September 27, 2013