We have successfully concluded the two-day faculty development program on Build your Own Smartphone using Raspberry Pi organized by Chitkara University Himachal Pradesh in collaboration with Computer Society of India Chandigarh Chapter and with industry support from Element14. Total 30 faculties from Chitkara University and four other neighboring engineering institutions attended the program. Trainer for the workshop was Dr. SRN Reddy - HOD CSE, IGDTUW New Delhi(He is an expert in the area of mobile architecture & computing and is handling many industry sponsored projects.)

Smartphone architecture, Python Programming and sensor interfacing were the three key elements on which the program was based upon.
Smartphone technology platform is a convergence of diverse technologies across different industry segments into one platform. For example: Smartphone features multiple wireless technologies like GSM, Bluetooth, WiFi, NFC etc, dedicated navigation system - GPS, multimedia technologies like Camera, Audio, Video, Streaming etc, broadcasting segment - television & radio, sensors interfacing - temperature sensors, accelerometer, PIR sensor, light sensor etc. In addition, smart phone offers the freedom of mobility and ubiquitous computing. Smart phone architecture both at hardware and software front is quite different from computer architecture and has separate operating systems. During the first session of the program smart phone architecture and its operating systems were discussed in length.
Raspberry Pi Model 2 was used as a platform for building a smart phone during the program. In the subsequent sessions the features of Raspberry Pi Model 2 along with its specifications, pin configuration and various other functionalities where discussed. Raspberry Pi features ARM7 Quad-core processor, with GPU operating at 1Ghz, 1GB RAM, 40GPIOs for sensor interfacing, 4 USB ports, various communications protocols, microSD card slot, camera and TFT display interfacing options. The first exercise for the participants was porting Linux operating system on Raspberry Pi. Raspbian is the standard Linux operating system that was ported on Raspberry Pi.

Once our Smart Phone Platform (Raspberry Pi) was up and running with the OS, we got ourselves ready for mobile programming. Mobile programming is the set of procedure involved in writing software for smart phone platform for interfacing various hardware components and developing software applications. There are many mobile programming languages available and we had chosen Python language for our smart phone because of multiple reasons a) it has few keywords, simple structure and clearly defined syntax ideal for somebody who has just stared to explore smart phone development b) It is extendable and can run on variety of hardware platforms c) works on different operating systems d) broad standard library e) python installation is quite simple & straight forward, it is preinstalled in Raspberry Pi.

The first program we wrote was HELLO world which means blinking the LED with Raspberry Pi. Then we did camera interfacing with Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi comes with a dedicated Camera Serial Interface (CSI). Most part of lab exercises included interfacing of various different kinds of sensors like accelerometer, LDR, PIR, sound sensor, Bluetooth, GSM etc.

Before closing the program, Dr. Reddy demonstrated the complete smart phone kit built using Raspberry Pi along with some other projects like Intelligent door locking system, intelligent safe, agriculture project based on soil humidity all done using Raspberry Pi.

During the valedictory of the program Wg Cdr DN Misra - Chairman CSI Chandigarh Chapter, Mr. B.S. Chabra – Vice Chairman CSI Chandigarh Chapter, Dr. Rajnish Sharma – Dean Academics Chitkara University presided over the occasion and distributed the certificates to the participants.

Participants gave very good feedback about the program. Thanks are due to Dr. SRN Reddy for conducting useful & industry relevant technical sessions, CSI Chandigarh Chapter & Element14 for their support and Dr. Rajnish Sharma for organizing such meaning full and industry oriented workshop.

By Sagar Juneja, Research Associate, Chitkara University.