Table of Contents

Campus Compass is a project - and entrepreneurial venture - aimed at converting radio signals from devices into real-time occupancy statistics for study spots on campus. This real-time data is provided to users in the form of an app; in your hand like a compass! On top of advertising revenue, the campus usage data will be sold to the universities - who have already shown interest in it. This has been an extremely fun project where I have learned a tonne by doing: data engineering, data analysis, cloud infrastructure engineering, embedded system engineering, telecommunications protocols, app development, management, busyness strategy, and much more.

Data collection

Little micro-controllers sit hidden away in study spots, listening to the radio waves emitted by student phones. The first part of the data pipeline is the data collection. I was messing around with micro-controllers with antennas when I discovered a way to collect live information about the different wireless channels’ usage rate. I developed upon this discovery by studying academic literature, implementing code in C++ for the micro-controllers. I then anonymise the data and send it to AWS.

Data pipeline

The data is ingested into AWS and turned from MQTT format to JSON. Based on some conditionals, the data is sorted into different locations and cleaned up. It is stored in easily accessible formats in logically arranged directory structures (date, time, location, device ID). After data is analysed the user application can access it via an AWS API call. Learning data engineering and cloud infrastructure from scratch was a fun challenge.

Data analysis

For a great user experience, the occupancy values should be intuitive and consistent room to room. We decided that the occupancy of a room is to be a normalised value from 0 (the room is empty) to 100 (the room has no more capacity). Using time series analysis I developed algorithms and programs to turn sensor data into occupancy values. I implemented a SARIMA statistical model to do this, incorporating time and day patterns in the calculations. Understanding statistics and data analysis seems like a relevant and ever more important skill, I enjoyed researching it .

Business – and consciousness

Consciousness is a miracle; communicating ones state of consciousness to another conscious being is humanity’s superpower. This is how complex civilisations have formed against all odds and pushed humanity to such extreme heights. This is how we have developed unbelievable technologies, through the passing of understanding from one being to another, even across generations. I take pride in constantly trying to understand and improve my communication abilities. It is why I am interested in telecommunications and art.

It is also one of the reasons why I have a passion for business and entrepreneurship where communication is exceedingly important. Weather it is communicating your vision and value creation to investors, communicating the the benefits of your product/service to customers, or communicating to employees the company’s values, culture, and potential for professional growth.

My presentation of the project prototype was quite successful; it made us winners of Bath Hack ‘24, and captured the attention of enough people that it was brought up in a “Top 10” meeting with the University of Bath directors. I talked to a director, who became quite fond of the idea and put me in touch with the leader of the ‘Digital, Data and Technology’ university organisation. We had a great conversation, he told me that not only would the Campus Compass technology be useful for this university, but many others. Through this meeting we acquired our first customer: the University of Bath.