LigerSat team visited the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia (NPIC). There we met the professors to talk about their ground station and the process to acquire amateur radio license. We were surprised that they have to go through a strict and time-consuming process to get the government approval for their ground station. Only two professors passed the technician amateur radio test last year. Anyway, Dean of Engineering suggested our team to talk about our CubeSat mission to the Ministry of Telecommunication to approval for building an Earth station as well as the satellite. After the meeting, we were delighted to have a tour around their campus. We were amazed by the hand-on equipment and diverse facilities.
Meeting with Engineering Dean and other professors about CubeSAT
NPIC telecommunication lab that consists of transmitters and radios
Getting a tour from a young professor
At NPIC robotics lab with manufacturing demonstration
Charlie from International Labour Organization (ILO) was submitting a mobile application idea to Boston University. When his idea pass, students from the BU will develop the app. However, he needed Visal (my friend) and I help to do a wireframe for his app in FOUR days.
A wireframe is a blueprint and flow of app before doing an actual design on a computer. Visal and I had couple times designing our own apps, so wireframe was not a problem, but to finish the wireframe in a short time w
as challenging. We spend 3 hours sketching on paper and 5 hours wire framing on Adobe Xs.
Two more years till my graduation, I might attend a university oversea, therefore to prepare for university, I took two AP (Advanced Placement) courses, AP Statistics and AP Computer Science A. The courses are university-level course and they are extremely difficult. To prepare for AP exams on May, I studied statistics during Math class and part time in school prepare for AP computer science.
On March 2nd, during STEM festival at Olympic Stadium, I displayed my masterpiece Self Balancing robot, which I built during the after-school activity. This robot has impressed many students because it could stand by itself with two wheels. I questionedthe students what do they think the robot was for before I ran it. Most of them have believed that it was a car or a cart. I also noticed that they were excited wanted to know how to build and the physics of this robot and I was happy to tell them.
My friend displayed his project
My friend displayed his project
Beside my exhibit, I was exploring around other booths and discovered many new booths and faces but what drew my attention the most was Highschool students’ booths. Students around my age from government schools were presenting in this fair. I have been exhibiting at this festival for four years and this was the first time seeing them presenting these amazing projects! Two years ago, an Exploration was evaluating the project-based learning in government schools and wrote a whole report to Ministry of Education. The Minister was excited about project-based curriculum during his visit to Liger and started to implement project-based learning to some high schools because of the report from Liger. To that end, the students I met at the fair were from those high schools! I felt like I met my brothers and sisters that love STEM. Liger is not alone.
More to that, two years ago during Ministry visit at Liger, the Secretary of State was interested in Scratch and wanted to introduce this computer coding program to students to learn to code. I was chosen to give a lecture how to use Scratch to the assistant of Secretary of State, and the lecture passed on to teachers and students. Oh yeah! I saw a group of high school students made a maze game from Scratch! I thought, “What I have done two years ago has shaped Cambodia, I made a change in Cambodia!”
Grace Hopper is known an important person in computer science. She invented the first computer compiler that shape this contemporary technology. During, Physic class, I researched about her and here is the information about her I wrote.
Liger Digital Currency is the first application developed by Liger students that had launched. It not just a simple application, it is a digital currency system that is more likely a PayPal that uses only for Liger campus. Many students had involved in this project since 2016 until the official launch on November 20, 2017. We developed this system from scratch with Node.js platform and we hire none other developers to build this. The developers are 15 years old Liger students and this is including me. I am the main developer, coding in many pages of the application. I am a hybrid developer meaning I code the back-end and also the front end. Throughout, this application, I had exposed of many web skills, such as Login Authentication with Google, working with Postgres database, cookies, HTTP requests and so on. Beside coding, I involved in discussion and meetings with the school director about the problems and the solutions to make the system works as best. This is the biggest project I work so far and what I get was a lot of experience.
On Friday 27th 2017, I attended to a workshop about AR application hosted by Eric Gu. I was not chosen to be on the trip but I asked to join and gave up a class because I found out that AR is very fascinating. AR is short for Augmented Reality. It is a new technology that generates an enhanced version of reality on an image of something being viewed through a device (such as a smartphone camera). For example, Pokemon game uses AR technology with smartphone camera. We can move the camera and the object looked real.
Eric showed a tutorial for making an AR application on Unity. To do this, we needed a Vuforia package that has AR camera code. AR camera can be train to recognize an image. For Eric’s demo, he already trained the applications to see a card. If the camera detected the card image, we can add any objects, for example a cube to the card. I followed the tutorial with a lot of excitement and when I made a simple AR application; it was so AMAZING. I played the card around, and the cube followed the card. Playing a game on AR was even cooler, Eric showed a tanks shooting game on AR controlled by computers but the picture was from the camera and the tanks and games components was from the application. Basically, AR allowed people to play a digital game on a real table. Eric also showed a presentations and videos what AR is and what the future looked like when AR implemented. I was blown away.
On 15th November 2017, I and 11 other went to a Tech Talk at Tekhub about how cryptocurrencies change the world as we know it. I found this event posted on Facebook page and it caught my heart desiring to hear the talk. I requested my facilitator if I and somebody else who were interested could go. I got accepted. I was very excited but I must leading the group to the event.
I have learned more about Bitcoin, how does it works and its history. The history came from Satoshi Nakamoto , the founder of Bitcoin, because one of one big problem is bank flation. Bitcoin solved it, government can’t shut down the system because it is a decentralized system. It globalize used, no need approval from the government, convenience and fast. At first I thought our Liger Digital Currency is a cryptocurrency but once I listed to them, It’s not. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized (meaning that more than one server), while Liger Digital Currency is centralized because we only have one server. I was inspire with blockchain system and how people can be an ICO of the cryptocurrency. I was Blown away.
