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
LigerSat joined the first satellite symposium in Xi’an, China to better understand CubeSat concepts, and most importantly to network with experts and mentors that able to help our CubeSat project. We met teams from Bangladesh, Israel, China and experts from Japan, Caly Poly University, China, Costa Rika, and the United Kingdom.
I have learned that CubeSat constellation will take over space and form a network like an internet. This constellation will provide real-time data and benefit to many industries.
There are presentations, some are simple and most are technical. Listening to technical concepts help me to improve my listening skill as well as get expose to something new. Besides listening to presentations, we networked with experts and companies because our team needed supports in human resources, satellite components, guides, ideas and strategies to developing a CubeSat.
Previously, my Dinosaur Exploration had suspected figures like dinosaur footprints at Battambang Province, though we couldn’t verify them as dinosaur footprint a 100 percent. Therefore, we invited two Thai paleontologists to validate on the footprints based on their background in biology and geology.
We were all thrilled about these footprints. If these footprints are agreed by experts to be dinosaur footprint, it would be the first dinosaur footprint ever found in Cambodia. Unfortunately, one of the paleontologists was convinced that they are not dinosaur footprint, they are flute casts, it was caused by the river flow and small rock on the bed. We were really disappointed; however, I think it is what most scientists experience during their discovery.
On 19th November 2017, I was volunteering for Khmer Sight Foundation (KSF) mission at Kampong Speu Province. I spent this Saturday to help to save people eyes. Based on the doctor I worked with, he said as people getting older, their eye lens would get cloudier. This is call cataract and another common eye problem is call pyridium. There is no medicine or drops to cue the eyes’ lens, the only way is to do a surgery. The foundation’s mission is to find those who has the problem with their eyes and giving them tear drop, sunglasses and especially provide a surgery for those who has a lot of cataracts or pyridium .
I was inept about eyes at the start but my heart told me to help my people that is why I volunteer this. I helped to register the people there, moving chairs, organizing the room. Ieventually ended up becoming the doctors interpreter and assistant. I thought this is the toughest volunteer job since all the patients I have talked to were having a lot of cataracts and pyridium. I needed to explain to them that their eyes should have a surgery and the side effect of keeping the cataract. More importantly, I need to explain to them that there is a chance that surgery would fail, their eyes could get blind.
On the mission, we screened more than a 100 patients and about 30% of them is on surgery list. I never see the surgery before, I also felt nervous for the patient as well and the risk they took, but what I and other volunteers could do is to comfort them because some patient never traveled to Phnom Penh and couldn’t speak English with doctors.
I went to the clinic with eight patients and I saw procedure before surgery. They scanned the patient’s eye for the size, depth, curvedness and the doctors would replace a new artificial-len for the patient with those dimension. I didn’t get to see the surgery itself, but I saw photos from my teacher who went to see the surgery.
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.
