The project started under two courses in Aalto University, and from now on continues under the Aalto Global Impact organization.
This page will no longer be updated. Our progress can be followed at our new blog.
There are dreamers and doers, we are dreaming and doing simultaneously creating a flowing, iterative process during this Summer 2012 project.
We have now completed our second day in Uganda, and I couldn’t be more excited to be here! The possibilities are endless and we have free hands to set and carry out new standards of project creation and implementation.
Today at the UNICEF Innovation Center Mbuya, we established the main goals of the project for this summer. With the current products already designed through the first part of this project: a tap, a water transportation device, a hand washing unit, a remote monitoring system and the whole Clean School concept, we are now taking the next steps to figure out how we can improve them further to ultimately create an attractive and simple yet effective tool that UNICEF will want to adapt and utilize. But before we reach that, we need to further develop our products and figure out a way to design them in a way that they will become products of standard daily use for the people of Uganda. In order to do this we need to make the products attractive to the locals and easy to both create and use.
We have agreed that no matter what decisions we make from this point forward, we are going to analyze them from every possible perspective. We don’t want to just produce something for the schools, hand it over to them, and have them never use it again. We are serious and passionate about what we are doing and will take all the time and effort necessary in order to carry it out successfully; we want to work with the schools/students/staff/etc. to create something that continues. In order to help do this, we want to involve the end users as much as possible through the further development of our products.
Tomorrow we will meet with UNICEF Uganda to brainstorm with them what specific human resources and tools we need in order to successfully carry out our project goals for the summer. We also hope to open up communication with them in so they constantly know what we’re doing within the project.
Until then, at least I will continue to dream and do and dream and do and dream… about clean schools in Uganda.
The first Hugging Point in Uganda
Outside of the UNICEF Innovation Center Mbuya
Aalto University representing!
The men hard at work already first thing in the morning
The UNICEF Innovation centre in Kampala was established less than two years ago and until now it has been mainly serving the development of the Digital Drum. The centre has been growing quite organically and is more and more engaging academia like Makerere and Kyambogo universities from Uganda and foreign universities like Aalto University or Pasadena Art Center College of Design. The innovation centre does not have as wide user base as Design Factory. It’s mainly the staff members Emma, Peter, Neil, Jean-Marc, few volunteers like Felix and Abil and students, e.g. our Makerere team members during PDP.
From tomorrow onwards there will be 10 additional players in the field as the whole Aalto-UNICEF Finland team starts its work. In order to have a good start for the next step of our project we started to develop the workshop for its expanding needs. Spatial development à la Emma and Irena & co. turned part of the space upside down to create more space for prototyping and desk job. We also had an eye on other spaces in the compound where we could develop working spaces for different needs. In addition we started to collect stuff for the for rapid “prototyping material bank”.
Yesterday we relocated the computer kiosks and cleared out more space inside the workshop. Now we can fit more tables to the working area. Today Emma built a big table at the workshop and a frame for flip chart and Felix started to repair the old tables. An awesome team we have here!
A few decades ago, Pink Floyd wrote a song called Summer ’68. Forty four years have passed since 1968, and here we are today. Today, our D-day, day to kick start the Summer Project in Uganda, continuation for our IDBM and PDP projects.
A few of us are already in Kampala (including, of course, our Ugandan students) and 5 more of us are joining them tomorrow, when the plane lands in Entebbe. Our goals include the implementation and further development of the concepts designed throughout the year: the tap, the water transportation device, the handwashing unit, the remote monitoring system and the Clean School concept.
During the next month, a cheerful crowd of buzungu will be around Kampala and Gulu. Be sure to check out this blog and Twitter, as we will do our best to keep updating daily about our progress.
See you soon!
The month in the Masters of Aalto 2012 was very intense. Our exhibition included not only our PDP and IDBM outcomes, but also work from the students in Lauttasaaren yteiskoulu and, of course, the toilets themselves. For some pictures, check out our earlier post about it.
Many events happened during this period, including the UNICEF “Zombie Innovations or True Development?” panel. A lot of people visited our stand and talked to us, giving us very good feedback and ideas.
And as mentioned before, we were counting the usage of the toilets. By the end of the event, a total of 2247 people used the toilets and urinals.
During the first days, there were a few problems with the sensors and the SMS sending module, so the count may be slightly higher than our results. But we learned quite a lot from this second prototype.
Random fact: last Wednesday’s event in MoA went until quite late, as there were people using the toilets all night (the last one between 5 and 7 AM).
Detailed info is available here.
We’ve been working a lot. Personally, I’ve been developing the monitoring unit, and today it came to my mind that the only place in the world where it is fully described is in my head. Considering that tomorrow I could be hit by a bus, it’s a good idea to put all those ideas somewhere else.
The whole idea behind this unit has already been described in a previous post.
We are currently on the second prototype of the system. The first was installed in the latrines in PDP Gala, and the second is right now in MoA (Masters of Aalto).
Check out live updates on the Twitter!
The rest of this post is a bit technical. If you’re not interested, skip to the pictures!
THE FIRST PROTOTYPE
The first prototype counted how many people used the latrines and sent out warnings when the water level in the handwashing tank was low.
The main focus was always to keep low cost and simple technology. Counting the users was done with simple contact switches at the doors. When it closes, the switch is pressed, and if it stays closed long enough, it means there’s a person inside. A little bit of cardboard was used to make sure that an unlocked door opens just enough for the switch not to be pressed.
The water level was measured with a potentiometer attached to a stick with some foam on the other end. The foam floats, and the angle of inclination of the stick can be measured on the potentiometer.
All that was connected to an Arduino board. It periodically sent out SMS messages, using an attached GPRS module (that works as a regular GSM phone).
THE SECOND PROTOTYPE
There were more toilets in MoA than in the Gala. The Arduino board didn’t have enough connections, so we also used a Teensy board.
There are 4 toilets and 2 urinals. The same kind of sensors were installed at the doors and connected to Teensy. It sends out a signal to the Arduino every time an user is detected. The original plan was to use another Teensy board attached to monitor the 6 handwashing tanks, but unfortunately the time wasn’t enough for building and installing the sensors. Maybe in the following weeks.
The Arduino plays the role of the central unit, gathering the data and sending out text messages periodically, with the same GPRS module.
Unfortunately, after the first day, the GPRS broke down and stopped sending messages. We are currently trying to fix it, but until that is done, data is recovered manually every day with an USB cable and posted to Twitter.
The doors at the urinals were a bit different, and as a result both sensors broke. We fixed it yesterday night, hopefully from now on they’ll work as expected.
COST
Arduino Duemilanove: 22 euros
Teensy board: ~15 euros (US$19.00)
GPRS Module: 71 euros
Antenna: 6 euros
Contact switches + potentiometer + wires: ~1 euro
Total: ~115 euros
CONSIDERATIONS
The sensors at the doors can be greatly improved. Their installation and calibration is tricky, because it needs to be in an exact position for accurate readings. Also, if we want to measure other things (people washing hands, how many use soap, waste level in the tank…), sensors should be designed for that.
The microcontrollers from the Arduino and Teensy boards are much more powerful than actually needed. They could be replaced by cheaper ones. The problem related to the limited number of connectors available could be solved by designing specific hardware, a thing that thanks to China is not so expensive nowadays.
But most importantly, the GPRS module is way too costly, and not so reliable. Personally, I’m sleeping much better now that I know it’s broken than before, when I wasn’t sure. More than that, good mobile phones can be bought in Uganda for less than 10 euros. If we could use these, the cost would drop dramatically.
Last minute set up for the PDP Gala
Final tests before MoA
This week the Masters of Aalto – MoA ’12 exhibition started. It is a yearly event where students from TAIK present their work.
The place where it is being held is a warehouse by the Eastern Port in Helsinki. It has no toilets capable of receiving a big amount of people. For many, this would be a problem. For us, it was an opportunity.
We worked with the architects who designed the toilets, and got some of our concepts and prototypes to be used there.
The handwashing stand is equipped with our taps. The used water flows into a small garden, one of our ideas to prevent water to puddle on the ground and being a home for mosquitoes.
Biolan has provided composting toilets for receiving the waste. Those are generally used in Finnish summer cottages by families, so the regular usage by hundreds of people during the event is also an extreme test-case scenario for their products.
And the toilet usage is being monitored. We are using the same Twitter account that was used during PDP Gala, but the username was changed to @AUFToilet (AUF stands for Aalto-Unicef Finland).
The whole are has an exhibition of our work, and also many examples of artwork made by the students of Lauttasaaren yhteiskoulu.
If you’re around, be sure to check it out!
Sorry for the silence! The days after the Gala have been incredibly busy. We will write about that in another post. Right now, we are here to publish the video of our final PDP presentation:
Aalto-Unicef Finland starts at 36:55.
The IDBM students also had their final presentation last week. Video will be available soon.
The Final Gala is approaching quickly. Next Friday, April 27, at Aalto Design Factory, our team is going to present what has happened during the past months. All teams will have their exhibitions, and presentations will be streamed live at the PDP website.
Among other cool stuff, our exhibitions includes, of course, two operational latrines and a handwashing facility with our tap prototypes. For a few days already, we’ve been not only hammering, cutting and painting wood to build the latrines, but also soldering, programming and testing the monitoring unit that will be attached to it.
With these elements, we have a few things we’d like to show the attendance. We’d like to give them the feeling of using a squat latrine. We want them to try some of the outcomes of our work. And we’d like to prove that attaching sensors to latrines is not that much of a crazy dream.
Specifically about this last topic, what will be operating on Friday is the first prototype of the remote monitoring unit. As explained in the previous post, this unit is just one part of a bigger thing, but the development of the mentioned server is a considerably large project by itself and fell out of our scope during this process.
But sending messages to one of our phones and showing it to the people would not be practical, and most importantly, you guys here would not be able to see it. So that’s why our toilet is, now, a tweeting toilet! Yes, you read correctly.
Twitter is going to play the role of the central server. Each tweet represents a new input for the database, coming from our hypothetical “Gulu Primary School” in Design Factory. A real server would receive this “tweet”, process it, and update its database. And about what can be done with the gathered data from schools all across the country, well, your imagination is the limit.
The Twitter account is already online, follow us to see live on Friday how many people are relieving themselves in our facilities! Follow us at @AUFToilet.
Latrine being built outside Design Factory (featuring Lauri & Palash)
Monitoring unit in a test setup. Notice how the resistors have been soldered on the wrong side of the board.
In a previous post, we talked about attaching sensors to the latrines, collecting data and sending it via SMS. We mentioned specific advantages of that to our own design process. But in fact, this monitoring unit is just one piece of a bigger system.
First of all, we opted to use SMS inspired by two other existing projects in Uganda: mTrac and Ureport. Both of them are based on text messages and have proved themselves appropriate not only for Uganda, but for other countries as well. Following the same path is a logical way.
The remote unit monitors the usage of the system, and the collected data is then bundled into an SMS message and sent to a central server that concentrates information from schools all over the country.
This centralized data can be then processed and provide information about the usage of the system. Reports about each individual school can be generated. Warnings are triggered when the system is not being used, so the reasons can then be investigated in loco. Has it broken? How? Has it been locked and children are not able to access it? Why? With this kind of feedback, the system can even be further improved.
But the most valuable outcome of this remote data gathering is that the information can be used for many other purposes.
The impact of educational programs about hygiene could be measured by checking if the number of children washing hands has increased.
It can be used to better understand the context in which each school is inserted. It can be known, for example, if the latrines are being used by outsiders during the night and weekends, a sign that a given community is lacking toilets and further actions should be taken.
If the usage rate of the latrines increases too much, it could mean that a certain school is lacking facilities and the currently slow process of building new toilets in schools could be accelerated.
If the handwashing tanks in many schools in the same region are empty, this could be the first sign of a drought.
The data can be shared with governments and other organizations as a way to measure the improvement of WASH related issues. It can help prove that foreign aid money is really being used for aid. It can help accelerate development.
The possibilities are endless, but working with this data is a big project by itself. The first steps have been delineated. This presents itself as an exciting alternative for future development!
