A smart fish feeding system for internet of things based aquariums

Effective fish feeding within aquarium environments is essential for proper health and growth of fishes. However, due to busy lifestyles, maintaining proper feeding cycles is a key challenge for aquarium owners. With the emergence of technologies including Internet of Things, various smart aquarium solutions have emerged. However, within existing solutions and published literature, limited work has been done to automate fish feeding for smart aquariums. As such, this paper extends literature on automated fish feeding within IoT-based aquariums through the implementation and evaluation of such a fish-feeding algorithm and system. In this study, a fish feeding algorithm that computes various aspects related to fish feeding (e.g. feeding time and number of pellets) is presented, based on aquarium environmental parameters (e.g. temperature and pH) along with aquarium characteristics (e.g. fish species and density). Based upon the proposed algorithm, a smart fish feeding solution was designed and implemented. For evaluation, the algorithm and system were tested within five aquariums to determine their effectiveness in feeding fish within different aquarium settings. Results showed that precision and recall reduce with increased number of fish species. Based on these limitations, recommendations have been made to enhance the implementation of such systems

Fruitify: nutritionally augmenting fruits through markerless-based augmented reality

In the past few decades, a significant decrease in fruit consumption around the world has resulted in a hiking rate of cardiovascular diseases and obesity among youngsters. In order to address this issue, healthy eating is being recommended. However, awareness on nutritional information on fruits remain an important challenge that still needs to be addressed even though various sources in the form of books, websites and mobile applications are already available. This is also potentially due to the limited interaction and engagement with such sources. One technology that has shown to improve engagement, enhance understanding and provide a unique learning experience is Augmented Reality. However, limited work has been undertaken to provide nutritional information on fruits via this technology. As such, this paper investigates the application of AR to nutritionally augment fruits through a proposed prototype called Fruitify, before discussing the usability tests performed on the application and involving end users. As key findings, a system usability scale score of 82.1% was obtained where participants expressed strong intention to utilize the tool again in the future

Cloud robotics platforms: review and comparative analysis

Due to the various advantages that the cloud can offer to robots, there has been the recent emergence of the cloud robotics paradigm. Cloud robotics permits robots to unload computing and storage related tasks into the cloud, and as such, robots can be built with smaller on-board computers. The use of cloud-robotics also allows robots to share knowledge within the community over a dedicated cloud space. In order to build-up robots that benefit from the cloud-robotics paradigm, different cloud-robotics platforms have been released during recent years. This paper critically reviews and compares existing cloud robotic platforms in order to provide recommendations on future use and gaps that still need to be addressed. To achieve this, 8 cloud robotic platforms were investigated. Key findings reveal varying underlying architectures and models adopted by these platforms, in addition to different features offered to end-users

Power consumption of the Raspberry Pi: a comparative analysis

Over the past few decades, human beings have increasingly adopted different types of personal computers including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones. More recently, there has been the emergence of the Raspberry Pi and since its release in 2012, this new type of computer has undergone rapid growth in adoption to even become the fastest selling British computer. The Raspberry Pi has often been referred as a computer designed to change the world since it is capable to do most things that a desktop computer can do. The growing concern is that all these computers utilize power in order to operate thereby turning ICT into a power drainer. The diverse functionalities present in modern computers including communication and Web browsing, among others, were found to be important components that affect the power consumption of such devices. As such, this paper investigates how power consumption of the Raspberry Pi is affected by the key functionalities that could be performed by end-users on the platform. Moreover, this relationship is compared against other types of common personal computers before recommending on techniques and practices that could reduce the power consumption of this emerging type of computer

An automated personal carbon footprint calculator for estimating carbon emissions from transportation use

Transportation is one of the biggest menaces to the planet, releasing several million tons of gases into the atmosphere on an annual basis. The growing use of transportation has expanded the concentration and release of these gases, which affect the environment in a number of ways such as depletion of the ozone layer, air pollution and more seriously, global warming and climate change. Among the different modes, road transportation is a significant contributor of greenhouse gas as it ejects dangerous gases directly into the atmosphere, and these emissions are predicted to increase drastically over the years. As such, it is essential to track and monitor emissions from transportation activities in an attempt to reduce the global emissions of greenhouse gases, through carbon footprint calculators. However, most of these calculators do not solely focus on transportation and the ones that do, require a substantial amount of effort and manual input. this paper investigates acceptance of an automated personal transportation-based carbon footprint calculator and its accuracy in monitoring and reducing carbon emissions. As part of this study, a mobile application called TCTracker was implemented using Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality and built-in artificial intelligence (AI) features. The acceptance of the tool was evaluated using the Technology Acceptance Model whereby involving forty users to evaluate four constructs notably, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and intention to use. Among these constructs, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness had the highest scores, to also depict the acceptance of the tool, while also sustaining interest in carbon footprint tracking

Security in web applications: a comparative analysis of key SQL injection detection techniques

Over the years, technological advances have driven massive proliferation of web systems and businesses have harbored a seemingly insatiable need for Internet systems and services. Whilst data is considered as a key asset to businesses and that their security is of extreme importance, there has been growing cybersecurity threats faced by web systems. One of the key attacks that web applications are vulnerable to is SQL injection (SQLi) attacks and successful attacks can reveal sensitive information to attackers or even deface web systems. As part of SQLi defence strategy, effective detection of SQLi attacks is important. Even though different techniques have been devised over the years to detect SQLi attacks, limited work has been undertaken to review and compare the effectiveness of these detection techniques. As such, in order to address this gap in literature, this paper performs a review and comparative analysis of the different SQLi detection techniques, with the aim to detect SQLi attacks in an effective manner and enhance the security of web applications. As part of the investigation, seven SQLi detection techniques including machine learning based detection are reviewed and their effectiveness against different types of SQLi attacks are compared. Results identified positive tainting and adoption of machine learning among the most effective techniques and stored procedures based SQLi as the most challenging attack to detect

A review and comparative analysis of vulnerability scanning tools for wireless LANs

The 21st century has been characterized by the widespread proliferation and use of wireless networks, notably, Wireless LANs, that enhanced access to information and resources to businesses and the society at large. However, WLANs are vulnerable to a range of security issues such as replay and KRACK attacks. In addition, the underlying security protocols used within WLANs, including Wired-Equivalent Privacy and the different versions of the Wi-Fi Protected Access have had security vulnerabilities that led to deprecation of few previous versions. As such, in the process of hardening security of such networks, vulnerability assessment is important and for this, various vulnerability scanners are available on the market. This paper critically reviews and analyses key vulnerability scanners for the context of WLANs. As part of the investigation, four tools, notably Nessus Vulnerability Scanner, OpenVAS, Nexpose and GFI LanGuard are reviewed, and insights are provided following practical utilization. As key findings, different vulnerability scanners were found to address different kinds and number of vulnerabilities, where some of them can be more granular than others, even in terms of output provided to the user. Moreover, the scan duration was not consistent across tools and does not corelate with the number of vulnerabilities detected

Cloud robotic architectures: directions for future research from a comparative analysis

Advances in robotics and cloud computing have led to the emergence of cloud robotics where robots can benefit from remote processing, greater memory and computational power, and massive data storage. The integration of robotics and cloud computing has often been regarded as a complex aspect due to the various components involved in such systems. In order to address this issue, different studies have attempted to create cloud robotic architectures to simplify representation into different blocks or components. However, limited study has been undertaken to critically review and compare these architectures. As such, this paper investigates and performs a comparative analysis of existing cloud robotic architectures in order to identify key limitations and recommend on the future of cloud robotic architectures. As part of this study, 7 such architectures have been reviewed and compared and results showed limited evaluation of existing architectures in favour of security weaknesses

Improving wireless charging energy efficiency of mobile phones: analysis of key practices

As human beings became dependent on mobile phones, the relationship of these devices with the natural environment became more significant to study. Mobile phones require energy to operate and this is stored within connected batteries. Recently, there has been a shift in the way batteries of mobile phones are charged, namely, from wired to wireless charging. Being regarded as a transformational technology in the mobile world, many smartphone manufacturers have been investing in this technology. However, current wireless charging mechanisms meant for mobile phones are recognized to be slow and energy inefficient as compared to wired charging. Such inefficiency can in turn worsen the adverse impacts that mobile phones already have on the environment. This paper addresses the energy inefficiency issue during wireless charging of mobile phones by comparing different charging practices in order to identify opportunities for energy savings

TangiNet: a tangible user interface system for teaching the properties of network cables

Within many computer science related courses, networking is often included as a core module due to industry needs. An important topic within networking involves teaching students the properties of network cables and many students however find it challenging to learn networking-related topics thus reducing interest and motivation for learning. Through the use of Tangible User Interfaces (TUI), such challenges could be potentially addressed although limited work has been undertaken to create systems that teach networking related topics. In order to address this gap, this paper investigates the application of tangible user interface for teaching the properties of network cables through a proposed system called TangiNet. The proposed system was evaluated to assess four key aspects, namely, learnability, interaction, tangibility and enjoyment. For all the constructs investigated, positive overall results were obtained thus implying that such tool could be adopted in networking related courses for the addressed concepts