iOS developers who use CoreLocation frequently are often thinking about how to test their work. In the past Xcode had a nice way to simulate locations using GPX files, however a drawback was the altitude and course could not be simulated. To get over this, developers used Automation Instruments to set the location that would be passed into the LocationManager. This was great as it allowed developers to test their location based apps within Xcode using JavaScript. With Xcode 8 Apple decided to remove the Automation Instruments tool in hopes that developers would start using the UI Testing Infrastructure more widely. After many attempts to find something to test with, I stumbled upon the GPX Location Manager repo. I quickly realized that it may work and added the Cocoa Pod to my project. When I first tested it, I quickly realized it was not simulating the speed or course that I was passing into it. I started looking into the files and realized that I could modify the code to accept those and did that. I’m happy to say I found a way to simulate location once again.

As part of our SYDE 361 design course, our class was tasked with tackling an X-Prize challenge. The problem space that we selected was earthquake/disaster management. During this project we designed a way to allow two-way communication between first responders and citizens during a natural disaster. Working in Sprints, we came up with different prototypes and concepts that we saw as viable solutions to the communication problem during natural disasters. In the end, our team build an app that gives first responders to know who is safe during a natural disaster.

I like data visualizations and in aviation there are a few cools ones that show how air traffic moves around the world. One weekend during a coop term I was a bit bored and decided to try my hand at creating one. I’ve often wondered why no one has created a visualization of an flights that is interactive. Sort of like this one but interactive so that users can zoom in and out and move around. I’d seen a few visualizations using THREE.js but the maps are not the best. I wanted to try making one with Google Maps so that users could have a good map based to see exactly where flights are flying over.

One of the most challenging aspects of this project was finding a way to get data of historical flights. Unfortunately, the best solution that I could come up with was to brute force scrape html from Flight Aware using a Python script. Although this worked, it wasn’t as easy as I hoped and it is fairly easy for my script to break if Flight Aware changes the way they display data. Having said this, I was able to extract the data, display it to a Google Map and animate the data allowing users to see the flights and be able to interact with it. I would love to spend more time extending this project to take multiple airlines at once and make it easier for users to learn more about specific flights. You can checkout this project here.

I am an avid photographer and particularly like taking photographs of stars. However, one challenge with astrophotography is getting a photograph of a star without any light trails when shooting with exposures greater than about 10s. Traditionally, photographers would purchase stabilizing mounts for thousands of dollars to get photographs. Unfortunately as a student, I can not afford that and decided that I would try and make my own mount. Working with a friend, we designed the mount and calculated how fast the motor would have to rotate at to counteract the rotation of the earth. We then wrote Arduino code to run the motor and tested it out. After comparing the photos, the results showed that the mount reduced the amount of star trails compared to not using the mount.

Flying has been a passion of mine since I was 6 years old. Ever since then, all I have wanted to do is fly planes or do something in the aviation industry. After graduating high school, I went out to a local flight school and started my flight training. Today I have approximately 250 hours total time and am a flight instructor.