Welcome to the eighth of Altitude Foundation’s #MicroChallenges2020
What’s a Micro Challenge?
These challenges are short activities to help you develop, revise or refresh your coding skills, posted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Today we look at the Internet of Things to find solutions to Micro Challenge #8!
Micro Challenge #8
This week, our focus is on problem solving. This may not seem immediately linked to coding; however, problem solving is a key part of a programmer’s role. They need to be able to break problems into smaller problems (sometimes called decomposition). They can then identify the best place to implement a solution to tackle the overall problem – or, potentially, the best places!
Digital Solutions and the Internet of Things:
If you haven’t already, have a look at yesterday’s challenge. After completing the challenge, watch this video about the Internet of Things.
Thinking about the problem you addressed in the last challenge, how could the Internet of Things help?
- Select a part of the problem where the internet of things might help solve the problem. Consider:
- What data you might need to help solve your problem
- How that data might be gathered
- What the input → output relationship might look like
If you like, you could present it like this:
Data
- Amount of people getting on at each bus stop before your stop
- Average delay over a long period of time
- Time spent by the bus in queues of traffic before your stop
Input
- Time it takes to get to bus stop
- Time you want to leave the house
- + data
Output
- Likelihood of catching each bus
- Recommend time to leave the house
Review it
Once you’ve completed the challenge, review it:
— Is there any other point where you might be able to ‘solve’ the problem?
— what are the advantages of using multiple data sources?
Advanced:
- Could you write up a sales pitch for your solution? Why is it the best solution for the problem? Might it be useful for other people as well?
Share it
We would love to see what you have created! Please send any pictures, videos, or files of your activities to us – either via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using #MicroChallenges2020 or to challenges@altitudefoundation.org. If you are emailing them to us, please let us know if you are happy for us to share your stuff on our social media platforms (with credit, of course).
Sign-up here to receive a weekly email with Micro Challenges top tips and solutions: