MQTT Frame – Beautifully Framed Live Data
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MQTT Frame Privacy Policy
Effective Date: [19th March 2025] Your privacy is important to us. This Privacy Policy explains how MQTTFrame (“we,” “our,” or “us”) handles your information. Information We Collect MQTTFrame does not collect,…
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Continue reading »SHIFT DIGITAL FRONTIERS REPORT UNVEILED DURING LONDON DATA WEEK
SHIFT, in collaboration with Arup and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Connected Environments Group at University College London (UCL), have released the “SHIFT Digital Frontiers” report, a visionary roadmap…
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Continue reading »Turning Any Device into a Literary Clock with MQTT
The Concept of the Literary Clock A literary clock is a unique fusion of literature and timekeeping. Every minute of the day is represented by a corresponding quote from a…
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Continue reading »Make a Scrolling Hub75 Matrix Display using a Pimoroni Interstate75W and MQTT
The post Make a Scrolling Hub75 Matrix Display using a Pimoroni Interstate75W and MQTT appeared first on Digital Urban.
Continue reading »Node.JS, Node Express and Puppeteer for Epaper / EInk Displays: How to Open a Web Page & Save as an Image
Sometimes there is a need to step back and do things as simply as possible. EInk / Epaper screens are amazing, they carrying on showing…
Continue reading »The Little Book of Public Space and the Internet of Things
Following on from our Little Book of Connected Environments and the Internet of Things we have a new publication – The Little Book of Public…
Continue reading »IoT 3D Printable Devices – The Spring 2021 Collection
At The Connected Environment Lab, part of The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, here at University College London we are designing and building a…
Continue reading »Download The Little Book of Connected Environments and the Internet of Things
Our Little Book of Connected Environments is about opening up the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) devices to provide information about our environment. From city-wide systems and the idea of the Smart City through to bui…
Continue reading »Make an eInk MQTT Reader for the Time, News and Environmental Data
‘THE’ is a mini MQTT Information Display for Time, News and Environmental Information. Using a 4.2-inch eInk screen, its concept is simple – to display information on a rotational basis, updating every coupl…
Continue reading »New MSc in Connected Environments – University College London
Three years in its creation, our new MSc in Connected Environments at University College London is now open for applications to study. Based at the world leading Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, part of the Bartlett Facul…
Continue reading »Raspberry Pi Internet Radio
Part of creating a new insight into ‘Connected Environments’ (more on that term in future posts) is understanding the function, design and nature of devices….
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3D Printing a Radiation Shield for the Weather Flow Air
The Weather Flow ‘Smart Weather Station‘ is arguably one of the most innovative weather sensors on the market. Launched via a kickstater campaign in 2017,…
Continue reading »Streaming Urban Data – YouTube Live
The increasingly availability of bandwidth along with advances in computer hardware and Internet services is making it possible to stream HD content, live from multiple…
Continue reading »Particles – 3dsMax and Lumion/Unity
Particle Flow is a versatile, powerful particle system for Autodesk’s 3ds Max. It employs an event-driven model, using a special dialog called Particle View, allowing you to combine…
Continue reading »The Making of the CASA Oculus Rift Urban Roller Coaster
Earlier this year CASA was invited to create a virtual reality exhibit for the Walking on Water exhibition, partnered with Grand Designs Live at London’s…
Continue reading »Linking a 1940′s Radio to the Internet of Things
In the corner of our apartment we have an old 1940′s radio, picked up a few years ago the original valves had already been removed, leaving it modified with a then transistor radio. As such it made the perfect project to remodify and bring up to date via a mix…
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Introducing the MSc and MRes Smart Cities at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Learn the New Science of Cities at University College London with the MSc in Smart Cities at The Bartlett’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis from September 2014. APPLY NOW FOR SEPTEMBER ENTRY As Course Director, i am pleased to announce the new MSc and MRes in Smart Cities, here at…
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Continue reading » CASA Barbican Cinema One Trailer and Live Stream: Future Cities and Digital Technologies
Cities have always been places where new technologies are invented but as more and more of the world’s population is living in cities, it is ever more urgent to consider their future. Cities are also being reinvented using new digital technologies and this one day conference will explore how CASA…
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Continue reading » Pedagogy meets Big Data and BIM – Big Data, Sensing and Augmented Reality: Paper and Key Note Presentation
In June 2013 The Bartlett held a conference entitled ‘Pedagogy meets Big Data and BIM’. The conference brought together over 100 participants from across the United Kingdom, European Union and the United States from diverse backgrounds such as academic institutions, government and industry – including ARUP, Autodesk, Balfour Beatty, BAM, and…
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Continue reading » CASA Future Cities and Digital Technologies Conference – Free Event – September 27th
Cities have always been places where new technologies are invented but as more and more of the world’s population is living in cities, it is ever more urgent to consider their future. Cities are also being reinvented using new digital technologies and this one day conference will explore how CASA…
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Continue reading » Tweet City: Building Heights by Number of Tweets Movie (London)
What if London’s buildings grew according to the amount of data they generate? Stephan Hügel (@urschrei) and Flora Roumpani (@en_topia) two of our PhD students from The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, have been working on a system to read in twitter data to CityEngine and link the geo…
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Continue reading » Two New Lecturer Posts in CASA – Closing Date 12th July
We are pleased to announce two new lecturer posts here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis: Lecturer in Urban Analytics- Ref:1345485 and Lecturer in Spatial Modelling and Complexity – Ref:1345477 Closing Date 12 Jul 2013 Latest time for the submission of applications 2pm About CASA The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)…
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Continue reading » UCL Live Campus Augmented Reality App – Created by Masters Students at CASA
UCLive is an Augmented Reality Map of UCL developed by students on the Masters in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation at CASA. Featuring live data, the augmented reality android app works by simply pointing your mobile device at any of the UCL maps across campus. Running in Unity and mixing a number of GIS and…
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Continue reading » UCL Quad – Procedural City and Lumion
The Quadrangle at University College London was designed by William Wilkins and constructed between 1827 and 1828. It is a natural building of urban research as its surroundings provide a mix of architectural styles. The 3D model of the quad was built using SketchUp with photos grabbed via a mobile phone – quick and…
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Continue reading » AR Navigation System for Pedestrians – Android App
Sung-Hyun Jang, one of my Ph.D. students here at CASA, has launched an Android app called AR Navigation System for Pedestrians. The app is a part of his Ph.D. studies, and is an attempt at visualising geographic information via an augmented reality interface. Specifically, the app provides navigation information via…
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Continue reading » Developing Classical and Contemporary Models in ESRI’s City Engine – CASA Working Paper 191
CASA Working Paper 191 – Developing classical and contemporary models in ESRI’s City Engine – is now available to download. By Flora Roumpani, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London: Abstract In this paper we describe the development of projects which aim to explore the use of…
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Continue reading » Colours: A Live London Weather Dashboard
Here at The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis we run a Davis Vantage Pro 2 unit with Solar and UV sensors from a rooftop on Tottenham Court Road. The current output is via our live ‘Weather Dials‘ page, which is all singing and dancing, complete with graphs and updates every…
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Continue reading » 500 Words a Day: Academic Writing
Its not something many academics admit – but writing is hard, not for all, there are some academics who simply flow words but for many its a challenge. There is nothing worse than the blank page of a Word/LaTeX document, knowing you have 10,000 words to go and only a…
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Continue reading » Working Paper – Virtual Cities: Digital Mirrors into a Recursive World
We present our working paper entitled ‘Virtual Cities: Digital Mirrors into a Recursive World‘. The paper comes in at approximately 9000 words and explores visualisation in cities ranging from Twitter to Second Life and through to NeoGeography and The Paraverse. The abstract is below, we have added it as new…
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Continue reading » 15,000 Agents: A* Pathfinding
Games engines such as Unity are the perfect platform for agent based modelling, they allow a combination of 3D urban cityscapes and navmeshes/grid graphs/point graphs and local avoidance systems. The A* Pathfinding project features an array of techniques for rapid pathfinding or AI development using a low memory footprint. We…
Continue reading »Unity Traffic System – City Traffic
Creating a sandbox style traffic system in Unity is a challenge. As our previous posts have shown agents can use NavMesh and calculate shortest paths but the hit is high on processing which in turn limits the number of agents in a scene. Sander van der Vegte is a multidisciplinary game developer who…
Continue reading »Police Agent City Ball – Unity/NavMesh and CityEngine
The natural conclusion of our recent posts on Unity and CityEngine is of course a physics/navmesh police chase with the agent target being a drag and drop ball. We will release a version next week on the win/mac platforms for those interested – the aim was to explore shortest path…
Continue reading »Urban Ball – CityEngine, Unity and Agent Based Modelling on the iPad
CityEngine combined with Unity and a tablet – iOS requires a developers account, Android simple needs the 30 days Unity trial – allows city wide models to run with a touch based interface. We have used our recent work on Unity and Agent Based modelling to create a simple app…
Continue reading »Augmented Reality City Table Top – Unity, CityEngine and Vufoira
The Vuforia AR Extension for Unity allows developers to build AR apps using the cross-platform game engine – Unity. Working with both the free and pro versions of Unity, Vuforia is not only free it is also one of the best out there in terms of tracking and image based tagging. Running…
Continue reading »Trail Rending of Agents with NavMesh, Physics, Unity and CityEngine
Combining simple agent based models with physics objects and rendering techniques in a game engine has potential for city wide 3D urban modelling. Traditional techniques often use JAVA based solutions or custom written toolkits with researchers developing their own models. With recent advances in procedural modelling and game engine technology,…
Continue reading »Shortest Path Modelling and NavMesh in Unity and CityEngine
Shortest path network analysis, pedestrian modelling and moving agents around complex city scenes has always been a specialised domain. As regular readers will know we have always taken the view that game engines are arguably better suited to agent based modelling – especially in terms of pedestrian and transport than…
Continue reading »Processing, Lumion, CityEngine, 3D Max and a touch of Jazz
One of the questions in modelling a ‘living city’ is how to combine aspects of agent based modelling for crowds, traffic simulation and 3D cities without a work flow that takes weeks and a high end graphics house. Using the intriguing P5 to Max script it is possible to control…
Continue reading »Flying Cities
Flying Cities is a concept animation by Stefan Haberkorn – it is one of the best uses of Lumion we have seen so far. It goes beyond the normal architectural visualisation and makes good use of landscaping and volumetric clouds. The full movie below sets the standard: Head over to http://www.vi-3d.de/ to see more examples of Stefans…
Continue reading »Lumion 3 – ESRI CityEngine and Autodesk 3D Max
Lumion is one of the best rapid visualisation systems out there for architectural style rendering. Its ease of use and ability to create scenes complete with advanced sky and lighting effects make it perfect for urban visualisation. With the release of version 3 we thought we would take the free version for…
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