Colin Telford Technician-demonstrator Applied Art & Design

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1 Learning Beacons Using the Internet of Things to deliver health and safety materials in student workshops Dr Nik Whitehead Associate Professor Applied Computing University Of Wales Trinity St David Colin Telford Technician-demonstrator Applied Art & Design

2 Project Background Swansea School of Art includes the historic Welsh School of Architectural Glass (founded in 1935) Teaches practical skills in both architectural and decorative glass Students have access to a set of workshops with specialised industrial machinery for cutting, heating, etching and treating glass High-quality Health & Safety training is a legal requirement, and easy access to instruction manuals for these devices is essential Paper copies of these are held in each workshop

3 Aim: Aims and Objectives To investigate the use of Physical Web technology to provide users of the Glass Workshops with easily accessible Health & Safety materials Objectives: To produce high-quality bilingual Health & Safety materials that can easily be accessed using mobile devices To use Bluetooth Beacons to point users towards those materials To record the usage of such materials

4 What is the physical web? Google project relating to the Internet of Things (IoT) Aims to provide location-based information through Open Source technologies using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons First launched in October 2014 via GitHub as a response to Apple s 2013 launch of the ibeacon technology Uses Eddystone beacon profile (released July 2015) In September 2016 the Minister for Skills & Science announced that the WG wants Wales to become a leader in IoT technology

5 Bluetooth LE beacons (also known as UriBeacons) are available from multiple manufacturers from 11 each (retail) and can last up to a year on a single CR 2032 Lithium cell The URLs broadcast by these are detected using a specialised app or via a Chrome browser add-on (

6 Accessing the material Students download the Physical Web app from the Apple app store or Google Play Running this software shows any beacons in range and allows the student to access them

7 Methodology Multimedia H&S materials were produced in collaboration with the Glass support staff and the Technology-Enhanced Learning Unit These materials are available via a secure website using learning beacons in each of five workshops Each workshop s web page contains text and video materials demonstrating the safe use of the equipment within the workshop Access to the website was logged in order to evaluate the use of the system by workshop users

8 Results so far A workshop introduced the project and helped the students get online A wide range of videos and documents have been made available on the website Some of these describe how to operate machinery safely, others demonstrate particular practical techniques These are currently in English but there are plans to provide Welsh language versions as well 2-3 students use the materials each week (cohort ~12)

9 Results so far The batteries only lasted 4 months In practice it would be better to have mains powered beacons This limited lifespan can probably be doubled by judicious use of the beacons sleep function Wifi/4G access is problematic in the large old building used, so more wifi repeaters need to be added Health & Safety inspectors praised the innovative way of publicising the materials

10 Future Work It is expected that the working system for the current academic year ( ) will Provide bi-lingual H&S information, including video demos, via users mobile phones/tablets Provide a large touch-screen to access to the website developed for those with wifi/4g connectivity problems Reduce the workload on the support staff Provide a baseline against which further projects can be measured

11 Thank you for your interest For more information contact Dr Nik Whitehead