13 Sept: Enjoyed giving a presentation about BingBee at the Centre for Social Development Early Childhood Development conference (CSD ECD).  The pdf of the presentation is here (3.3MB), and a lower resolution version (1.7MB) here.

11 Sept: Finally got the extra security cage arrangement done this morning, with some difficulty.  The structure is wildly over-engineered relative to what I thought I asked for, and has constraints that only the "big" machines (newer ones) can live on one side of the hut, while all the smaller ones have to side on the other side.    Now we have to make postbox enclosures for the remaining 6 machines before they can be moved into the lock-down arrangement on the floor.

23 August: Went up at 9am to fix the pads.  I turned the machines on from home remotely, and we arrived at the site about 15 minutes later to find around 30 children swarming about.  Their school had been vandalized overnight and they'd all been sent home for the day. It was hectic, but quite a buzz trying to replace pads with some significant pressure from interested children!

16 August:  We're still up and going, with some new energy and some new content and activities planned for the next three weeks.  After quite a long absence I was delighted that things still seemed in good shape - 10 out of 10 machines working (although we need to replace almost all the window pads), and quite high levels of usage.

13 May: The last two new replacement screens finally arrived (from our insurance claim against the burglary in February - 3 months it took.)  So for the first time since then we're up to full-strength with all 10 kiosks working. I also spent a couple of hours last weekend painting the floor with bonding liquid to try to stop the excessively dusty conditions in the room.   I'm now awaiting some extra iron-work in the building - we're doing some more security on the inside (we don't presently have computer cages) , so our new arrangement will have two rails, top and side, the full length of the room, behind which the computers will stand on the floor. The side rails lock in the middle, and can be unlocked to provide access to the machines.   We're slowly making up some new camera and light-housing postboxes so that the machines don't need to stand up against the window.

Demand from the children still seems strong, with at least two people at each window on Friday, and about 10 more playing soccer.

23 April:  I've been very encouraged on the last few visits to Raglan Road.  On Friday 20th I counted 41 children at the centre - many playing football and frisbee.  This is in direct contrast to about 8 months ago when we turned the first computers on.  At that time I had a bad-mood week because I saw no children at all except some pre-schoolers who could not reach the BingBee windows.  So I feel quite confident in claiming that our project seems to be "creating a community" of children who now pitch up after school and engage each other.   The presence of the CSD volunteer students most weekday afternoons is also helping.  Kim, one of our volunteer students, took some photos and got them to make some drawings which we promised to load on the kiosks, much to their delight.

We've also put some new puzzles in place and created "hurdles" for the most popular videos.  So the children have to solve a puzzle before they can watch the video.  It is a surprisingly simple mechanism that seems to be very effective.  On the few occasions when I've offered to teach some of them how to solve the rubic sliding puzzle, the response has been very enthusiastic.  (Not very effective teaching, though - I really need someone who can speak isiXhosa in this role!) 

Hannah is picking up the monitoring software and we'll be installing a web cam soon to have some live updates of the site online.  I've changed the camera tracking and mounting arrangements to something more stable, and we're slowly moving the computers onto the floor.  I've just had a quote for some new burglar bar mechanisms (like computer cages, but much cheaper and simpler).  And the last two monitors to open up the last two kiosks after the burglary seem to be taking forever to arrive!  

2 April:  Our replacement server went in on Friday, we're slowly regaining functionality and remote control.  So the logs and graphs have been uploaded for the past six weeks (messy stuff, with machines stolen, manual switch-on/switch-off, pads damaged on the windows!).  But we're catching up, it is school holidays now over the two-week easter period, we have some exciting content updates planned. 

The camera which watches the pad takes a snapshot when there are sudden lighting changes. Here is a guy caught in the act of ripping a pad off the window.

17 March:  We reopened on Wednesday after some new burglar bars were fitted.  There are presently 8 kiosks working, no server, and the volunteers have been going up daily for an hour with the children.  Friday afternoon was absolutely buzzing with lots of activity at the kiosks, and plenty of soccer in the yard.  Our only current downside is the lack of remote manageability, so we need to drive up there to turn machines on and off.

8 March: It is not working: the shutters are messing up the machine setup, and frustrated children have ripped and vandalized some pads.  So we're taken a decision to close the facililty until new security measures are in place and we can leave the shutters open.  

5 March:  It was a tough week with a lot of paperwork, cleaning up, and picking up pieces.  We have 8 machines running again, with an insurance claim lodged for the 2 workstations, the server, and the two monitors we lost.  Our plan to electify the internal shutters was not viable - they are well grounded into the wall, and there are fears that pulsed HT close to the machines is going to cause too many secondary issues.  So we've moved to plan B - we now have a quote for some extra security burglar bars, with the work due to happen next week.  Until then, there is a daily obligation to open and close the shutters and turn the site on and off manually.

The better news is that we've met the first 6 student volunteers and it looks like they'll be a great asset. 

26 Feb. We took our first security hit last week: we lost two computers and one other was vandalized in a break in.  It is more than annoying that the security company initally told us that the did not respond to the alarm because the account had not been paid (in fact, they've now admitted that this was their bookkeeping error), so now their story is that the alarm didn't trigger because nobody managed to get into the building.  Yet the burglars took two machines, and removed memory from a third one!   Fortunately this is not my battle.  I think BingBee's fundamental premise is intact - we have a secure kiosk system with no expensive equipment exposed outside the windows.  However, we need some operational improvements to ensure that the security inside the building is hardened and tested periodically.    So we hope to get the remaining 7 systems up again within a day or two. Unfortunately the server was one of the systems that was taken: so for the next while we'll be in an offline mode again!    

9 Feb More technical stuff this week.  We've now got the site switching on and off autmatically on a timer, and we're adding and refining a number of remote monitoring features.  We now have a site-wide maintenance mode that lets us use the machines remotely while they're inaccessible by the children.  The surpise of the week was Wednesday 7 and Thursday 8, where we turned the machines on early to test some of this stuff.  Although all the children should have been at school, athe usage took off immediately!   

31 Jan: Oops! I goofed up on a remote site update and have had half the machines out for the past few days. Someone turned off power on most machines for a day or two too.  The good news, I guess, is that I saw the problem in the monitoring logs before I'd seen it at the site. I did drive past the facility earlier this week and thought it a bit weird that all the kids were only on the one side of the building, but parents were collecting offspring from school and there was too much traffic to stop. 

So our mechanisms for remote control and monitoring are improving and catching the problems - but it needs a more aggressive way of alerting us.  The statistics and graphs for the week reflect this problem.

26 Jan:  Great strides this week in enhancing remote maintenance and control of the facility.  Ingrid set up a remote VPN service, so we can manage the site from our offices.  I was able to collect usage statistics from a distance for the first time this morning. We're also able to update or reboot the systems remotely, and are now able to turn all the kiosk computers on or off from the server.  There is a world of difference beween maintaing the site from the comfort of home or office, and having to exercise care while we stand inside a hot, cramped, dusty, and noisy room!  (Yes, we have a plan that should reduce the amount of dust...)

22 Jan:  We've put BingBee@RaglanRoad online to ease maintenance and content updates!

15 Dec: We've added a usage graphing capability, and collected statistics since early December 2006. It's been pleasantly busy, aside from the weekend before Christmas until 2 Jan, while the centre was closed.    Browse the recent usage.