People in the developing world face some of the world’s biggest challenges. This creates the opportunity to make some of the world’s most innovative and effective solutions. Modern electronics can play a large role in creating these solutions. For many years, developing, building and deploying electronics in developing economies has been cost-prohibitive and ineffective, but with the advent of low-cost embedded systems, this is changing. The time is ripe to introduce these systems to the developing world and empower users there to find and build the tools they need to tackle today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.
Full stack projects help students learn the full range of technologies for implementing hardware projects, from sensor and actuator drivers to scheduling routines, web servers and clients. We use embedded systems because they are robust, have low power needs and have reached a price point that is feasible even in regions with extreme budget constraints.
At Full Stack Embedded, we strive to
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Foster skills for building full stack projects in the developing world
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Connect talented people with similar goals and support collaboration among them
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Promote openness and a culture of sharing
in our quest to build a better tomorrow.
At Full Stack Embedded we spread knowledge in the developing world by building full-stack, open source projects that demonstrate a deep stack of hardware and software technologies. These projects are introduced in workshops to aspiring developers in developing countries. Every workshop produces at least two elite students who continue to organise workshops in the time following. This ensures that the knowledge becomes firmly anchored at the universities where we work. It also provides students with the opportunity to deepen their knowledge by sharing it with others.
Each workshop takes place in countries where we have established cooperations with local universities. The university supplies the rooms; generally we supply small amounts of hardware and plan the workshops based on requests from the students themselves. The travel costs generally cannot be reimbursed by the university, but their support in making travel arrangements and willingness to buy appropriate hardware for their students ensures that we can collaborate effectively on a long-term basis.
Our workshops take place in a collaborative atmosphere where the fastest students help any struggling compatriots. We strive especially to support underrepresented groups, such as women or students from underrepresented countries, such as Burkina Faso. It is our goal that students are able to teach what they have learned to others, and use the skills they have developed to create projects of their own that are relevant in their lives.
Between workshops, we help our students prepare by publishing tutorials and homework, and by encouraging them to work together and exchange ideas. All material we produce is out in the open and free for anybody to learn from, use, improve upon and adapt to their own purposes. This helps us provide support to our elite students, who organise further local workshops, sometimes in their home countries, in order to further enhance local skills and knowledge.
We use Python at Full Stack Embedded because it is an excellent language for teaching, it works well with our primary platform, the Raspberry Pi, and it covers all of the domains of expertise that might be interesting to our students. The fact that it is open source and easy to learn, and that it supports so many programming paradigms, makes it the our tool of choice for teaching programming and software and hardware development.
Since 2016 Full Stack Embedded has been running workshops in West Africa. Since 2017 we are recognised under German law as a non-profit organisation. The full record of our activities can be found on our website.
Our work began with teaching workshops in Togo and Ghana. Subsequently we returned and have built up a strong working relationship with the Accra Institute of Technology’s Robotics Club, which continues to produce excellent teachers and ambassadors for our organisation. Every year we expand our set of workshops that our students are familiar with. The students use the workshops to learn concrete skills in various fields. Each workshop uses hardware that is already present in the host country. Because all projects use the same hardware, each project is physically compatible with the others.
Because our students are committed to re-teaching the workshops to their fellow students, the robotics clubs of the universities have widespread knowledge of how to build several systems. These include proximity detectors, autonomous and remote controlled toy cars, and Internet of Things applications such as smart trash cans.
As our students have concluded their studies they have spread throughout Africa. Many of them have run Full Stack Embedded workshops in their home countries. Thus we have solid representation in Burkina Faso and Congo-Brazzaville. This year a representative of the FSE Executive Board visited the schools that we have established cooperations with in Congo and taught more than 150 students in workshops. This has allowed us to consolidate our relationship with these skills and establish concrete targets for future workshops.
Our star students have gone on not only to reach successful employment in their field (which is often difficult in their countries of residence) but also to demonstrate their skills in other ways. Our former students include:
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the founders of Luzabu Group, a Congolese organisation focused on making technical and business skills available to students in Congo.
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several successful women who have invented aids for blind people and wearable monitoring devices for pregnant women
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the winners of the prestigious Ghana Tertiary Award for Most Outstanding Students in Engineering
and many more students - too many to list, unfortunately.
In 2020 we plan to return to Africa and expand our operations within Ghana, Togo and Congo-Brazzaville. As we are currently 100% self-financed, we would be extremely grateful if the PSF were to fund all or a part of FSE’s activities in preparing for and executing the workshops for year.
The activities in preparation for the FSE 2020 workshops will encompass:
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Developing a prototype student tracking system according to requirements specified by our Togolese partners as technical demonstrator project. This project will have the goal of providing an automated solution to track student attendance of lectures at the university.
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Acquiring the hardware in order to integrate and test the application
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Planning and executing the travel for several teachers to our three target countries, in coordination with our African partners, for a total of four workshops (Accra, Ghana; Lomé, Togo; Brazzaville, Congo; Pointe-Noire, Congo)
The prototype student tracking system workshop will be taught in Accra and Lomé, where the students are more advanced. We will teach a Park Distance Control (PDC) workshop in the Congolese universities, with the focus on learning Python basics and using those skills to write object-oriented drivers for an ultrasonic sensor, a push button, an LED and a buzzer. The final step of the PDC workshop will be to combine all of these drivers into an application and integrate this with the actual hardware on a Raspberry Pi in order to build a functioning PDC.
Of course we will also be executing further activities in order to increase our visiblity in Germany and other countries where potential sponsors could be found (to date this has activity has been neglected in favour of the technical and organisational work). These activities, however, are outside the scope of this proposal.
As we use only volunteer work, no costs are expected for developing the prototype application for our workshops in 2020. In addition to off-the-shelf hardware, we also use a customised FSE developer board in order to limit the amount of soldering necessary to complete projects. The FSE developer board has connections to the Raspberry Pi, voltage converters, an integrated LED and various other features that make it easier for students to learn basic electrical engineering skills.
We estimate the following costs for acquiring the hardware for the example project for 2020:
| Item | Estimated price per procurement (€) | Number required | Total (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
Raspberry Pi Zero W |
15 |
1 |
15 |
FSE developer board |
25 |
1 |
25 |
Fingerprint reader |
48 |
1 |
48 |
Webcam (Rpi Cam) |
25 |
1 |
25 |
Miscellaneous hardware (wires, etc.) |
5 |
1 |
5 |
For an estimated total of 118 EUR.
Additionally, new teachers will need to use exemplary Park Distance Control hardware for training before the workshops in Congo. The costs for these are as follows:
| Item | Estimated price per procurement (€) | Number required | Total (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
Raspberry Pi Zero W |
15 |
3 |
45 |
Buzzer |
2 |
3 |
6 |
Ultrasonic sensor |
2 |
3 |
6 |
FSE developer board |
25 |
3 |
75 |
Miscellaneous hardware (wires, etc.) |
5 |
3 |
15 |
This produces an estimated total of 147 EUR.
Additionally, assuming that two teachers fly from Germany in order to do the workshops in each host country, the following travel costs are to be expected:
| Item | Estimated price per procurement (€) | Number required | Total (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
Visa for Ghana |
110 |
2 |
220 |
Return flight to Accra from Frankfurt |
700 |
2 |
1400 |
Daily subsistence in Accra (including food, hotel, transport) |
30 |
2 |
60 |
Visa for Togo |
30 |
2 |
60 |
Return flight to Lomé from Frankfurt |
650 |
2 |
1300 |
Daily subsistence in Lomé (including food, hotel, transport) |
30 |
2 |
60 |
Visa for Congo-Brazzaville |
150 |
2 |
300 |
Flight from Frankfurt to Brazzaville |
800 |
2 |
1600 |
Flight from Pointe-Noire to Frankfurt |
900 |
2 |
1800 |
Return bus travel from Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire |
40 |
2 |
80 |
Daily subsistence in Congo-Brazzaville (including food, hotel, transport) |
30 |
2 |
60 |
For an estimated total of 6940 EUR.
Finances permitting, we will also bring hardware sets for our students, which we would leave at the universities where we teach. This would supplement the hardware procured by the universities directly.
Assuming a net cost per hardware set of 118 EUR for Ghana and Togo and 147 EUR for Congo-Brazzaville, this would produce the following costs:
| Country | Number of sets required | Total (€) |
|---|---|---|
Ghana |
10 |
1180 |
Togo |
10 |
1180 |
Congo-Brazzaville |
20 |
2940 |
For an estimated total of 5300 EUR.
The high number of sets for Congo-Brazzaville is due to the fact that we just consolidated our collaboration with the universities there this year. Thus they do not have a large amount of hardware already available. Furthermore, we teach in two cities in Congo-Brazzaville, and both of the universities where we teach have a high number of interested students.
This produces a total financial need as follows:
Development hardware |
265 EUR |
Travel |
6940 EUR |
Provision of hardware to universities |
5300 EUR |
Grand total |
12505 EUR |
There is limited potential to lower this estimate by lowering the amount of hardware we bring to the host universities. However, experience has shown that having a high ratio of hardware units to students results in better learning outcomes. Hardware donated to the universities in the past has been used to great effect in following years, and in fact as all Full Stack Embedded projects are hardware intercompatible, there is great potential for synergies and student-designed projects using this hardware. This makes the hardware an excellent investment in the future of our students at the universities that host us.
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Requirements for new project 2020 agreed with Togolese partners: April 2019
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Teacher roster for 2020 workshops is finalised: May 2019
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System design and specification completed: May 2019
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Work plan for producing 2020 project agreed with developers: June 2019
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All system components of new project are integrated and tested: September 2019
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Travel plans are finalised: October 2019
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Workshop dry runs in Europe: November 2019
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Workshops take place in Africa: January 2020
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Final debrief and lessons learned: February 2020
As an outcome of the work outlined in this proposal we expect to:
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Have an additional technology demonstrator project in our repertoire
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Strengthen our relationship with the universities where we teach
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Teach approximately 70 new students how to use Python in order to build robotic applications
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Find at least two new students at each university who are capable of teaching the skills they have learned to their fellow students in our absence
Full Stack Embedded has a track record extending back several years of developing educational hardware/software projects and teaching these in West Africa. Our former students have been running workshops in Ghana and their home countries of Burkina Faso and Congo-Brazzaville for several years. In 2019 we extended our core operations to Congo-Brazzaville and established solid cooperation agreements with the Ministry of Education and two universities there. Our past experience is extensive and leaves no doubts that we should fail to complete the necessary technical and organisational work required in order to accomplish our goals for 2020.
This is due in no small part to the robustness of our local contacts. In previous years they have been crucial in our combined success in spreading robotics education to West and Central Africa. For the 2019-2020 timeframe our contacts in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo and Congo-Brazzaville have reaffirmed their commitment to continue their work with Full Stack Embedded.
The core group of Full Stack Embedded European teachers are permanently and gainfully employed as engineers in the automotive and aerospace industries, respectively. Since 2018 the number of active participants - both as developers and teachers - has more than doubled in Europe. We plan on investing further efforts in the recruitment of new European volunteers, so that the organisation has fewer points of failure.
These reasons make us confident that we will accomplish our ambitious goals for the following year, as in previous years.
The target group of Full Stack Embedded are young West and Central African students. These are typically underrepresented in technical fields due to the widespread poverty in their home countries and the lack of opportunities for practical education. Beyond this general demographic, we focus significant efforts on encouraging young women who are interested in computer science and electrical engineering to participate in our courses.
As elsewhere around the world, this is a difficult endeavour, but two of our woman students have gone on to invent innovative devices to help the visually impaired and pregnant women. One of them is now employed as an electrical engineer in Accra; the other is considering marketing her invention, a wearable contraction monitor, in Ghana. At every opportunity, we encourage these students to showcase their achievements and be a positive example to aspiring young women. Although they have now both left university, one of the officers of the Accra Institute of Technology’s Robotics Club is a woman whom we had the pleasure of teaching this year.
Many of the accomplishments of Full Stack Embedded in the area of promoting women are due in large part to our good fortune of having had a woman in the Executive Board. She was succeeded this year by a teacher from Accra, but continues to be involved in the organisation and help us to establish priorities that serve the goal of supporting women in technology.
Currently Full Stack Embedded has no contributors beyond its own volunteers. However, we are currently searching for new sponsorship opportunities and will be transparent concerning our funding capabilities throughout.
Full Stack Embedded adheres fully to the Python Software Foundation’s Code of Conduct. Our activities are furthermore in line with the Python Software Foundation’s mission in that we promote the use of Python and support its adoption by a diverse and international community of Python programmers.