University - computer science project

[marsrat]

Afternoon all.

Rather bizarre thread so I apologise in advance.

I am studying Computer Science at university right now, and I've got a period of time before I submit my initial proposal for a 3rd year project.
Would love to involve caving in it some way or another.

Any ideas? (could be anything which somewhat requires the use of programming. Any particular issues you've had in caving which you always thought could be automated?)

Yours aye,
Marsrat.

 

[ChrisJC]

When I did my dissertation in the 90's, one option was to do something with cave surveying and rendering the results in 3D. Much like Survex is now.

I did something else unrelated to caves!

Chris.

 

[Ian Ball]

If you had the data you could try to come up with some water level processor for the popular scout/school/led group trips. If you could put in some calculator for rain fall across a catchment area, then model the water rise and fall through the caves impacted, perhaps you could produce a tool which could be used to guide the decision to avoid or not.
You could add in a permeability value of ground for summer flooding? I think it would be a challenge to convince anyone that the values you would produce should be taken as gospel, but all can I think of.

 

[Bob Mehew]

see pm

 

[ChrisB]

If you could put in some calculator for rain fall across a catchment area, then model the water rise and fall through the caves impacted, perhaps you could produce a tool which could be used to guide the decision to avoid or not.

Somebody has already done that for whitewater paddlers - see https://riverpredictor.uk/

 

[mikem]

Has come up a few times before, the hardest part is getting reliable rainfall forecasts (they use Norwegian yr.no whilst isthedartrunning uses metoffice, sometimes giving wildly different results for Dartmoor):

illusion pot

Hi, I'm with UNCC and we are thinking of doing illusion pot on Sunday. We are aware that it takes a while to drain and are wondering if people would recommend going down tomorrow?

ukcaving.com

 

[Standard Unit of Tom]

I've always had the idea in the back of my head of something that can read rigging topos for you and then cross reference it to an existing database (with your rope lengths and available metalwork) in order to spit out all the trips you could possibly do instead of having to comb through websites such as CNCC (especially for South Wales cavers like me who are unfamiliar with the area) and then to further it have it calculate different combinations of trips you could do at the same time and still have enough rope. Because a problem I find on weekends away is I spend so much time figure what we can do and all have enough rope 😅

 

[ChrisB]

something that can read rigging topos for you and then cross reference it to an existing database (with your rope lengths

You've seen this, have you? There's a thread about it but the site search doesn't work with short words like "what can I rig"

What can I rig?

Given the ropes you've got, what caving trips can you rig in the Yorkshire Dales?

aricooperdavis.github.io

 

[jimmo62]

Small handheld device to record progress thru a cave then use this data and the BCA radon concentration data to calculate dose using the complex dose tracking method?

 

[Andrew N]

Something that reads Survex files and does some sort of interesting operations on them. Cave survey data is a big graph - so lots you can do:

• Loop closures
• Pathfinding
• Distance estimation
• Volumetric calculations (approximate)
• Lots of comparisons of the above

 

[aricooperdavis]

I believe there are a lot of webmasters who need help bringing their websites into the modern era. Email it@british-caving.org.uk and I'm sure Simon will be able to point you in the direction of some BCA IT projects desperately in need of attention.

 

[Stuart France]

I suggest you join in with or take over the Dan-yr-Ogof water depth telemetry project that I've been doing. I'm a busy person. There's an article here:

https://linetop.co.uk/dyo/creg_j123.pdf

The system got flooded and/or over-pressured in some mega floods last Sept and is still in the cave. Its replacement with longer cables, higher pressure rating and over-pressure protection is sat in my house. The windows app which will run in the cave ticket office is happily running in the house uploading fake data every 15 mins. There is a browser webpage that displays results to the caving public but it currently doesn't update the html (needs some Python or a PS script).

There is a viable radio connection from OFD1 to DYO, so when the DYO Mk2 is installed and working, then it's possible, God willing i.e. SWCC, to send the OFD1 data to DYO and use the DYO 'gateway' to publish it live by running a second instance of the DYO app and likewise a second user webpage but for OFD1:

https://linetop.co.uk/dyo

Contact me if interested.

 

[marsrat]

Many thanks all for the replies, I'm currently going through them and writing up a feasibility report (and seeing if my assigned tutor will authorise it as a suitable project). Hopefully speak to some of you soon!