The Hindu : National : College kids show how to ‘Green IT’

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College kids show how to ‘Green IT’

Anand Parthasarathy

Affordable wireless network for monitoring soil conditions wins

— Photo: Special Arrangement

GREEN TEAM: Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan with the Mumbai-based Novices@work team in Bangalore on Friday. The team will represent the country in the global Imagine Cup contest in July in France.

BANGALORE: The challenge of ‘greening’ the world and the potential of Information Technology to provide the tools inspired over 18,000 Indian college students to create compelling solutions and vie for Microsoft’s annual Imagine Cup, a global IT competition for college students. The theme this year was technology for sustainable development.

The winner at Friday’s national finals here — Novices@work, the team from Mumbai-based Vivekananda Education Society’s (VES) Institute of Technology — created a cost-effective wireless network for monitoring the condition of the soil in farmland.

Using the latest ultra-small sensors that measure temperature, moisture, light conditions and other basic soil parameters, the team put them together in a wireless network and created the software to analyse the results. Team members — Krunal Dedhia, Paras Doshi, Saili Dharia and Veenit Mavani — took home a prize money of Rs 40,000. They will go to France in July to vie for the global Cup finals which offers $2 lakh ( approximately Rs.80 lakh) as prizes.

The first runner-up from VES as well as two other Mumbai colleges, Bharathi Vidyapeeth Engineering College and the Father Conceicao Rodriguez Technology Institute created a power management system for networks of PCs; while the second runner-up from Delhi University set up a system for lay citizens to report environmental hot spots.

“In pure passion for such meaningful challenges, Indian students are clear world leaders,” said Paul Murphy, Director of Innovation at Microsoft India, speaking to The Hindu.

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