Peshwa Kalin Stepwell in Badlapur

There is a proverb in Marathi "Kakhet Kalsa ni Gavala Valsa"

Kakhet means in your armpit. Kalsa means a vessel. The saying means the vessel is with you but you are searching for it in the entire village (Gava). Women usually carry the water vessels in between their arm and chest. The phrase is quite useful when someone is searching the entire room for their spectacles, but they have forgotten that the specs are on their forehead.

Recently I was randomly scrolling the news-feeds on Facebook, when I came across a couple of picture, which one of my friends had shared, of a step-well in Badlapur of historic significance.

Badlapur is a suburban town in the central railway route of Mumbai. I live in the adjacent town of ambernath approximately 8 km from badlapur. Hence it came to me as bit of a surprise that I did never knew about such a well's whereabouts. I searched the internet but found little reference of any such thing, so I decided to make a visit there myself.

History:

The Villagers refer to it as a "Shivkalin Vihir",( Shivkalin- Era of Chhatrapati Shivaji , Vihir- 'Well' in marathi) but on actual accounts this well was built under the reign of Peshwa Bajirao-I, by his younger brother and military commander of the Maratha army, Chimaji Ballal bhat or Chimaji Appa.
Chimaji Appa led a conquest of Vasai fort against the Portuguese ,due to the spread of Christianity,as a program to annihilate Hindus through conversion or massacre was intensely practised by the Portuguese.

Deololi is a small village that lies on the route from Poona (pune) to Vasai. Due to unavailability of a source of water nearby, a stepwell was built in order to provide usable amount of water for the contingents of the Maratha army that would take a halt there.

Features :

The Step-well is shaped in the from of a 'Keyhole' or as the natives suggests in form of a 'Shiv-linga'.

The Key-hole shape of the well.

It is built in basalt rock and has 18 steps that takes you to the water-level. The steps end at the entrance of the well carved intricately. There is a idol of the deity Ganesh carved on the top of the door along with his guards besides with one of them holding a sword.

                             

 

The deity Ganesh with guards besides, one of the guards can be seen holding a sword.

The walls besides the stairs has niches provided for lamps for lighting during nights.The well has a rejuvenating and lively source of water which sustains water throughout the year. The water of this well is still used for household chores by the villagers. Due to recent headlines in the local newspaper the place has been clean of weeds and other bushes and is attracting visitors on daily basis.

Route:

The Deololi village is approximately 6km from badlapur railway station. one has to reach badlapur west and drive parallel to the railway station towards karjat ,cross the Ulhas river bridge,and turn right to Badlapur village. Driving for a while one should not leave the asphalt road and turn right for every divergent road or ask a fellow passer-by. It is better to keep an eye on the mile indicator of your vehicle as the village is around 5 to 6 kms from railway station. The village has countable number of houses and there is no board that names it so one has to be cautious so that they don't miss it. Enquiring with people is the best way to keep yourself from getting lost.After reaching the Deololi village you can ask any one about the 'Shivkalin Vihir', as that is what the natives call it.

If your are looking for a short getaway on the weekend and whether or not holds good interest in history this step-well will provide you with best 20 minutes look into the bygone Peshwa history. Sitting on the the walls of the well , your feet dangling inside , the water calm and clear so you can see deep into it , the savor of the surroundings mixed with the whiff of cow-dung, and a panoramic view of the surrounding range of Chanderi fort, Malang gad and Taoli will make you euphoric for days coming.

You need not pack your bags for this one, Just hit the road!

Travelogue Hyderabad Part-I

After three centuries , a kingdom once size of  France has been reduced to a few hundreds of acres and some countable palaces . Slums have sprung up in the pleasure gardens where the Nizams once flaunted their wealth. On the banks of river Musi, is this cyber hub of India, Hyderabad .The city with absolute blend of ancient and modern times where the sixteenth century Fort of Golconda and the skyscraper of the Cyber-tower lies in contemporary to the present. 

Ruled by the Sultanate of Qutub Shah Dynasty till 1724, and then By the Nizams of Asaf Jahi Dynasty from 1724 to 1948, Hyderabad has seen the days of glory rise and fade. Founded in 1591 by Muhammad Qutub Shah for his favourite Wife Bhagmati , a Hindu, the city was originally called Bhagnagar, but was later renamed Hyderabad, after Bhagmati's Muslim name Haider Begum. Later conquered by The Nizams, Viceroy of the Mughal Empire in Deccan. 

Today Hyderabad offers an exquisite way into its historic past through its monumental palaces and forts. Rising 130 meter above the surrounding plain, the fort of Golconda remains the potent symbol of what was once the wealthiest and most powerful princely state in all of India. In the seventeenth century it boasted eight gates, 87 bastions and 42 escape tunnels, and was protected by five sets of crenellated walls some 10 kilometres in circumference. 

The Golconda Fort
Photo credits : Photography|giri.

 

For 300 rupees a tourist guide will clap his hands at a certain guard post and for a promise of 10-rupee tip a man at the foot of the fort will respond to demonstrate how warnings were sounded at the times before telephony. the guide will explain how toilets were flushed three centuries ago, how Golconda granaries and water tanks enabled it to withstand a year-long sieges and how a tunnels wide enough for two horses to gallop abreast connected the fort to the city of Hyderabad and could be used to bring additional supplies and reinforcements.

The Seven Tombs, Hyderabad
Photo credits : Photography|giri

Just a kilometre away resides the Tombs of the Golconda Sultans , Popularly known as the "Seven Tombs ". These tombs are of the generations who ruled Hyderabad from the Fort Golconda.

Towards the old city, the centre of the Hyderabad is marked by its famous monumental identity, The Charminar. Built by the Qutub Shah sultan to mark the eradication of plague. It stands amidst a very busy marketplace and is one of the busiest roads in the city.

Charminar , to the left is the Laad Bazaar from where one can go to Chowmahala palace
Photo credit : Photography|giri

Surrounding Charminar one can find shopping bonanza of jewellery of lac studded with glittery stones. Hotels such as the Nimra and the Rumaan in the vicinity are famous for the Irani Tea. 

The surrounding market is called the Laad Bazaar. At the end of the Laad bazaar, for a left turn you will find the Chowmahala Palace , The Throne of Nizams. The First three Nizams ruled the kingdom from Fort Golconda but the Fourth Nizam Salabath Jung was paranoid of the Fort and found it threatening. Due to which he built the Chowmahala Palace, and the succeeding Nizams continued to rule the state from here. 

The Khilwat Mubarak Mansion, part of the Chowmahala Palace,Hyderabad.
Photo credits : Photography|giri

The Court of Nizam, inside Chowmahala Palace, Hyderabad.
Photo credits : Photography|giri

 The Chowmahala Palace , as the name suggests is a bunch of four Mansions- Khilwat Mubarak which houses the court of Nizam, Aftab Mahal , Afzal Mahal and Tahniyat Mahal. It was restored by Princes Esra , the First Wife of the eight Nizam, Mukharram Jah, and was opened for tourist in the year 2003. It has the Hall of Fame and Hall of Artefacts which gives its visitors the glimpse of the good-times of the bygone Nizam era. 

On the eastern side along the banks of Musi river, one can also find the famous Salarjung Museum. It holds the huge collection of Antiques collected by the Prime minister of the Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur, Nawab Yousuf Ali Khan Salarjung III. Salarjung III was a very fond of antiques and had collected the artefacts over a period of 35 years from around the world. 

                                                                     

       

                 The Late Nawab Salarjung III.
                 Photo credits : Photography|giri

The Museum Building.
Photo credits : Photography|giri

     
The most famous antique being the two faced wooden statue which is carved with the body of man on one side and a woman on the another side. besides this it also has a enormous collection of military weapons including swords, armours, guns, pistols, daggers etc. It also holds a collection of most unique walking sticks, ivory artefacts and various artefacts from over the world including England,  France, China, Japan, Egypt etc . An also the favourite among the visitors, the 16th century Mechanical Clock from England.

To the South of the Charminar, is the Zoological Park. Nehru Zoological Park. It ranks among the top zoos in Asia . Variety of Species of Fauna can be seen in here. White Tiger , Royal Bengal Tiger, One-Horned Rhinoceros, African Giraffe are the most entertained. The Reptile section and Night Birds section are its speciality .

The White Tiger At Nehru Zoological Park.
Photo credits : Photography|giri

Besides everything Hyderabad is also famous for its lush green gardens. Lumbini Park , NTR Gardens , Indira Park , Priyadarshani Park are some of the gardens most common among visitors. Lumbini Park is adjacent to the Hussain Sagar Lake, Where one can find a huge Statue of Buddha . Ferries are available to reach the foot of the statue. Surrounding area of the lake is Known as Necklace Road. From Lumbini park at walk-able distance one can also find The Birla Temple.

Hussain Sagar Lake with the Huge Statue of Buddha at the midst of the lake.
Photo credits : Photography|giri

The Birla Temple is a magnificent temple made of White Marble with intricate carving of Ramayana and Mahabharata. But unfortunately the use of camera is restricted in the temple premises so I could not get a photo of it. As the temple is situated on a hill the surrounding regions are clearly visible from the temple premises . Especially during late evenings one can see the entire Hussain sagar lake and the Necklace road twinkle with colourful lights.

Hyderabad has a lot to offer and everything cannot be listed here in one article so I am dividing this article into two. Another part of the Travelogue Hyderabad would be soon published.

That candid picturesque family!

Making family photographs has always been less of a cake walk for photographers capturing each of the family members personality and bringing out the family dynamics in your photos, even the most professionally experienced find themselves at strike. Nevertheless this piece of blog is a little divert from those usual cliched family pictures where in the Babuji (head of the family, mostly a grandfather) and Baa (Grandmother) sitting in the frame center with all other family members smile posing around them. The family which I clicked is the family of perception!

This was a weekend trek to Lohagad with a small bunch of friends. Not much of a trek, it took us about 2 hours to reach with walking-resting-clicking-walking along the trail. The fort offers one of the most scenic views of the surrounding regions with lonavla city on one side and the rural outskirts of "Pawan maval".

Pawan maval region as seen from the fort with Pawna Dam seen at distant.
Photo-courtesy: Photography|giri

The Lohagad fort
Photo-courtesy: Photography|giri

Visapur Fort as seen from Lohagad.
 Photo-courtesy: Photography|giri

Atop the fort with the huge expense of lush green carpet takes us to the lonavla end of the fort known as 'Vinchu Kata' or the Scorpian tain.

Vinchu kata, Lohagad.
Photo-courtesy: Photography|giri.

That Exhilarating view of it urged me get to follow the further trail till the very end of it. Walking past the short trails over the fort wall I saw something that made me click it.

Photo-courtesy: Photography|giri

A small pipal tree (Ficus religiosa ) rooting its grip to the fort walls with many of those contrasting red, maroon and pink shade leaves. This pic closely resembles a family. With a closer look the green ones are the eldest ones as we can see they are bigger than others and are usually parents of the branch they contains the green pigment Chlorophyll that helps them feed the ones with no chlorophyll i.e the red or the maroon ones. we can also see the red ones with little green those are the teens getting into adolescence.Then there are the red ones bright red the young. And last but the least the new born buds emerging in between. So much so that we can also see like usually happens in a family photo, the children, the younger ones are always in front followed by the elder and then the parents behind all of them.

A story that has never looked upon as this.This makes us realize that we all are tied with a bond.
This is my first photo-story , the scientific fact mentioned above may not be accurate, but it does approximate aesthetics.

Selecting a Final Year project....

Selecting your Final year project is the most crucial part of the entire engineering course. It not only reflects your learning and studies during the entire 4 years but also test your capabilities as a student in terms of innovation, pressure handling and proper management of time and resources.

Now there are many approaches on how you can select a particular project. What I am most familiar with and most of the industrial projects are currently designed is through a” Top-down” or “Bottom-up” approach.

What is a Top-down approach?

Top-down approach is basically thinking of an abstract level application of a particular idea and further improvising over the practical implementation of it.

And Bottom-up…?

Bottom-up is like having fundamental modules already worked on previously, and utilising these modules for a more sophisticated application.

So adoption of a particular approach is dependent on the group. Besides there are few more factors to be taken into consideration while selecting a BE project.

·         Choose a Unique and Improved Project

There are many institutes which offer live projects but most of them are offering the same projects from many years. These projects from many institutes are not unique and have already been submitted by many students to their universities. So, try to avoid such projects if possible. Try to make sure that your project work is unique and is an improvement over other projects if a similar project already exists.

·         Address Social concerns

Society today has many such issues which are always recognised over the sessions of various debates, but are seldom solved. You can look for such problems faced by every commoner and may provide a technically innovative approach to solve it to make things a little better.

·         Planning is better

Never start a project without planning properly about it. Gather all the information, research well and then go for your selected project. You cannot change the project once the sheet has been sent to University.

·         Domain bounded projects.

Many times it happens those students in electronics go for a GUI based or software project or the Computer students opt a hardware-based project. I do not discourage learning new things and implementing them in your project, but if you have proficiency over some programming language or field of knowledge it is better to utilise that than learn something new. Besides, at times of your project vivas, if the major part of project is not in you course related domain you might be in trouble answering to queries.

·         Placement success

Do remember that your projects can be your key to success in placements so pick them cautiously. An innovative project can make your mark on the interviewer’s mind so selecting uniquely useful project can give you a job too!

·         Physical parameters

There are various physical parameters that comes with the implement-ability of the project

 Less or No Involvement of Wireless Networks

 Wireless networks like RF modules; Blue-tooth , etc. can stop working any time. Imagine if it crashes or stops functioning on your project presentation day. Besides, you will encounter difficulty in dealing with interference and noise issues. I hence, recommend avoiding wireless networks as far as possible.

 Programming Language Used

 It should always be a platform with an independent language like Java, .PHP, etc. so that the        project can run on every platform.

 Available Core-gen and libraries

Making your own library and functional modules is always advisable. But if in case the application is too complex and deals with a small part of the project then readily available open source libraries can be utilised without much concerns. For e.g. Writing a RS232 driver in C is simple but writing a USB or Ethernet driver can be tedious so it can be implemented using CORE-gen.

·         Taking Others Help with Your Project Work

There are thousands of engineering colleges over and lakhs of engineering students over here. But the bitter truth is that there is an immense scarcity of good teachers to cater the needs of these students. Because of this, many local colleges hire unqualified and unskilled teachers. Many colleges do not even have their laboratories fully equipped. Even if there are laboratories, there are not many people to train the students practically. This is the main cause why students are forced to seek others help in their project work. According to my statistics (although with my limited data), not more than 30 percent of the students studying in these local engineering colleges do their project on their own. I do not know how it is in other places, but here in Mumbai (India), there are many companies and institutes with crores of rupees of turnover which they earn only by making these projects. This itself is sufficient to understand the gravity of the situation.

I guess most people reading this article are about to select their project as soon as possible. If that is the case, and if you fall in this category, then I recommend you to take help from others as you do not have a better alternative. Taking others help in learning something is not at all wrong but taking others help to skip learning is wrong. If you think you are not yet good at electronics or programming and if you cannot implement any circuits or programs on your own, then the first thing is to find a tutor who can teach you all these things. There are many resources online to help you learn and enhance your skill. However, it will be better if you can find a personal tutor who can help you out. Better if you get any good senior or a professor of yours to help you learn. If you are really interested in learning something and if you need any help, you can also contact me. Learn all the necessary skills first and then you can proceed with the project.

As a final word, if you want any assistance for your projects and if you are looking for any unique project ideas, you can also contact me. I can assist you in your work.

Real Time Crowd Detection

Its not about IDEAS, its about making IDEAS happen. Just a couple of days earlier to the most not so awaited but significant annual final year project competition, Tantravihar'14, my group project was in a imperfectly non-working condition. Wherein I could still hear the professors who came for the scrutiny saying “Kay dakhavnar kay Tantra-vihar madhe?” (Which meant " what are you people gonna present in Tantra-vihar?"). And this unfortunate situation led us to move onto a Minimum-viable-model (as far as we called it that) with less hazards and fully planned functional project. So that we could at-least present a proper demo of our BIG idea and its workability. And the astonishing fact is we actually could procure Best project in Departmental category and also gained 2nd best project for the Inter-collegiate competition. For obvious reasons the attributes of which goes to the decisions we took at that point in time because " Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail" . This triumph of ours could be because we could choose a topic which was not only innovative but also practical and furnishing model of it , Prezi( Gaurav Ketkar) and our multi-domain outputs( Matlab, FPGA, Open CV i.e. Raspi) additionally the team's co-ordination was just perfect. 

 Coming on to our Big idea, whenever the final year project topics were to be selected, the University mandates us to look up for some real life issues faced by beings and get them solved by the use of technology. So we did a lot of brainstorming on this. So what is this one thing which connects each and every person in Mumbai or at-least most of them? It was Mumbai Local Trains. The Mumbai Suburban trains or Locals, as it is commonly known, is the life line of the city carry more than 7.2 million commuters out of the 13 million people residing in Mumbai , every single day, which is certainly more than the total population of Israel. 

Every day in Mumbai more than 200 trains make more than 2000 trips along 400 km of tracks carrying more passengers per kilometer than any railway on earth. Mumbai trains were built to hold 1700 passengers, but they often carry three times that number, leading to such a notorious crowding that railways have given peak hours a special name: The Super Dense Crush Load ( with 16 to 14 people per sq meter). During rush hours (its hours here, not hour), around 500 people stuff themselves into train cars meant only for 188. That's more than double the recommended figure. 

With some more observation, since our 4 years of travelling to college, we discovered that this crowding was particularly limited or more frequently seen in some bogies i.e. train cars which were either near to the Foot over bridge or near to the exits of some stations while some of the bogies still remained relatively less crowded.

EUREKA !!!

What if the information about such less crowded bogies be given to the people standing at the next station in advance?

So the people not only know which train to wait for but also know where to wait in order to get to their respective destination with a comfortable journey. So this was our BIG idea to make the journey of rail commuters better. As work as name, we named our project “G-Yantra" where G- stands for Gantavya meaning destination in Sanskrit and Yantra means Machine. Thus our project helps people reach their destinations in a better way than present. The technology which we are using to tackle this issue is “EDGE DETECTION"

So what is Edge detection?

Basically, this is what an edge detected image looks like. Whenever there is an abrupt change in the intensity level of the individual pixel an Edge is detected.

What makes this edge thing so useful?

We came up with a basic assumption (may be right or may be not) that More the number of people in the bogie more will be the number of edges. Sounds promising, isn't it?

Why did we choose edge detection? Are there any other methods?

Answer to the above question is yes, there are numerous methods, e.g. determining the approximate weight of bogie with a sensor and comparing it with the weight of an empty bogie. But the real issue with this is when we talk about fewer crowds or more crowds, we talk about the amount of space (volume) they occupy. Hence the calculation tends to go as not expected with the weight thing. On the other hand, edge detection works on a spatial area, proves more efficient here. Additionally, it is the simplest of algorithms and requires less computation comparatively.

The project on whole is as shown below:

Data input block is basically a Raspberry-Pi compatible camera which captures an image and sends this to the host(main controller) which in our case is the Raspberry-Pi. The image is then converted to grey-scale image in order to save the computation time and space (memory). This image is then sent to a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array).

Wait what?

Yes, FPGA. It is basically an array of gates which can be programmed to behave as an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Chip). So FPGA(Math Processor in the fig.) does a dedicated task that to fast…. Faster

So how much faster?

Normally any software tool like MATLAB can also detect edges. But the time taken by it to process one image is 1.5 seconds. Seems fast, eh? But at the implementation level considering 4 cameras per bogie, there will be 48-50 images per train? So on the whole the processing time goes to 75 seconds. Besides FPGA can do the same thing i.e. 50 images in just 300 milliseconds.

Why do we need so much speed?

On an average, the minimum time between two closest stations in Mumbai railways is around 2-2.5 min. And in order for people to arrange themselves, we need to inform them at least 1.5-2 min prior to the arrival of train. That’s where the speed comes to be a heroic saviour.

So, FPGA processes the image faster and converts it into an edge detected image. The no. of white pixels is counted using a counter. Thus more edges more are the White pixels. This white pixel count is sent to the host computer again along with the Train-tag and the Bogie-tag.

What is Train-tag and Bogie-tag?

The system consists of numerous cameras on single train so identifying each photo's location and sending data to respective indicator is necessity of the project. Hence we incorporate a Train-tag and Bogie-tag in the last two pixels of the image itself. As the algorithm which we are using does not modify the corner pixels and also it does not affect the results, we overwrite the end pixels with Train-tag and Bogie-tag. Moreover this also reduces the additional overheads of writing it to meta-data of the photo.

Now, the Host computer (Raspi) receives the data. We have equipped the raspi with a look up table. Depending on the value of pixel count there are 5 levels of GARDI (Gardi means Crowd in Marathi). Thus there are different GARDI LEVELS (this is an official term coined by our group) depending on the no. of white pixels. This data is then sent using wireless media to the Micro-controller on the Next Platform.The Controller in our case is an Arduino UNO.

The Controller receives a 6 byte information. first 4 bytes of it is the Train-tag, which is used to identify the train and to which platform it will arrive.fifth byte is the Bogie-tag

helps identify the indicator, corresponding to the bogie, to be selected. The last byte is GARDI LEVEL. so according to the GARDI LEVEL the respective LEDs on the indicator are glowed.

Thus more the LEDs (especially the Red ones) are ON, more is the Crowd level. This data will surely help the boarding passengers on the next platform to arrange themselves in a better way. Thus moving from CHAOS to ORGANIZED CHAOS.

Here is the G-Yantra Team:

For Video Demonstration : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhHBAHIgrec&index=3&list=PLonJJ3BVjZW7ilFOMjGZcnrcNXgusSl5l