covid-19

kevinmichaelloeffler

Introducing FreeTranslate- deploy a personal webpage for neural machine translation with a click!

Screenshots of the tool in action!

THE PROBLEM

The language barrier is a major problem during the COVID-19 pandemic when trying to convey critical safety and medical information and to get information to parents and students as we head back to school. Translation services are expensive and there are many communities that need services.

THE SOLUTION

Amazon Web Services has a product called Amazon Translate which is a neural machine translation service, meaning it translates text using machine learning. It is very powerful, and while it cannot replace a human translator, can help people like teachers convey meaning to the communities they work with reliably. Unfortunately this tool is intended for developers, whereas it can be of great value to people who are not programmers who could leverage its generous free usage tier, letting you translate 2 million characters per month for 12 months at no cost.

That’s where FreeTranslate comes in. FreeTranslate is a software project I have worked on that allows people to deploy a personal translation page to use these free credits by simply clicking a button. It will deploy FreeTranslate to your Amazon account and generate a personal URL just for you!

The technical details are that I have built a CloudFormation template that deploys when you click a URL on my projects page. This template deploys an API Gateway (for the webpage and sending translation requests) and a Lambda function (which does the actual translation bit). You can see a diagram from the CloudFormation designer tool here:

Diagram of FreeTranslate and what CloudFormation deploys when you click my Launch Stack button.

SHARING THE SOLUTION

You can deploy it for yourself, view instructions, and see additional pictures here!

As always, the code is open source! You can view it here.

kevinmichaelloeffler

A novel method for preventing “Zoom Bombing”

THE PROBLEM

Zoom Bombing is exposing children learning remotely to inappropriate content and disrupting meetings so a few pranksters can have a laugh. The biggest unsolved issue with Zoom Bombing is that people are sharing links and passwords on social media in order to egg trolls and classmates on to bomb these classes and meetings. How can we share a meeting without disclosing the meeting ID and password?

THE SOLUTION

BombSquad(4)

BombSquad is a solution I built on Amazon Web Services to help mitigate the worst of Zoom Bombing. Here’s how it works:

  1. Get a Zoom meeting invitation link like normal (and make sure the password feature is turned on!)
  2. Go to www.BombSquad.us
  3. Select your meeting options- you can permanently turn off the participant microphone and camera so that nobody can reenable it by clicking the checkboxes.
  4. Paste your invitation link
  5. Get a sharable cloaked URL that goes right to your meeting!
  6. Continue orchestrating your meeting from the Zoom client like normal.

The technical details are as follows: BombSquad takes your URL, transforms it to force the user to use the Zoom web client, stores the original URL securely, and only redirects the browser to the real meeting URL if the user clicks through the sharable link you receive. The invitation link inside the window is disabled. Thus, all a user can see are BombSquad URLs! This is performed using a combination of AWS S3 and Lambda instances as shown above, making this a neat example of a serverless application– the first I am distributing publicly!

SHARING THE SOLUTION

Head on over to www.bombsquad.us and give it a try!

interface
BombSquad interface

kevinmichaelloeffler

DIY COVID-19 Facemask using a plastic report cover!

mask1

THE PROBLEM

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is in short supply due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

THE SOLUTION

There are tons and tons of awesome PPE designs on Thingiverse, YouMagine, Instructables, and other popular hangouts for makers. One that I really like is this facemask that uses a plastic report cover or overhead transparency made by Erik Cederberg / 3DVerkstan from Faceshield.nu. Unfortunately, it was physically too large to print using my 3D printer, so I made a version of his design that can be cut using home CNC mills, like my Carvey. It can be cut in just 11 minutes! I used a 1/4″ thick MDF sheet, but any flexible but strong material should do the job.

ezgif.com-video-to-gif

SHARING THE SOLUTION

Head on over to Inventables right now to grab the Easel project/G-code! My employer is also printing these same masks in our company hackerspace, so I intend to bring them in as part of their drive to produce PPE and donate them to those who need them.

Video kevinmichaelloeffler

FreeDisplay – Share your screen with everyone on your local network for free!

COVID-19 is taxing our internet infrastructure, and many stuck at home are struggling with tasks where it would be useful to share one’s screen with others, such as teaching from home, sharing content with someone without handing them your device and getting it contaminated, or monitoring what is happening on a home computer in real time.

FreeDisplay is a free open-source program written in Python that allows you to share your screen with anyone on your local network, such as your home Wi-Fi network. It creates a QR code other can scan for easy sharing and serves a simple webpage with a mirror of your screen so that any device with a web browser can easily view your screen! Use it for home teaching, sharing content without handing someone your device, presentations, monitoring activity on your home computer and more. Download for free here: https://kevinl95.github.io/freedisplay/

As always, the code is open-source and can be viewed here: https://github.com/kevinl95/freedisplay