South American cities opted for a typology of housing that gave the illusion of security. We were the witness of high-rise residential buildings that offered an inner green zone for our kids, they claimed to be a “secure environment” to play in. The streets and parks were the synonym of danger. Why would go out of your buildings to relax or enjoy a picnic if you could do it “inside”. This type of building closes itself with high walls or bars like a prison, in order to provide security. In theory habitants of these building are safer but the security for those who walk by is nowhere to be granted. Would you feel safe walking with your dog 4 blocks with a 3 meters high wall right beside you?

Since we cannot destroy those horrific walls and bars I propose to invade them with a system that provides some type of artistic element that will soft the hardness for those who walk by in order to create a more gentle and safer environment for everyone. My project is to create a sensor that will lit a light and accompany you during those type of street walks acting like whips or fairies. Since the system will only lit where a person stands by, if two or more pedestrians are walking, the light will alert any pedestrian activity so there is no chance for someone to hide.

At the same time, if you are in your apartment, you can look outside and see if someone is passing by. In a worst case scenario, if someone needs assistance due to a robbery or similar, you will know where the incident is happening. A sensor will have additional parameters to be defined in order to explore a more artistic shape for kids to play with their parents. Light intensity and color could vary according to the proximity for example. The system will use feed off solar energy through the day as it will only be using low consumption LED lights.

Tools - Dreamweaver, Muse, Photoshop, and Illustrator

In order to make my website, I started sketching in paper ideas on how the template would be. I have prior experience with Wordpress and Blogger but I didn’t want to use it due to a long-term concern. Those platforms need to be updated with their respective plug-ins.

I took an html5 free template and started editing it. To edit the template I recommend using Adobe Dreamweaver because you see the code and design “live” at the same time. For people who doesn’t have any Html experience it helps a lot. You can find the template here. For beginners, the best tip I can give you is to click an element on the “live tab” because it shows where is it in the code.

Useful html codes:

•         LINK - <a href="url">link text</a>
•         IMAGE - <img src="link" width="xx" height="xx">
•         HEADINGS - <h1>This is a heading</h1>
•         PARRAGRAPH - <p>My first paragraph.</p>

Update - 3/16/2016

With Dreamweaver my website design was very restricted so I moved to Adobe Muse. This software works with no code at all so you can just design a template just like you were using Photoshop and Illustrator. I totally recommend it

The first day with GitHub was a nightmare because I am not used to work with coding programs. For me Github is like a “Two step” sharing program (like Dropbox). Once you understand that, everything make sense! For windows users, you can download a github client here. After you install GitHub we are going to add our username and e-mail. To do that input use the following commands:

git config -- global user.name "your name"

git config -- global user.email "your email"

Double check your github information using the following command:

git config --list

Once we have an username and e-mail we have to generate a new SSH key. Use the following command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "$your_email"

Once you generated your SSH Key, you then add your public key to your profile in Fab Academy Gitlab

Your github client and github lab are synced. Once your tutors give you developer status you are good to go! We are going to clone your lab repo. Use the following command: (take the url from the repo page on gitlab)

git clone git@git.fabacademy.org:fabacademy2016/reponame.git

Github keep track of every file inside the repository folder. If you edit or add any file use the following command order: (In this case an .html file)

*git add index.html

(You tell github you want to add this file)

*git commit -m ‘message’

(You confirm the file adding a message)

*git push origin master

(You tell github to sync the file)

If you wanna add a folder remember that a file must be inside the folder before! Use the following command order:

git add week1/images

git add week1/images/image.jpg

git commit -m ‘message’

git push origin master

Sometimes your colleague might have worked on some others files inside the FabAcademy repository. In order to upload any change you made, you must be “up to date”. Use the following command to update your repo:

• Explore and use website development tools
• Formulate a final project proposal
• Identify version control protocols

With each building working as a standalone element within a neighborhood there is little chance to create community as each building just secure its own limits. One solution would be to destroy those walls and bars but the chances to happen are impossible since that space is private property. High rise residential buildings with no walls or bars are possible as history has shown us. Buildings like “Torres del parque” in Bogota provide a mixed use building which created activity all along the day creating a sense of community, therefore security.

Useful Resources:

• https://pixabay.com
• http://compressjpeg.com
• http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
•  https://color.adobe.com