A red icon appears on the large map projected onto the wall of the Arnie: there is a gas leak on the mountain, seven units are responding. But this isn’t a message from emergency services sent directly to the College. It comes from an application developed in less than a week.

The app, known as HamOntFire, is one of many displayed at this year’s Demo Camp, held at the college on Monday. Hamilton software developer Matt Grande developed the app.

“Essentially what I’m doing is mapping out where the Hamilton fire services sends their units out,” said Grande. “From that I’m creating some statistics based on what kind of events they are mostly responding to and where they’re centered.”

Grande says he was inspired to create the app when a fire broke out near his home and he wanted to know where. The app pulls data from the Hamilton Fire Service Incidents Twitter page and presents it on a map.

Another demo featured Over Air, a company created by McMaster University Business Informatics student Ethan Do. Do and computer science students Justin Chu and Darren Kitamura have been working on applications for near-field-communication technology, or NFC.

During the demonstration Do described NFC as QR codes on steroids: a user simply has to move a smartphone near an NFC tag and a specified action will take place.

Do originally got the idea to work with NFC when he found an unused setting on his phone and realized the potential.

“I think that NFC has a lot of applications,” said Do after handing out his chip-enabled business card. Simply moving the card near a NFC-enabled phone added Do as a contact.

But NFC isn’t limited to just business cards. During their demo, Over Air attempted to make a light turn off using a tag and some hardware. Although it didn’t work on stage due to some hardward damage, Chu still has high hopes.

“If you were able to turn on and off one light, imagine if you could have the entire control panel of your house,” said Chu.
(with files from Andrew Memme and Chris Luckett)