Laundry Alert Page
Contents
Project Proposal Presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_Z8Xa3uJgJewrvXhD7aH8ir0iT577_uLS-mbA0qntTQ/edit?usp=sharing
Overview
Don't you just hate it when you walk all the way down to the laundry room to find every single machine in use? Our 'Laundry Alert Device' idea will bring a solution to this problem. Our idea consists of a device that will alert, through text message, a washing machine's user that his or her laundry is done. We believe our device will cut the waiting time by a significant amount. To meet this goal, we will be creating a device using a raspberry pi 0, a vibration sensor. First the user will text the number attached to the device "Start" to notify it that they have started their laundry load. The pi will use the vibration sensor to determine when the laundry machine has finished the load. When the load is finished, using Twilio API, the pi will send a text message to the user telling them that their laundry has been finished.
Team Members
- Ezra Blair
- Young Wang
- Billy Gilbert Habimana Cyusa
- Ellen Dai (TA)
- Jim Feher (Instructor)
Objectives
Hardware
- Vibration sensors to determine completion of a washing cycle
- Need Battery for power source
- Case (preferably 3D Printed) for enclosure, protection, and presentation of device
Software
- Distinguish between vibration and no motion
- Get program to successfully send sms messages
- Use ngrock to establish communication from twilio to Pi
- Recognize texts received from user and store its phone number
- Get program to send messages based on user response
- Get a waitlist set-up for users who are waiting for a machine to be open
Challenges
- 1. Deciding Interface: one of the issues that we anticipate to encounter is choosing between using a website or a Self Contained Server.
- 2. Connectivity to private networks
- 3. Finding out the vibration pattern and level of the washing machine and making the Pi recognize it
- 4. Figuring how to integrate Twilio into the interface: Considering that none of our team members has any experience with the Twilio API, we expect managing to integrate it into our interface to be difficult.
- 5. Figuring out how to exclude the vibration noise of other washing machines or other vibrating objects nearby.
- 6. Finding a way to demonstrate the project: we do not want to have to carry an entire washing machine for the demonstration so we will have to find a less challenging way to demonstrate our project
Challenges Solved
- 1. We decided to use direct communication through ngrok instead of setting up a web server
- 2. ngrok allows us to access the pi through firewalls and private networks
- 3. We calibrated the vibration sensors through multiple takes to the vibration of a typical laundry machine and made certain parameters to avoid false readings.
- 4. We figured out how to get twilio to send and recieve text messages and integrated it into our code
- 5. We set the parameters of our vibration sensor to adjust specifically for this situation
- 6. We ended up using our phone vibration instead and adjusted our vibration settings specifically for the demo
