I have to admit, I kinda thought this particular solution was a little cliche at first, but then just this week, I accidentally left a burner on low, and walked away for an hour. Luckily nothing got too badly damaged, but I’ve gained a new respect for practical solutions to everyday problems.

Here’s the plan:

Attach a sensor to the knob to know when it’s not in the off position. This could even be a simple switch (today we’re using a potentiometer in case we someday want to know how high the burner is set).

From there we add a sensor to tell when the cook has walked away. We don’t really want a visual indicator that’s always on when the burner is on, or we’ll learn to ignore it. Today I’m using the HC-SR04 provided in class.

From there it’s just a matter of selecting a timeframe, and an indicator. For the purposes of the demo, we’ll use 5 seconds, but in real life something like 5 minutes is probably about right. For an indicator, I’ve gone with a red LED for the demo, but perhaps a text message or IFTTT notification on my watch would be more practical long term.

Below I’ve laid out the state diagram, wiring of the demo, and a picture of it in action. There’s a link to the zipped code at the bottom.

Let me know what you think!

burner.zip

Problem: I cook almost exclusively on cast iron.  It takes a while to heat up, but retains that heat super well.  There are often times where I have to step away from the skillet for a while to let it cool down.  I also moved in with new roommates recently who promptly touched the handle when it was still scalding hot.  It is difficult to tell how hot the pan is without holding the back of your hand up to it; there is a small visual indicator of heat coming off it, but it is minute.  The primary feedback is physical. A further issue is our individual heat tolerance–I can take and wash the pan / reseason it in the sink when its hotter than when my roomates can or want to.  It is impossible to tell just how hot it is without actually touching it, thermometer excluded.

Solution: Basically, heat indicators built into the pan.  This would allow a user to know at a glance if the pan were hot or not, instead of using their hand. This would be accomplished by a thermometer testing the surface of the pan.  Because cast iron pans heat fairly evenly, it has a fairly large margin of error in terms of where its sampling from.  No idea on how thermometers actually work so that may be wrong.

The embedded LEDs range from green to red, fairly common stop and go indicators. Red fairly clearly means hot when used on cookware as well.  I see the lights lighting up linearly from Not to Hot based on temperature, so only 1 LED would be in use if it were cold, and all in use when Hot.

I think this would at least ease the use of ambiguously hot pans, in a similar way to the audio feedback project by another student from Assignment #2.

Proof of Concept:

Chance Assignment 4

Fairly straightforward code that lights up LEDs in a row based on how large a value is read from a pot, acting as a thermostat stand in.  I am pretty sure I fried one of my pots but this does work fine, so hope for that demo in class!

// Chance, Assignment 4. Not really digital states, but approximations of analog ones

#define Serial SerialUSB

const int buttonPin = 2; // momentary button
const int greenLED = 13; // green LED
const int green2LED = 12; // green LED
const int yelLED = 11; // yellow LED
const int yel2LED = 10; // yellow LED
const int redLED = 9; // red LED
const int red2LED = 8; // red2 LED
const int potPin = 1; // analog 1

float LEDcount = 6.0f; // should just cast this later but fine to be declared as this
int startPin = 8;

void setup() {
// initialize the LED pins as an outputs:
  for (int i = red2LED; i <= greenLED; i++) {
    pinMode(i, OUTPUT);
  }
// initialize the pot pin as an analog input:
    pinMode(potPin, INPUT);
}


void loop() {
  // read in the pot / thermo stand-in
  int val = analogRead(potPin);
  Serial.println(val);

  for(int i = LEDcount - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
    if(val >= (((float)i / LEDcount) * 1023)) digitalWrite(i + startPin, HIGH);
  else
    digitalWrite(i + startPin, LOW);
  }
}

Problem:

In the not-so-distant future when everyone is walking around with wireless headphones of some sort, how will people know who they can/can’t interact with? In some situations, I’ve tried to get the attention of someone wearing headphones to no avail; yet other times, I have no difficulty. In addition, sometimes people wear headphones because they don’t want to be bothered, while other times it’s simply of matter of wanting to be able to listen to music or Podcasts.

Proposed solution:

I propose implementing a visual system (using LEDs on the side of the headphones) to let others know whether or not the headphone user can/should be bothered. In the example that I made, a simple green LED indicates a low volume of music and no light indicates that loud music is playing. I think that this simple system has the potential to be a universally adopted method to differentiate the states of peoples’ headphones.

Proof of Concept:

I created a relatively simple Arduino circuit to prototype this interaction. It consists of a sound sensor as an input and a green LED as an output device. When the sound sensor reads above a certain threshold, the LED turns off—indicating that a user is listening to loud music and doesn’t want to be bothered. In practice, this was actually a bit harder to do, and I needed to implement a smoothing function to account for the variability of music as well as the specific sound sensor I was using.

Ardunio sketch, Fritzing, and Video demonstration

Problem: 

Even though I do not have any problems with my hearing, I became a temporary deaf in some situations. For example, when I am listening to music through my headphone (especially, the one with noise-canceling) I cannot even hear my friend talking right beside me or my phone ringing. When I am taking a shower in the bathroom, I cannot hear someone is pressing the doorbell. I decided to focus on these problems.

General Solutions: 

I tried to sketch some situations that are similar and decided to design a system that could visualize sound in many ways. For example, I come up with using motors to change shapes or using vibrators to show the movement of water ripples (which could be also a type of visualization). Other than using lights, there would be various ways to visualize the sounds. I decided to focus on the situation that I cannot hear the bell ringing while taking a shower. For this situation, I realized that using lights would be the best way because there are not many things I could let users get along while taking a shower.

Proof of Concept:

The concept is pretty simple. When the bell is pushed, the intensity of the light of the bathroom slightly changes, so that a user could notice the change easily. I tried to not to use additional LEDs or lights inside the bathroom because it would be burdensome and have water-related problems. I tried to design the light slightly changes with specific patterns so that a user won’t misperceive the lighting of the bathroom is something wrong.

Arduino Code & Demo Video:

Jay_Assignment_04

I tried to use P5 JS Serial Control to visualize on my computer, but it didn’t work well. 🙁 I need some help to solve the problem! (and I hope to learn JS as well.)

State Machine(s): Kitchen Appliances

Problem: How many times have you made dinner one night and then woke up to a warmer apartment and/or kitchen the next day? Maybe a slight odor of gasoline? I can distinctly remember doing this twice… because I forgot to turn the stove off. 

My electric stove has a knob to turn it on and specify the level of heat. Underneath the knob, is supposed to be a helpful indicator light that reminds the cook that the stove is on. Finally, there is an oven timer the cook can set to remind them to take their food off the stove. While the indicator light is a great idea, it does not help a whole lot when the cook is away from the stove. Along with the slight buzz of the stove being on and heat radiating, all of the stove’s feedback is useful for a cook at the stove; however, it is less than useless for a cook who has left the kitchen.

Describe the general solution: In the smart house of five years from now, doorways could house monitoring systems for various appliances or systems that would ensure that someone walking around the house can see if things in other rooms are left on.

Proof of Concept: I wired up a potentiometer to represent a stove or oven knob and an LCD screen (that includes a potentiometer) to represent a monitoring system to the microcontroller board. Essentially, the LCD screen reads out an “on” or “off” state of whatever appliance is connected to it. This system could allow for multiple appliances to be held accountable by the monitoring system; it also could allow for different users/homes to set preferences for various alerts/notifications for various states (flashing screen, no text when things are off, etc.).

Assignment 4 Files: Frtizing Diagram, Arduino Sketches, Prototype Video

Use visual information to communicate a change in state

We discussed examples in class to show how a visual indicator can show a change in state.  My microwave and washing mashing both make noises when they have completed an action and are ready for me to respond.  How could I be visually notified of a state change if I had hearing limitations; or if I were on the wrong floor and couldn’t hear the notifications with normal hearing?