{"id":1601,"date":"2020-10-15T18:51:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T22:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.ideate.cmu.edu\/48-339\/f2020\/?p=1601"},"modified":"2020-10-17T00:41:29","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T04:41:29","slug":"worry-free-curtains-and-an-alarm-clock-supplement-thats-natural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.ideate.cmu.edu\/48-339\/f2020\/?p=1601","title":{"rendered":"Worry free curtains and an alarm clock supplement that’s natural!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Problem:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you like having natural light in the room during the day, but often forget to close the curtains at night and so get woken up earlier than you wanted in the morning? Do you ever just want to wake up with natural light in the room, but not get woken up too early by it? After not getting enough sleep, do you find yourself having trouble getting up to your alarm or being blinded when you turn on the light or open the curtains because your eyes aren’t used to it? If you’re like me and have answered yes to these questions, this worry free curtain and alarm clock supplement could be the solution!<\/p>\n

Proposed Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Enter the time times you want to wake up each day of the week, the current date and time, upload the program, and that’s it your curtains will open according to the time you want to wake up and when you went to bed (set by pressing button) and close when it’s evening and dark. If you didn’t get nearly enough sleep, a fan will also blow in your face when your alarm goes off to help ensure you wake up. The fan could be an overhead one, but one on a nightstand or a taller one on the floor next to the bed would be best. I used the left and right threaded rods coupled together that I had from a previous project to be able to control the open and closing of the curtains movement. The logic I used for when the curtains should open compared to when you want to wake up and when you went to sleep were set by my preferences wherein the less sleep I got, the earlier the curtains would open based on time frames of amount of sleep. For me if I’ve gotten less sleep, I wake up to slight changes less than if I got enough sleep. Also, the fan is set to blow at a low speed for a minute when you’ve had under 5 hours sleep and high speed for 30 seconds if you’ve had between 5 and 6 hours. This is because higher speed will be more annoying and so needs to be on less; the lower speed is for the least sleep case because you are more likely to get sick on less sleep. I used a stepper motor to control the opening and closing of the curtains as that is what I had available and I can easily control the distance moved forward and reverse precisely. I would’ve used a faster motor if available and ideally a DC motor and an encoder instead as I’d be able to control the amounts forward and reverse easily and it’s more efficient in this scenario. Additionally, if I had a pressure sensor, the time you went to bed would be detected by the time you went on the bed and didn’t get up again before the alarm. This way you wouldn’t have to remember to click a button. To add to this, I would add a speaker so that this could be used for an alarm sound itself too. Finally, as someone mentioned during the crit, an app would be really useful for inputting the parameters and quickly making any changes. With the materials I was able to use and the time given, I’m happy with this prototype and in the future may make this for myself on an actual scale.<\/p>\n

For reference, this is what the curtains in my room look like:<\/p>\n

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Ideal fans:<\/p>\n

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small fan for nightstand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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floor stand fan to be put near\u00a0 head of bed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Proof of Concept:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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