EAButterfly

Inspiration

Think of this scenario....fast forward 50 years in the future....u r at home on a cloudy day....ur clothes are hung on the hanging racks on the terrace.....suddenly it starts raining...u in ur old self cant possibly run up the stairs to the terrace to take off the clothes ...which ll already be wet by the time u reach the terrace......obviously this is a very specific case....but this problem of protecting clothes from getting wet exists in most households....especially in households containing senior citizens and working citizens who arent at home most of the time......also what could we do with all the rainwater......

What it does

Project Butterfly basically brings forward a device which is visually analogous to a butterfly. It uses three sensors : the rain sensor, the humidity sensor and the pressure sensor.As shown in the video simulation, as any of the conditions such as the rain sensor returns a true value, the device has to be functioning to protect the clothes or even if the pressure and humidity values satisfy, the device has to get in position to counter the probability of their being rain. when we sense the rain or the probability of rain, the flaps on the device will rotate from the initial vertical position to protect the clothes.The angle between the flaps is such to ensure the water flows down to its groove ....the material of the flaps will be hydrophobic so the water will not stay on the surface, instead since the only force acting on it is gravity, it ll kinda experience a suction force of gravity to get collected through the path of the groove.

How we built it

We built an animation of how the actual device would work.We used raspberry pi modules and python code using both a logical approach and a hardware implementation ....in the program the hardware implementation code is in docstring, while the actual code uses the logical approach.The program uses dummy values randomly to assign values read by the different sensor and based on the supposed readings the flaps open or remain closed.The program does take a while to show u the output as it takes readings over a period of time after which it decides if there is a chance of rain or if it is raining.The motors have been implemented in the code using plots of the angle rotated by each motor when the flaps open or close.The video of the opening and closing of flaps have been merged and provided below.

Challenges we ran into

Finding the right raspberry pi modules to use, understanding it coz three of us didnt have any prior knowledge of raspberry pi, coming up with the best design,understanding how the sensors and motors would work.....

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Able to bring forward a glitch free implementation of our childish but creative idea, using raspberry pi modules and pylab for the first time to make some thing useful,indulging in hardcore animation using solidworks, compiling our codes and ideas together