Door Hack

how the current product looks

Inspiration

Door buttons are really annoying to press from a wheelchair

What it does

This lets you do it from your phone or computer

How we built it

We built the frontend with JavaScript and Smalltalk using PharoJS. The backend is C++ and Arduino.

Challenges we ran into

PharoJS is a very difficult environment to set up. We are also having difficulties finding the necessary connectors for PharoJS to be able to run JavaScript's navigator functions for bluetooth. Configuring BLE for communication and event triggering was also difficult.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully ran and edited a Smalltalk program and made a fully functional, if non-integrated, app that can run on any device. We successfully implemented custom BLE services and characteristics.

What we learned

We learned workflow is the most difficult part of PharoJS and Smalltalk. We learned how to code in Smalltalk. We also learned about BLE and how it differs from Bluetooth. It has a completely different structure.