ChoreAlert

Inspiration

Housemates leaving dirty laundry in the washing machine and dryer. Also, people forgetting to take the trash out when it's their turn for the week.

What it does

ChoreAlert is a whole-home system of sensors that detects when it is time for certain members to do their designated chores. When the trash is above a certain level, the user who is currently on trash duty will receive an SMS message reminding them the trash is full and needs to be taken care of. When users use the washing machine or dryer, they will also be notified when their clothes are ready. This might not seem necessary, but many people aren't around when the washing machine or dryer rings, so they must be notified.

How we built it

We are using an Arduino Uno and ESP8266 NodeMCU wifi modules for each of the two sensing challenges. We are using a ping sensor to determine the distance between the trash can and the cabinet to which we will attach our sensor to. We are using the sound sensor module to detect audio frequencies in line with either of the distinct sounds that are made when our washing machine or dryer are finished. Since we are connecting our data from the NodeMCU to Adafruit.IO dashboard, we have found that using the IFTTT platform to communicate between Adafruit.IO and Android SMS is optimal.