Inspiration
Lisnr gave us a way for devices to converse over sound. We as team wanted to take simple communication through audio and use it to make a smart home. We all have a large number of devices at home, and our home networks weren't designed for such a heavy load.
What it does
By enabling devices to communicate through sound we have made an IoT connection for your home that has a single wifi connection. This enables you to be more aware of your house without having a ton of devices flooding your wifi router with data back and forth. We set up a Raspberry Pi Zero that can be used for any device, not just smart devices, that will play its signal that will be repeated by a repeater(another Raspberry Pi Zero) to the base. We currently have the base on an android phone, but look to try to migrate to yet another Raspberry Pi Zero in the future. This base will push the notification to a server, which pushes to your mobile phone. By using an external server we let you know if somebody stopped by the house while you were gone, or if the kids are running the laundry like you told them to. Creating a connected and smarter house that has a smaller network impact.
How we built it
Currently we are using a Raspberry Pi 2 with a speaker and a doorbell simulator. When someone rings the doorbell, the Pi plays the lisnr tone which is picked up by the base. The base pushes the lisnr ID to a linux server that serves the notification to your phone, wherever you are in the world.
Challenges we ran into
We had a lot of trouble with sound processing. Our initial goal was to build an arduino to pick up a simulated buzzer for laundry. Then demonstrate what a repeater would look like by having another arduino. Unfortunately we didn't have the materials needed for an arduino to properly process a signal. We tried to make it happen for a good 5-6 hours. Till we finally gave up. Jacob has spent all 24 hours learning android and lisnr to build the base. He finally got the whole thing together about 30 minutes before it was due. Lisnr uses a sound that is apparently harder to process, it took three different programs till we finally found a way to get the sound played properly for the base to recognize it.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We are proud to develop Hear Your Home. As we continue to add devices to our lives that are internet connected; solutions like ours will enable devices to be IoT without bothering you as you work on your online homework, as you work from home, or as you sit down to enjoy a movie on Netflix.
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