hydration station

Full hardware setup with Arduino Uno, LED, and coaster
Close-up of the backside of the smart coaster, with 3 FSR sensors attached to the legs

Inspiration

We wanted to create a simple way for both healthcare professionals and everyday people to track how often they drink water and how much they consume throughout the day — all without requiring them to change their normal routine.

What it does

Hydration Station is a smart coaster that tracks the weight of your water bottle. If you haven’t had a sip in a set amount of time, it reminds you to drink. Every time you pick up the bottle and set it back down, it measures how much water you consumed (by weight!) and logs your progress toward your daily hydration goal.

How we built it

We used an Arduino UNO microcontroller paired with three weight sensors (Round Force-Sensitive Resistor aka FSRs) placed on the bottom of a 3D printed coaster, to detect changes in bottle weight. We wrote a program in C++ to calculate water intake and idle time, then print a message to the serial monitor and trigger a light to alert the user when they have not drunk water for a set period of time.

Challenges we ran into

We initially wanted to use a Spark Core to upload the data to the cloud and then display it in a mobile app, but the hardware was broken and the Core's website was not able to connect to our physical device (USB connectivity issues). The FSRs also refuse to stick to our coaster. We had a whole React + expo application ready to deploy, just didn't get to demo it because of this critical failure :(

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Proud of learning the required hardware in the amount of time we were allotted! And for coming up with such a genius idea--a product like this simply does not exist in the current market, and dehydration is a problem that affects billions.

What we learned

Learned a lot of embedded systems design (voltage divider circuitry, FSRs, etc.) and how to code an Arduino microcontroller using C++. We experimented with embedded systems/IoT-specific boards such as LinkIt and Spark Core.

What's next for hydration station

We want to make this app-compatible for easy tracking and phone notifications instead of a light. Additionally, we can pair it with a ring or wearable device that vibrates to remind the user to drink, eliminating the need to check their phone. We also aim to integrate the breadboard and circuitry into the coaster, ensuring the design is seamless and simple, allowing the user to simply download the app and set their water cup down.