Smart Hardhat

This stand alone hardhat has a gas sensor that sets of a buzzer when high levels of gas is detected and sends a SMS message to a designated phone number via Twilio. It also has an adjustable light.

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Inspiration

My brother is an electrician and almost died because of a methane leak he couldn't see. I want to protect people who face those kinds of danger.

What it does

This hardhat protect people from head trauma, has an adjustable headlight through a potentiometer, and a gas sensor, detecting CO2, methane, and that turns on a buzzer and a text message sent from an ESP32-S3 dev board through Twilio, an cloud based SMS service, when gas levels are too high.

How we built it

I built it out of my boilermaker hardhat that had slots out the side for cables. The base is the ESP32-S3 dev board that connects to an MQ-2 sensor, a sliding potentiometer, an LED ring light, and 4 9 volt batteries in parallel to provide power. This is all being held together with duct tape, the cosmic adhesive.

Challenges we ran into

I was deeply challenged by my ESP ADC register not displaying values, providing power to the system, frying an esp32 by putting two power sources in at once, and learning how to program an esp32 board from scratch with no prior experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am proud that I learned how to use an esp32 all in one sitting and the fact that I can build something real that can save lives.

What we learned

I learned how to program an esp32, how not to blow up a microcontroller, and how to adapt when things don't go the way you expect.

What's next for Smart Hardhat

I will create 3d-printed housing for the exterior modules used, get a better power supply, refine the wireless code, and create a PCB with this design to hopefully create more of these to help others. I'm also thinking about scalability, centralizing the communication to a server, and making it accessible!

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