The Cat Cycle

Ever had your laundry tossed on the floor 5us after the cycle ends? Now, with the advent of the catcycle, consider your worries absolved - you can finally fight the final boss of student life.

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Inspiration

Washing machine snipers, mold, and not being able to find a spot at a laundromat are all ubiquitous problems faced by students all over the world alike. This is the problem we aimed to solve with the catcycle, to relieve the stress and worry that hangs over every student's shoulders.

What it does

The catcycle uses a combination of decibel-meter and accelerometer data to discern with astonishing accuracy whether a washing machine is being used, is surrounded by others being used, or if somebody has opened your laundry to empty it out post-cycle. Simply place the device onto the glass of the washing machine using the powerful suction cup and activate the washing mode, to get live notifications on your washing's status.

How we built it

We used MATLAB, as well as the Arduino Nano platform to simulate and program the product effectively. Using MATLAB, we wrote code to read accelerometer data, and then plot it against time. Using various curve-fitting algorithms we were able to differentiate between the different states of the washing machine, and set threshold values.

We used both Python and C++, across Flask, and the Arduino IDE, to implement the frontend and backend sides of the final implementation.

We made use of custom bit-parsing to read the accelerometer's output, and wrote directly to registers to choose the optimal modes and settings for the device. Through use of inverse PWM, we were able to calculate duty cycles and determine an analogue value from the digital output of the decibelmeter.

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