B-Box

A sneak peak of what the LCD display shows, the button, and the wiring that gets hidden by the box
Box to hold everything

Inspiration

As engineers, there is one stark problem that nearly all of us have heard about at one point in our lives. Basic hygiene. In reality, many of us engineers and fellow others with lower attention spans do not know how to adequately take care of ourselves or the environment. Therefore, we created the B-Box in order to incentivize people to build better bathroom habits through a mix of friendly competition and reminders.

What it does

Our device tracks several hygiene habits, as well as some information around the bathroom. These include:

Tracking multiple users:

You can add notes for yourself, as well as add actions to a schedule which you will be reminded of the next time you are in the bathroom
A leaderboard so that you can shame your roommates for not showering
This uses a point-based system, in which you earn points by showering/washing your hands for an adequate amount of time, but not so much that you are being wasteful

Multiple sensors for tracking data:

How long the sink has been on for when washing hands
If longer than 30 sec, a buzzer sounds to remind you to turn it off
If too short of a time, a buzzer and a message displayed will remind you to wash your hands properly

Showering

Uses a DHT to detect humidity in the room, as showering for too long means the room becomes very humid
Not only does this save water, but also can help prevent mold by preventing too much moisture in the air

How we built it

We used a variety of sensors and connected it all through Arduino and using the varies libraries to aid us.
An Arduino Uno along with code in the Arduino IDE served us for our software purposes
The backbone of it relies on a system that has an LCD display and buzzer for outputs, and a button and membrane keypad for user inputs.
We use two different sensors, a DHT11 to detect humidity and a turbine flow sensor to detect if the sink faucet gets turned on
When a reminder of some action is needed, a message will be printed to the LCD display and a buzzer will sound to alert you

Challenges we ran into

We originally wanted to put more around the bathroom using the WiFi capabilities of the ESP32, but discovered that most of our devices became considerably trickier to use given that it has a 3.3V output instead of a 5V output
Trying to include too much in too little time
We also looked into several other sensors that might work, but determined that the added level of complexity could not be adequately executed within a singular weekend

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Surviving our first hackathon :D

What we learned

This is our first year participating in Idea Hacks for all of us, so it was our first exposure to a lot of the parts offered, as well as a large portion of the community. We had a lot of difficulties in trying to integrate all our components together, especially with trying to figure out new sensors and other parts. Even though we had to pick and choose what components to keep eventually, we still learned a lot. Despite us coming out with almost a completely different device than our original brainstormed idea, what matters the most is the friends we made along the way 😀👍

What's next for to do :(

Wireless connectivity for more sensors around the bathroom
Creating an app or website in which users can see their scheduling and leaderboard from their devices