108A - Washer Watcher

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  Home Page

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  List of Washers

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  List of Hostels

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  ThingSpeak Channel

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  Arduino + ESP8266

Inspiration

I live in 4/F in my hostel, and I met many times when I take whole basket of clothes to the washing room at 7/F, I find that all washers are in use, so I go back to my room and try again later, if with luck, I could wash my clothes.

What it does

Monitoring the availability of washers in hostels

How I built it

For hardware, I used Arduino with ESP8266, vibration sensor and light sensor. Vibration sensor can tell if the washer is in operation and the light sensor can say whether the operation light is on.

Challenges I ran into

No vibration sensors and light sensors available, so I generate dummy random values.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Built a workable web platform, and made ESP8266 able to connect to ThingSpeak and made SMS reminders with Twilio work.

What I learned

Time management. To make full use of every second, I set many sub-goals to be completed within certain minutes (instead of hours).

What's next for Washer Watcher

Some thoughts like reserving washers or rating washers will be implemented.

Built With

• arduino
• esp8266
• javascript
• jquery
• light-sensor
• materializecss
• meteor.js
• thingspeak
• twilio
• vibration-sensor