ZotGarage

ZotGarage from the front
ZotGarage from the back
Connecting LED lights to the raspberry pi using female-to-male wire and resistors
ZotGarage sensor prototype: No buzzer, no lights
Connecting the ultrasonic sensor to the breadboards with resistors
Raspberry pi wiring
ZotGarage sensor completed: buzzer and lights
Testing the LED lights : Yellow light means you're getting close to the wall
Meet the team from left to right: Alexa Wang, Jumanah Almajnouni, Ethan Roush, Andre Abtahi

Inspiration

My sibling Andrea would have the privilege of parking her vehicle in our garage. With that privilege, she was also provided with a garage door opener. On the other hand, after long days at work, I would have to physically get out my car, type a 4 digit code, and check if the garage is occupied, then decide on whether I can park my car. This became a tedious, soaking wet (getting out of the car during rainy days) and frustrating problem. Why not automate this personal problem that I was facing?

What it does

ZotGarage provides family members with an easy and straightforward solution for checking whether the garage is occupied. For $30 any house can own a ZotGarage and assign phone numbers through Twilio. Once setup is complete all the user has to do is wait until someone parks in the garage. Once parked, user will be notified "garage is occupied" via text message. Once the member leaves the garage, user will be notified again via text when the garage is unoccupied. For an additional $10 we can add an additional safety feature for the member which provides drivers with light warnings when inching close to walls.

How it was built

We used components and tools from the unoR3 kit: specifically, two breadboards, 5 resistors, red, green and yellow LED lights, a buzzer, and the ultrasonic sensor. This hardware was paired with Python software on a Raspberry Pi. The combination of hardware and software lead to the full completion of our ZotGarage device.

Challenges we ran into

LEDs: circuit was turning the GREEN LED on when trying to activate other LEDs(sol: grounding the rail)
LED logic: calculating when to put the device to sleep when a car was parked or the garage was empty for extended amounts of time (sol: use of different coding logic to keep the LEDs off)
Testing was challenging due to objects used
Delays in program due to multiple time.sleep()
Identifying hardware vs software issues when trying to test the device (sol: breaking up the code and testing individual components of the hardware)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were proud of our teamwork and turning something once intangible into a tangible product. Some of our team members had no prior hardware experience, and we were proud that they were able help build a hardware-software hybrid product within two days.

What we learned

SSHing into a Pi can vary performance depending on Wifi
Connecting a Pi to wifi without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor
Placing our device in sleep mode when not in use
Working with Twilio
Working with different resistors
How to initialize and activate different GPIO pins through code
How to create a minimum viable product in only 36 hours

What's next for ZotGarage

We would like to predict when family members would most likely be using the garage at certain times in the day to avoid checking multiple text messages. We could figure out a way of exporting CSV time stamps of when someone is occupying and not occupying the garage, stick that data in a training model and access that data for future decision making.
Creating a mobile interface that displays if the garage is being used or not. Rather then texting the user, the user can manually check on their own terms.

Built With

buzzer
gpio
hc-sr04
iot
leds
python
raspberry-pi
sms
time
twilio

Submitted to

HackUCI 2020
- Winner Best Use of Twilio API

Created by

I was team lead for this project. Working on hardware wiring, along with the implementation of software code.

Setting up the raspberry Pi(configuring it for SSH via another computer- reducing the need for an output monitor, and 2 input devices: mouse, keyboard).

Carefully working with the correct resistors for both the ultrasonic sensor, and LEDs.

Implemented a solution for portability. Providing our case with portable power(back up charger).

Sought-out hardware advice from a mentor(since I’m a software engineering major: circuits and voltage was my weak points during this hackathon).

Facilitating a positive learning environment for my fellow teammates who experienced hardware for the first time along with Vim/Linux shell-commands:escape sequences, reading/writing program files, navigating directories, creating files, SSHing into Pi.

I learned so much in a 3 day 2 night journey in creating our minimum viable product. The friendships I built, the teamwork and communication needed to move forward, the moments of hardship and struggle. Overall, I learned that tenacity beats intellect. You don’t have have to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to keep trying. Eventually a breakthrough will happen.

Andre Abtahi
Presently owning a future Tesla Model 3.
I worked on implementing the logic of the project, which meant figuring out how to structure the program while collecting input from the sensor to determine when the correct time to send a text through Twilio was, and to change an LED color based on if a car was present in their space.

Also helped with using Twilio and figuring out how to send an SMS text through the API.

Ethan Roush
I helped with the hardware wiring as well as code debugging and following code logic. Since, out of all my team members, I lived the closest to HackUCI, I was responsible for keeping all the hardware safe overnight.

This was my first experience with hardware and I learned a whole lot just at HackUCI. What's equally impressive is how the entire team collaborated, compromised and brought their own skill set to put together a ZotGarage prototype in just 36 hours.

Alexa Wang
Private user