Hello all! 
First of all, I would like to shout out a big thank you for selecting me as one of the challengers for the Design For A Cause 2021 challenge
Secondly, I would like to congratulate all the other challengers and to wish you good luck and all the best during the next weeks. I am looking forward to seeing your projects and reading your blog posts
Without any doubts, this is going to be a very challenging journey for me from the technical point of view (I worked before with Arduino and microcontrollers in general, but not with the Arduino Nano 33 IoT board) but also from the time management perspective (like many other competitors, I am working full-time and I have some other activities). Though, I am willing to push my limits and bring this project to life 
Let's start with a brief introduction.
About me
My name is Alex and I am 28 years old. I am currently working as a Software Developer in the Automotive domain.
I am passionate about anything that blinks, beeps, spins or has at least a line of code in it
This is my first time when I am selected as a challenger in a Design Challenge 
What is my project about?
With Smart Exhibit, my intention is to develop a prototype of an IoT device used for helping the museums' staff in preserving the exhibits in the best conditions and also add some novelty in the interaction with the public.
- This device should be able to be attached to any exhibit in order to monitor the surrounding conditions (e.g. temperature, humidity, motion, proximity) and to send the collected information to the Cloud. There, the obtained information can be stored, displayed and analyzed automatically for detecting the possible hazardous situations (e.g. fire, flood, theft). Different measures should be taken according to the observed state (e.g. warning SMS messages sent to the museum staff)
- Moreover, through Bluetooth this device should be able to send information, interesting facts or jokes to the smartphones of the visitors which are in the proximity of the exhibit, in order to keep the interest high and to improve the overall experience.
Why this topic?
Museums have an undeniable role in the education of the population by connecting people from different parts of the world through knowledge. With the advance of time, more and more valuable objects for different domains are collected, preserved and displayed. In order to ensure the fulfillment of the conditions required for each of them to be kept for many generations, a step further has to be done in the way how these items are monitored and taken care of.
Moreover, museums should also improve the way the exhibits are shown in order to keep the pace with the younger generations’ expectations.
Not in the last place, the reason why I chose this topic is because I enjoy going to museums and I would like to use my knowledge for improving them even a little bit
What's next?
Until the kit (Arduino Nano 33 IoT) will be delivered, I will take care to prepare everything needed for starting the actual work:
- Thorough analysis of the capabilities of the Arduino Nano 33 IoT board in relationship with the scope of my project
- Search for the additional hardware components needed and order them
- Design the electronic, software and mechanical diagrams
- Set-up the software development environment, code repository, documentation area and the needed accounts
Promises
Before I start any project, I like to write down a short set of promises which will guide me through the journey:
- Write at least a blog post each week, showing the latest updates
- Keep the blog posts short (a bit shorter than this one
) and entertaining (I will add photos, videos, fireworks, cats, dogs, everything what will be needed 
) - Keep the code nicely written and documented (both in-code documentation and outside-code documentation)
- Develop the project gradually, don't skip any intermediate steps
- By the end of the building period, have a working version of the project (probably this the most important part )
Let's see how many I will be able to keep until the end of the competition Any bets?
