First I would like to thank Element 14 and the sponsors of this design challenge for choosing my application as one of the entrants. I hope that the projects I create for this challenge will meet with their approval.
Project Description
In normal day to day life there are few things as annoying as waking up on Monday morning for work and finding out that you forgot to move things into the dryer because you were somehow distracted the night before, be it hanging out with friends, working on a project, or taking advantage of one of many entertainment options.
The primary intent of my design communicated through my application is a fairly simple concept titled 'Wet Laundry Notification'. The goal of the my project is directly related to the 'Forget Me Not' topic and that goal is to nag a user when their laundry in the washer is done so that they don't forget to throw their clothes in the dryer and complete the routine. While clothes dryer cycle completion is less of a concern, I plan on working this into the project also, as well as a dishwasher status. This will make sort of an internet/intranet of clean (IoC), if you will.
Along the way there will be opportunities to passively integrate equipment statistics and information into the system. My first objective is to achieve basic cycle complete notification after a pre-determined dwell period if no human activity has been detected around the equipment within a certain period of time. This seems like it should be fairly straight forward to achieve and is, I believe, the most important feature.
Once that basic functionality is complete and working I will then move to the next stage and determine how much data can be extracted from this equipment without ever changing it's internal wiring or modifying it in an irreversible manner and what can be done with that data and what level of detail. Can I make assumptions about time left and operational modes by tracking variations in the gathered data, expanding the functionality, or will I ultimately need to make concessions in the features that are available with the available tools.
I am very much a hands on person so while I have many ideas and concepts in my mind, most of my work will begin once I have the equipment in hand and can set up test environments for the Raspberry Pi, EnOcean devices and my equipment and begin to pull in the data, process it and see what is possible and what I am capable of doing with it.
This weekend I will begin some testing using equipment I already have on hand and begin building a historical archive of data sets I plan to use in the project. Rich media and content to follow once things arrive and I start experimenting with the equipment.
As soon as I achieve the project goals in my application I will then push forward into additional projects for this challenge up to the end date. Additional details, plans and information will come forth over the following weeks.
Good luck everyone!