Intention

To create a weather sensitive wardrobe that notifies the user of the outside temperature for them to dress appropriately in an ambient way. After performing an initial inquiry of the objects and lifestyle of a first year MBA student – I discovered that very often she forgot to check the weather outside while dressing up and ended up feeling too warm or too cold. In order to fix this problem in a most non-intrusive way I came up with the idea of the weather sensitive wardrobe.

Goal:

To sense the weather outside and indicate it the user in a most non-intrusive way. Also, to provide the information with a sense of urgency of the weather is too extreme.

Process:

After conducting the interview, I started with understanding different sensors and components that can help me achieve the desired output.

The following components were used:

1. Particle Argon – Internet-connected microcontroller

2. TMP 36 Temperature sensor – to sense the temperature outside

3. Neo Pixel led – Emit different color lights to notify the user in a non-intrusive way

4. Piezo Buzzer: To emit sounds that will draw attention towards extreme weather

After discovering the components, I aim to achieve the following goals in step by step fashion:

1. Reading the temperature from the temperature sensor

2. Integrating Neo-pixel and emitting different colors based on the temperature reading:

• Extreme Cold: Temperature less than -7 C. Color: Purple
  
• Very Cold: Temperature between than -7 C and 5 C. Color: Blue
  
• Cold: Temperature between than 5 C and 15 C. Color: Greenish - Blue
  
• Pleasant: Temperature between than 15 C and 30 C. Color: Yellow
  
• Warm: Temperature between than 30 C and 45 C. Color: Orange
  
• Very hot: Temperature more than 45 C. Color: Red
  

3. Next, I added clothing suggestions based on the temperature that can be accessed on a mobile phone (in future) using an API.

• Extreme Cold: Its crazy cold today! Try to cover up all exposed body parts!!
  
• Very Cold: It's quite cold today! Consider layering up!!
  
• Cold: It's somewhat cold. Probably you should get a sweater
  
• Pleasant: It's a pleasant day. Have a good one!
  
• Warm: It's a warm day today! Consider some light clothes!
  
• Very hot: It's quite hot today! Be careful!!
  

4. After I achieved this - I realized that the temperature sensor was passing a lot of noise and the colors of the neo pixel were changing quite frequently. In order to fix that – I created an array to store the temperature values for the duration of 1 second and then averaged those values out to stabilize the output.

5. Next important step was to create a setup that would draw the attention of the user immediately to notify them of the extreme weather conditions. I achieved this by the following steps: In case of extreme weather conditions,

• The led would pulsate that would draw attention
  
• The Piezo buzzer would beep    

Code