Stream — the IOT device that saves the planet
Hack, (/hak/) — A piece of computer code providing a quick or inelegant solution to a particular problem.
I recently entered a hackathon called SD Hacks where my 2 friends (Ben Brown & Michael Timbrook) and I won Best Smart City Internet of Things hack. The hackathon was only 36 hours long (so yea, that means little to no sleep). I’ve never competed in a hackathon before so I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience for sure.
Friday — What the fudge are we hacking?
After waiting in line for almost an hour we finally got in, the hackathon setup was amazing, the entire event took place outside in a tent. Since I’m in California, (we thought) rain wasn’t going to be a problem (and actually was helpful for our hack).
Coming into the hackathon, we had no idea what to do. The initial idea was to make some sort of device that makes an ordinary object a “smart” object. Ben actually had a device that could access car data, so we wanted to use that. After finding out that such devices exist (turning your car into a smart car), we turned to bigger problems. More specifically in California, the drought that has been an issue.
Now we didn’t think of this idea until 4 AM in the morning (credit to Timbrook for the original idea). The plan was to somehow tell an average person feedback on water usage (but not in a negative manner). Now, devices like this exist. Heck, even the water company can tell you this information. But the problem with these sources is that it’s expensive and usually a hassle to install (messing with the main water pipe to your house).
Saturday — Grind day
We wanted to address this issue in the simplest way possible, because we had to build it in less than 24 hours at that point. How can we measure water usage in a modular and affordable manner?
Finally the Physics class knowledge from college was coming handy, we had access to a wifi adapter, an Arduino board, and a flex band (thanks to MLH for the awesome tools). The idea was to use the flex band to calculate the difference in water pressure, and through that get the amount of water that was flowing through. Great! But how do we collect and store this data?
The wifi adapter that connected the band sent the data to a time series database, where, over time, the data persisted and was updated every 5 minutes. Now we had to figure out how to display this information in the best way possible.
For the branding, I went with a clean blue color and a water droplet. I also used a rounded font to give a nice flow to the branding of the app.
Designing the UI was tough at first. Creating the dashboard (what the user first sees) was a challenge because we couldn’t use ourselves as our customer. We had to keep it simple (because we only got very little data from the source) and easy to navigate. We also had to encourage the customer to continue using the product (which is harder then it seems).
We decided to gamify the whole idea. Take FitBit for example, they make exercising and losing weight a fun experience. One that you can compete against friends with. We modeled our experience after that. We also added a community aspect to it that let groups of users compete against other groups of users.
This would give a positive experience to something as simple and bland as saving water. The reasoning is that a single person never feels like his/her participation in saving water is enough (kinda like voting), but giving the user the feedback necessary to continue usage was in the gamification and cost of the experience.
For future additions, we wanted to have achievements. Sorta like how Xbox Live does it, just a popup on your screen that gives you a reward for a short term goal. Simply as a way to encourage usage for the app.
Sunday — Demo day
Tensions were high as we came to the final day of SD Hacks. Mother Nature also decided to give a lot rain for some reason which made our initial reasoning kinda awkward, but it usually doesn’t rain here.
We were working up until an hour before the projects were due, which gave us some time to look over our project and tweak anything for presentations. We also had to create a devpost for our project, which you can see here. That will explain more of the business logistics of the app.
Demoing this was tough, because it either works or it doesn’t and we all failed as a team. We had to setup a controlled environment so there was as little chance possible for sh*t to hit the fan. We had water bottles ready to go (ironic) and reserve water JUST IN CASE.
We also had two versions of the app, one that was connected to the database and was updating with real time information, and one that had static data just in case the device was not working.
There were multiple rounds of judging so we had to prepare for that. We had to reset the data and refill the water each time. The first round went well, and that was for the category we entered in (best smart city IOT hack). The data updated and the judges looked impressed. The next couple rounds didn’t go as well.
After the first demo (and because someone poured too much water too fast, and the wires weren’t soldered) the device stopped working. We immediately debugged the issue and figured out that the wires were not connected and data was not being sent. The timing was unfortunate as well, because the judges for the other categories AND the judges for the overall winner of the hackathon came by when it wasn’t functioning correctly.
The rules state that your hack has to functioning properly in order to qualify for the overall hackathon winner. The reason is because you have to demo the hack on stage, in front of all the other hackers and judges. We had a staff member come up to us one last time right before the semi finals to ask us if it was operational, but alas our device was still not working.
We didn’t quality for the final, but we did win the Best Smart City IOT hack, which was amazing. All that hard work put in by me and my friends paid off.
In the end, I learned a lot about the technology we used and also working on little to no sleep, my teammates even less then me!
I’m looking forward to doing more hackathons in the future and would highly recommend anyone it to anyone who is interested in technology or just hacking stuff!
