Creative Engineering Design: SleepWell
Engineering Design Cycle
Tasked with solving a major world problem, our group put our heads together and remembered what we had learned about the engineering design cycle.
Step 1: Identify a need.
Step 2: Research the problem.
Step 3: Brainstorm solutions.
Step 4: Choose a plan.
Step 5: Build a prototype.
Step 6: Test and Evaluate the prototype.
Step 7: Redesign or Communicate end result.
The problem our group found was that most Americans don't get enough sleep. After researching the problem we realized that if we designed an alarm clock that could wake a person up in their lightest sleep, then that person would feel better rested than if they woke in deep sleep. While brainstorming some ways to make this alarm clock our crack team realized that it would be best to make an app. This app would be able to recommend times to go to bed, set an alarm, and turn on the lights automatically each morning. This was the result:
This prototype has all the capabilities listed above, but only runs on computers, not phones. However, with a little tweaking, this app could be installed on a phone.
Another important part of our project was the "Turn lights on function". Professor Fretz was able to hook up a raspberry pi microcomputer to an android phone and remotely turn a lamp on and off. Unfortunately there is no photo or video evidence of this spectacle.
In the future, the sleep well development team may be open to expanding on the app's function. Ideas include, but are not limited too: a changing the wakeup tune feature, a tic tack toe feature, a dimmer feature, a sleeptip feature, and an option to add a threshold of wakeup times.
Physics Concepts Used:
The two skills most used in this project were programming and electrical engineering. Professor Fretz mainly engineered all the electric circuits, which you can see on his website (http://michaelfretz.weebly.com/), and I used the java programming language to code the app.
Java is an object oriented programming language. This means that all functions and data are stored in electronic objects which you can call on with code. Using this knowledge, I created an activity object, an interface object, and a resource object. The interface object stored all the data on what the screen should look like, the activity object stored all the functions such as receiving input, and the resource object stored all the files such as the icon image and sound.
Here is a screenshot of some code for MainActivity:
Another important part of our project was the "Turn lights on function". Professor Fretz was able to hook up a raspberry pi microcomputer to an android phone and remotely turn a lamp on and off. Unfortunately there is no photo or video evidence of this spectacle.
In the future, the sleep well development team may be open to expanding on the app's function. Ideas include, but are not limited too: a changing the wakeup tune feature, a tic tack toe feature, a dimmer feature, a sleeptip feature, and an option to add a threshold of wakeup times.
Physics Concepts Used:
The two skills most used in this project were programming and electrical engineering. Professor Fretz mainly engineered all the electric circuits, which you can see on his website (http://michaelfretz.weebly.com/), and I used the java programming language to code the app.
Java is an object oriented programming language. This means that all functions and data are stored in electronic objects which you can call on with code. Using this knowledge, I created an activity object, an interface object, and a resource object. The interface object stored all the data on what the screen should look like, the activity object stored all the functions such as receiving input, and the resource object stored all the files such as the icon image and sound.
Here is a screenshot of some code for MainActivity:
Reflection: Our end result was excellent, but the path to it was paved poorly. This is a fancy way of saying that we had a lot of pits. Originally the group decided to make SleepWell because we believed that we could all contribute a part, but this did not play out so well. The plan was that I would code for android, Kai for IOS, Prof. Fretz would design the electronic circuitry, and Marslina would do all the art. Unfortunately Marslina and Michael could not really do any work until I was finished with the app, and when I finished the app, it turned out that we didn't need any art. Then Michael had to work like a madman to finish in time, while I didn't have anything to do at all. Don't ask me what Kai was doing, no one really knows. The work distribution was definitely a giant pit. The next biggest pit was probably when we found out that we would have to pay $100 to even consider developing for IOS, this was a bit out of our price range. One of our biggest peaks, however, was when Michael was actually able to get the lights to turn on remotely. This was spectacular considering that the LAMP was able to connect to the raspberry pi. Another peak was when the app actually worked on an emulator, which I had never been able to do before.
Overall this project was a great learning experience. We learned the importance of dividing work up equally
Overall this project was a great learning experience. We learned the importance of dividing work up equally