Published December 1, 2022

Live Laundry Availability Wireless Display

Never get caught walking all the way down to your dorm's laundry room only to find out none of the machines are available!

BeginnerWork in progress103

Live Laundry Availability Wireless Display

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Particle Argon

Breadboard (generic)

Single Turn Potentiometer- 10k ohms

DFRobot Gravity:Digital Push Button (Yellow)

Adafruit Standard LCD - 16x2 White on Blue

Jumper wires (generic)

LED (generic)

Story

Overview:

Picture this: It’s 10pm on a cold Sunday night in December. You’ve just gotten comfortable on the couch in your dorm, wrapped up in all your favorite blankets, sipping on hot chocolate. Right as you’re about to turn on an episode of your favorite show, a sinking realization hits you. You haven’t done your laundry, and you have nothing to wear to class tomorrow. Disappointed, but forced to act quickly since you don’t want to be kept awake all night waiting for them to finish, you peel yourself off the couch. You collect all your laundry into a giant bag and begin the long walk down to the ground floor to the laundry room. What happens when you finally lug all your stuff down there? All the machines are full of course. Now you have to look around and search for which machines are closest to being finished, set a timer, and then carry all your stuff back up to your room while you begrudgingly wait for an empty machine.

For many students, this annoyance isn’t merely a thought exercise, but a relatable experience if you have lived in a dorm with a community laundry room. It is for that reason that we decided to make this the subject of our IOT project. The goal of this project is to create a compact wireless display counter that instantly tells you how many of the washing machines are available in real time.

Our live laundry display, ready for use!

The Hardware:

To accomplish our goal, we will be utilizing two sensors and two Particle Argons with bi-directional communication. The sensors are a button for input and a potentiometer that provides adjustability for the LCD display for the output. The first argon will be connected to both the button for input and the LCD display for output calibrated by the potentiometer. The second argon will just be connected to the internet and be in charge of handling the large HTML data capture.

Particle Argon wireless development board

ELEGOO button module

10k potentiometer

ELEGOO LCD1602 pinned display module

How It Works:

When pressed, the button signals the first argon to ping a request to the second argon and asks it for laundry data. The second argon is connected to the internet and queries the UNCC laundry website data to see what machines are available via a search through the HTML code of the website.

The UNCC LaundryView website

The information is then sent back to the first argon which displays the number of machines available on the LCD display. This project will eliminate the hassle and time waste of having to manually check for availability.

Video:

Code

// This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>


//Declaring pins for the LCD:
//pinout on LCD  (RS, E , D4, D5, D6, D7)
LiquidCrystal lcd(D0, D1, D2, D3, D4, D5);

//button setup
int button = D6; // setting button to integer pin digital 6
int val = 0;    // setting variable val to LOW
String data = ("appliance");



void setup() 
{
	// set up the LCD's number of columns and rows:
	lcd.begin(16, 2);

	// Clears the LCD screen
	lcd.clear();
	
	pinMode(button, INPUT_PULLDOWN);//declaring button pin D6 as an input while using the particle's pull-down resistor
	
	Particle.subscribe("hook-response/Laundry/1", LaundryRead, MY_DEVICES);
}

void loop() 
{
	// Print a message to the LCD.
	val = digitalRead(button);   //setting variable val to the digital read of the button
	lcd.print(" Press Button!");    //printing LCD message
	lcd.setCursor(0, 0);    // puts cursor back to top left
	
	//performing if loop for the publishing event
	if (digitalRead(button) == LOW ){
	    
	    Particle.publish("buttonPress", "buttonPress"); //send buttonPress
	    
	   
	}
	delay(1000);
	

    
}

void LaundryRead(const char *event, const char *data) {
    lcd.clear();
    lcd.print("Washer Ready");
    lcd.setCursor(0,0);
  delay(30000);}

//etablishing LED pins
int greenLED = D2;   //setting green LED to digital pin 2
    //setting Red LED to digital pin 11


void setup() {
    
    Particle.subscribe("buttonPress", button, MY_DEVICES);//subscribing to the button event
}

void button(const char *event, const char *data) {
       // Get some data
  String one = String(10);
  // Trigger the integration
  Particle.publish("Laundry", Available, MY_DEVICES);
  // Wait 60 seconds
  delay(60000);
       
}

Credits

Nolan Waddill

1 project • 1 follower

David Totty

0 projects • 0 followers

Live Laundry Availability Wireless Display