Shower time analysis (ThingSpeak contest)
Hi, this is my entry for the ThingSpeak contest, if you don't know ThinkSpeak, it's an open application platform (https://www.thingspeak.com/ ).
These are some of the features that the site has, there is also a service to convert data to Tweets and to Html requests, etc...
- Open Source API
- Real-time data collection
- Data processing
- Data visualizations
- Location-awareness
- Status context
- Application infrastructure
- Twitter proxy
- Apps
- Plugins
Now I'm sure that you can go and check it out so there is no need for me to explain more about the concept of ThingSpeak (it makes 'things' speak ... you get it now ;) ).
I wanted to know how much time I was spending under the shower each day, especially in these enviromentaly concious times. The benefits of that are that I can perhasp save some money on the water bills and also study the effect of temperature on my showering time. By cross referencing the data collected with the charts and graphs of a specialist weather site like (http://weatherspark.com/). For does who don't know WeatherSpark, it's a geeky way to see the weather forecast, it has lots of graphs, timelines, etc...
So with a good idea, backed up by good intentions, I started thinking about how my project might be achieved.
I knew I needed a simple, cheap solution: buying a water flow sensor would have been a bit of an overkill. In the end I decided to use an RFID reader that I had lying around and an RTC (real time clock).
I chose to use an Arduino because it's my favorite platform and I could program and debug quickly (actually within 5 to 6 hours after starting on the same day). The RFID would detect the proximity of my card (which can be handled with wet hands) and start the timer. When I'm done, I simply wave it again and tell the timer to stop. The duration is then uploade to the website's API section via the ethernet shield. Yes, I am pretty lucky to have a powerand ethernet port not too far from my bathroom!
Here I have attached a few glorious pictures:
The big black square is the RFID reader (an ID-20 from sparkfun), the thing on the bottom next to the card is the RTC module (from Adafruit) and the ethernet shield is sitting on top of the Arduino Duelaminove.
The code, is a mix of examples found a bit everywhere. ThingSpeak has a tutorial about how to use an arduino with an ethernet shield to interact with their site, I used the RTClib for the time portion of the project and the RFID is from (http://www.interactiondesign.se/wiki/arduino:rfid_reader_id-12 ).
In a few months, I might try to see what affects my showers :) and check if my bills have gotten cheaper. This is where I'm at now :
Finally, please remember that I am a student without a big budget and did this whole project in a single day.
Hope you've enjoyed the post.
Paul
