Perkinsense

2010-06-03

I designed and built room occupancy sensors for the Perkins library at Duke while I was a senior. The study rooms in the library were extremely popular and spread over four floors -- this project helped people find ones that were unoccupied. Battery-powered and running on 8-bit AVRs, the sensors used a rather fickle WiFi module called the 'WiFly.' Very simple custom 2-layer PCB. Look at those through-hole resistors!

This was one of my first web projects -- the backend was, uh, interesting. But there was a very basic web interface that showed the status of the ~20 rooms. The early prototype also also had a twitter bot, @thesmome (:

Alas, the project is no more and code and schematics are lost to me..perhaps someone else has copies? This video gives a good overview of how things were. (And here's another video with even more!)