Thursday, 28 September 2017

The Smart Wardrobe HE / SHE

Smart wardrobe is one of its kind implemented with components generally used in automation to enhance functionality of wardrobe. Although similar systems exist for some inventories resembling wardrobe, various features included in this project are original and aren’t present in other systems. These features when comes together results in great user experience when it comes to wardrobes which is never seen before. This project is comprised of either freely available software and IDEs for development of required firmware and apps. Hardware installed is widely available and mostly available at a very cheap price.

Apart from our project a different design of a smart wardrobe is designed by www.absolutnine.com.
Have a look to their design also.




Current status of project


Project has advanced from beta phase and is completely functional but is still in preliminary stage. Algorithms working behind scenes are still in infancy stage and have scope for improvement. Also there are many hardware and software optimisations which needs to be done in terms of energy requirement.

Remaining areas of concern

Automatic cloth detection
Using UHF RFID reader instead of LF RFID reader to completely remove the task of user scanning each item manually one by one. This will prevent many fail cases to occur in smart wardrobe which can occur due to causes like scanning multiple items at once.

Enhanced wardrobe Security
Applying modern security mechanisms like fingerprints or passwords based locks thus making whole wardrobe theft proof.

Advanced Data Mining and more useful suggestions
Applying more intelligent predictive analysis techniques and algorithms which are being continuously developed for much better suggestions for varying scenarios.  

Managing multiple wardrobes
Multiple wardrobes can be managed or accessed with single devices or multiple devices if authorized.


Pest control
Detecting pests and getting rid of them without harming clothes.

Cost reduction and reducing energy requirements.

Instead of providing power for different sensor separately we would supply power for all at once.

Dirt spots
Detecting unhygienic clothes, identifying the dirt spots and notifying user about them.

Image coustesy: www.dreamstime.com





Ideology

The ideology behind the project just is to make human life more comfortable, easy and relaxed.

  • Can fit perfectly in every house and in daily life of people
  • Automatically manage and perform tasks
  • Providing free time for rest of their chores
  • Liberty from repetitive wardrobe management activities
  • Relieving mental stress
  • Affordable
  • Low power consuming
  • Can be controlled remotely via mobile application


Future Prospects


  • As the project being in underdevelopment stage update's will be made in the future.
  • Some new technology which will be added are:-
  • Pest control
  • Scanning the whole stack of clothes with UHF RFID reader.
  • Keep track of clothes that is worn and tells which is ready for laundry.
  • Preventing the wardrobe from pests and controlling them.
  • Automatically tells that which cloth is smelling sweaty or having a odour in the wardrobe.
  • Providing security to the wardrobe.
  • Make our system more power efficient.
  • Managing multiple wardrobes in the house with the single device for multiple users. 

Image courtesy: www.archiexpo.com



PROBLEM ANALYSIS


PRODUCT DEFINITION

Product Name: Smart wardrobe

Product Objective: To provide fast and efficient access to wardrobe with minimum involvement of the user in the searching process, also to inform him about the expiry products.
Languages used:  Front end: Java, C, C++.

FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS
We perform feasibility study to analyse whether the proposed project is feasible or not. We check whether developing the project is beneficial for both the parties i.e., the developer and the client. Under Feasibility study, we have performed the following:

TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY

The application is to be developed using C, C++,these languages have been chosen by us because they are easily implemented and they are advanced programming.
Languages and they have been well developed and tested. The reason for selecting and using these languages are as follows: These are a lot easy to use.


OPERATIONAL FEASIBILITY
Wardrobe is a low energy consumption product as it mainly works on battery; it uses a Arduino as a micro controller motherboard, as it controls all the sensor in the wardrobe.
The software which is made in order to work with the wardrobeis efficient in terms of operation and usage, as it works with Bluetooth so no datausage is required and saves a lots of money.

ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY
The cost and the benefits for the development of this project are as follows: 
Costs:
Cost of development tools:
For software-as we used android so it was easily found in internet and downloaded so it didn’t require any money, also the C, C++ language used in Arduino was easily available as its library are mostly
Opensourced, so the software was made easily

For wardrobe - the material required for making the wardrobe(wooden ply, paint etc.), the sensors, the wires used, cost a little bit of money, which were manageable.


Related Projects

Magic Wardrobe:

Situated shopping from your own wardrobe. The main objective of the project was to design a system that would make it possible for users to have information about their wardrobe wherever also the best thing about this project is you will even get the information about the stores from which you had buy this item. Due to that functionality when you go for shopping purpose it will help you not to take those item which are already there in the wardrobe also matching with the other item is possible
e.g. finding shirts that matched a selected trouser.


What am I gonna Wear: Scenario-oriented recommendation

This is based on the user's choice and match making i.e,the system return suggestion for user outfit  which may consist of any occasion and then it record the suggestion or what the user wears so it would be able to give the same suggestion later in the future ,might be for the same occasion and it would provide you with suggestion 9 times example suppose you selected a set clothes for the swimming, now the wardrobe will record the data and will provide you suggestion next time you choose the occasion swimming.

Closet Buddy:

Dressing the visually impaired. The objective of the project was to design a system which would help the handicapped people to choose a appropriate outfit.They were also able to change the status of outfits as dirty, clean or damaged and even register some as no longer fitting. So because of it the user may even get suggestion about the fashion sense and suggestion from fashion expert or fashion rule. The closet buddy and the smart Wardrobe in the smart home project have functions that enable the user to set particular clothes as dirty. But, this setting is done manually.


Saturday, 9 September 2017

User Interface


For the connectivity and data transferring Internet is used as the tool but the user can also connect and control the mobile application via bluetooth when in the range, thus saving the internet data or helpful when there is any reception problem of internet.

Bluetooth is used as the embedded feature for the mobile application.
  • When the user is not using internet and starts with application, user gets an Alert box to open the bluetooth in case it also off.
  • Also it is important from the point of view of the project because every data either the sensors data or the id generated from RFID is transferred through it.
  • If the bluetooth is not turned on then list of bluetooth devices are shown from which you can choose the desired device.


Some of the functionalities are:

Sensors

The first activity of the application shows the sensors reading like temperature, humidity, heat  reading also it shows the gaseous content of CO2, NH3 inside the wardrobe.

Function to add, list, delete

In the application the product are added
As clothes and accessories option are given user can add both
In both of the options picture can be taken by camera or chosen by the gallery of the respective product.



Clothes

In clothes activity  the user  is  given an options to choose from clothes type while adding, also occasion for the clothes can be chosen while adding as will help the user in the future to choose clothes just by searching the occasion type in the application

Accessories

It will give the user flexibility to add any product, and major advantage is user can add expiry date also which will later help the user by giving him/her a notification earlier before the product is gets expired.

Suggestions by weather

Live suggestions are provided to the user for what should be used according to the weather outside. Like suppose it is going to rain in few hours then in the suggestion page, clothes good in the rainy weather will be suggested.


Image courtesy: onthefourthfloor.com