Process

Outline your approach to the project? What ideas did you generate and how did you refine or reject them? What did you research and explore? what were the design choices? What challenges were encountered and how did you resolve them?

• Challenges

• Button to switch

• Initially I was going to use a button for my input and then use a microphone as a sensor to collect sound data. As I began working through the project, I changed to a switch for my input and then a PIR sensor to collect any movement. I thought these changes would be appropriate because a switch would keep the PIR sensor on and will then shut off depending on when the user flips the switch.

• Getting the code to work

• Because of my lack of experience and skill with coding, writing up the code was definitely a challenge. I tried my best to base my code off something simple learned on the tutorials and make the necessary changes to make my prototype work.

• Connecting to the internet

• Towards the end I realized my Home Hack was not yet an IoT product if I did not have a way to access the collected data and information from my product. I tried multiple ways to figure out how to access the information, such as using the Pushbutton app or sending email notifications, and figured that using Particle.Publish would probably be the best to keep track of live updated information. Although the internet logging is quite messy, it gets the job done.