Partner Pots

Scenario

Partner Pots is a connected flower pot that allows couples at a distance to feel each others presence. The flower pots can be placed anywhere the user pleases. As the user, when you are near the flower pot, your partner's flower pot will glow. The glow will be brighter the closer you are to the pot. If you can see your flower pot glowing, you will know that your partner is near the other connected plant. Additionally,when you are thinking about your partner, you can touch the sensor on the flower pot to cause your partner's flower pot to vibrate. This will allow your partner to know that you are thinking about them and will bring you closer, no matter how far away you are.

How it works

The connected flower pots work using a spark core, sharp infrared proximity sensors, force sensors, LED light strings, vibrating motors, an internet connection, and a little bit of love.

The proximity sensor will sense when something comes into its view, measure how far away it is, and publish that data. The other flower pot will then find that data and use the distance value to determine how bright the LED will shine. In addition to this function, the flower pot will have a force sensor that measures when it is touched. The spark core will then publish this data for the second flower pot to use. The data will then be used in the second flower pot to turn on vibrating motors in the base when the force sensor from the first flower pot has been touched.

Bill of Materials

2 - Spark Cores

2 - Breadboards

2 - Force Sensors

2 - IR Proximity Sensors

2 - LED Light Strands

4 - Vibrating Motors

2 - 5 Volt Power Sources

Clear Acrylic Sheet

Red Acrylic Sheet

Circuit Diagram

Prototype

The prototype of the flower pots were made from acrylic and the pieces were laser cut and glued together. The pots consist of two main parts – the base and the pot. The base houses the circuit and spark core. The box can then be placed on top of the base to hold a flower. This box also has holes cut into it in order to accommodate the force sensor, proximity sensor, and the wires associated with each. See photos below.

Code

The code includes the two functions mentioned above: one touch, the other vibrate; one closer, the other glow brighter. These two functions were realized through two events mainly: "touch-vibrate" and "Creepin". Below shows the code of one board. It published two event "touch-vibrate" and "Creepin", and subscribed two event from another board "2touch-vibrate" and "2Creepin". The other board published and subscribed the opposite. So the only difference between the two board was these numbers.  

Problem Solving

We first run the "touch-vibrate" and "Creepin" separately and both of the boards talked to each other successfully. (We used a led instead of vibrator for this video. )See the video clips below:

But once we combined this two things into one, it does not work perfectly: 1) one board could control the other board completely for the two functions, but the other could not control back. 2) it worked for around 1 minutes and got stuck for 1 minutes and then recovered. 

We assumed that it may be because of our naming for the events. We used "touch-vibrate" and "creepin", which are too simple and too common. This may make the Spark confused.