Mehrnoosh VahdatTatjana PavlenkoArne Böckmann

Maris ÜkstiElise Sass

Problem?Three washing machines in the Laundry Room of student dormitory

Six keys to the Laundry Room

Washing machines are always busyIt is hard to know when your laundry is ready

Students need to check the room several times

Note: Those machines do not have screens and cannot calculate the time of washing programs

Solution!

To let students know when the machine gets free and when their own laundry is ready to be picked up

Video demonstration of using

our improved Laundry Room

WATCH

How?

If there ARE free machines: If there are NO free machines:

o Types his/her mobilephone number in order to get SMS notification later

o Gets an index of the available machine

o Presses OK and opens the door

o Types his/her mobile phone number in order to get SMS notification later

o Joins the queue for the next machine available

o Receives an SMS when any machine becomes available

o Comes to the Laundry Room and inserts RFID key to RFID reader again

o Gets an index of the available machineo Presses OK and opens the door

• A student gets an RFID key to the Laundry Room

• Comes to the Laundry Room and inserts RFID key to RFID reader

• The display shows information about the current use of washing machines

• Becomes the current user of a particular machine and starts washing• Goes away• (Checks the current situation of his washing process in the internet)• After some time gets an SMS that his laundry is ready• Comes to the Laundry Room again• Picks up his/her laundry

Ubiquitous Computing• Sound rationale for the proposed approach

Making washing clothes more automatic and easier for the students. At the same time not changing the routines for Dormitory administration.

• Elaborate all the initial beliefsWe do not have a difficult thing to solve. The hardest problem we could face would be that the dormitory administration won’t let test the project in real life. Otherwise we believe that students would be really happy to use the system as it would help to plan their schedules much better and they would not have to depend on the machines and checking them, but they can easily set their schedule.

• Metaphor rationaleIf the washing machine would be quicker, we could have a line of people waiting for their turn, but washing a load of clothes takes time. Therefore we need to make a virtual queue for people who want to wash their clothes. Queue is the metaphor itself where we started from. We also included more information - like information of when the load is finished.

• Where is it possible to deploy the solution?Our solution is possible to deploy into the dormitory Laundry Room

Ubiquitous Computing• It is possible to test the solution, but we will not be able to do that in real life. For

testing we would need the permission to open the Laundry Room washing machines and put our device in it. But we have tested all the necessary tools for the project and built a working prototype.

• Our project has an implementable concept, because the system we created could be easily used in dorms. The solution would actually be helpful for the dorm system. At the same time we wouldn’t change the existing system that dorm administration is holding on. We could prove them the easy way without actually changing the work and routine of the guards at the dorm who sign up and give out the keys to access the Laundromat itself.

• With this system we also have the hidden information how often machines are used and at what times. It could also help to work out any further plans for the Laundry Room and its usage in he future - if and when new machines would be needed. How to set or have suggestions for students when to wash their clothes (at what times there are less people using the machines). Would it be needed to include one more machine and when.

Real model

4 stages

Prototype

Let’s start with prototype…We have:

4 buttons

1 Phidget interface kit

1 RFID reader

RFID tags

1 touch screen

Creating and testing a prototype

• Phidgets:

• Hook up Phidgets

• Get some connection from Java to Phidgets

• Hook up buttons to Phidgets

• Get some Event from the Buttons

• Try to explain what happens and why for each

of the above steps

Creating and testing a prototype

• RFID:

• Hook up the reader

• Get some connection from Java to the reader

• Try to read a Tag

• Get Events of tags appear/disappear

• Try to explain what happens and why for each

of the above steps

Creating and testing a prototype

• Implement the logic

• Launch the touch screen

• Connect Phidgets, RFID reader and the touch

screen

• Use data from Java to create an HTML-page

with information about the washing process

Data in the Internet

Thanks for your attention!