TEAM 5: Good Vibrations
Spring 2010
MEMBERS
- Bryce Aisaka
- Justin Beaver
- Anthony Felice
- Skanda Mohan
PROJECT CONCEPT
A silent, portable, comfortable, battery-operated, phone activated, vibrating pillow cover.
MOTIVATION
Waking up is HARD. The worst part is the alarm clock. They’re generally noisy, ugly devices that need to be separately reset every night. Also, they are a pain to carry around.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
- Vibrating under-pillow alarm clock. Our competitive advantage: Good Vibrations is non-intrusive. You can put your arm under your pillow comfortably and without fear of moving the alarm clock.
- Pillow with alarm clock in it. Our competitive advantage: With Good Vibrations, you can keep your current pillow and not have to worry about the comfort of a new pillow.
- The Bed Shaker alarm clock. Our competitive advantage: you don’t need to be on your bed to use the alarm clock. Ours is wireless and mobile, and will only wake one person up.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Hardware:
- Blue-tooth enabled android phone
- Serial port blue-tooth module
- Solarbotics VPM2 Vibrating Disk Motor
- Arduino Nano
- Cordless Power Supply
Software:
- Java Alarm Application
- Java Daemon Process (runs in background on phone)
Protocols:
REQUIREMENTS
- Silent: Needs to make minimal noise.
- Portable: Must be easy to re-package.
- Battery Operated: Does not need grounding.
- Phone activated: Need to only know how to set our alarm in our phone => removes need to learn another device UI.
- Pillow-Cover: Customizable for any pillow.
- Fail-Safe: Sound is emitted only if person does not wake up after set time limit.
- Needs to wake someone up.
RISKS & MITIGATION STRATEGIES
| Risks |
Mitigations |
| Hardware too bulky for pillow cover to be comfortable |
Strategic placing of hardware, like batteries and wires, and testing padding |
| User not waking up (vibration not enough, user tosses pillow, etc.) |
Using variable motors and cell-phone speaker backup |
| Hardware disconnect due to rough user interaction (no pillow fights) |
Testing with a variety of connectors and padding |
| Not water-proof (drool proof) |
Having warning labels. Just kidding, water proofing inner layers |
| Battery power not enough |
Using rechargeable batteries or AC/DC converters |
| Vibrations too noisy |
Including variable motor settings |
PRESENTATIONS & VIDEOS
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