Design team members: William Lam, Homan Lau, Richard Shum, Jenny Zhang
Supervisor: Professor David Clausi
Background
According to BBC News, a typical person spends 3 years of their lives in the washroom, averaging 7 to 8 times a day. Nevertheless, technological innovations in washroom have not been as well developed as other parts of an ordinary house. Our team considers different possibilities to elevate the current standards in a washroom by integrating existing technologies to enhance the overall experience for the user. One of the most prominent elements in a washroom is the mirror. By incorporating the functionality of displaying useful information, such as temperature, weather forecast, date, time, and news headlines, the user should find their time spent in the washroom more worthwhile.
Project description
SmartMirror is a one-of-a-kind interactive system that addresses the need of accessing up-to-date information when the user is using the washroom. While SmartMirror serves the purpose of a conventional mirror, an easy-to-use and reliable computer system with user-friendly touchscreen interface is implemented to provide weather forecast, news feed and other essential information as desired by the user.
SmartMirror features WiFi technology to retrieve information and a large high resolution LCD display for displaying all the user-customized information on the screen. The device is comprised of three main components: a display unit, a one-way mirror, and a touch sensitive input layer will be constructed as shown in Figure 1. A one-way mirror reflects some percentage of the light and lets some other percentage pass, therefore allowing this device to maintain the form and function of a normal mirror while providing the user with necessary information.
The user customized information of the SmartMirror will contain items as displayed in Figure 2.
A simple and intuitive user control system will allow the user to navigate through contents of the SmartMirror and thus enhance the overall washroom experience.
Design methodology
It was recognized at the design planning stage that the project can be considered as having four individual modules – Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, user interface, sensing controller and live video feed and zoom. Thus, during the initial design stage, the four modules are carried out in parallel. After designing and testing the four modules separately with the selected components according to the specification, the modules are brought together and system integration and overall testing are performed.
Figure 3: Design Methodology