IoT Weather Clock: Dress for the Right Weather At All Times
Via hackster.io
Do you ever have trouble finding the right clothes during winter because you are confused by the warmth in your room? A lot of the times, even if you check the weather App on your phone, it is still hard to always dress in the most comfortable way. If let’s say, there is a device that can accurately suggest you how to dress in the morning, many miss-dressed instances can be avoided. TechDesign stumbled over a neat design shared by an awesome fellow maker, Jullen Vanier, who invents an IoT weather clock that can accurately tell users what to wear on any given day.
The delicately designed clock looks just like a common home decoration on the wall, and just like its simple appearance, the components are also nothing complicated. The clock hand is moved by a servo motor and it will point to the suitable type of clothes that users should wear. The clock is simply powered by batteries. If you wonder what is the source of the clock’s suggestion, then you need to know that all suggestions are made based on the data gathered by the Particle Photon at forecast.io. These data are the secret behind the clock’s function. In order to demonstrate how the clock actually functions in reality, Vanier shared a short video:
(Via Julien Vanier on Youtube)
To give you a peek into other major components of the clock, we will start with the circuit board. Vanier chose a servo from the Particle Maker Kit, and the circuit board has three wires connect to it. Other components include a firmware that installs D0 as the servo pin and the cloud function that Vanier applies to control the position of the servo.
As for the antique-looking clock hand, Vanier derived the pattern from GitHub, and turned it into an actual clock hand through 3D printing. A little trick he did to let the clock hand fit the servo is that he left a notch in the 3D part. In order to beautify and secure the clock, Vanier got himself a shadow box to contain the clock. After a few steps of assembling the shadow box and the clock, the final product becomes the useful and practical technological product and home decoration.
In case you try to figure out how the software powers the clock, here is the secret. Vanier divides it into two parts: a Photon firmware that controls the clock hand, and a hook.io script that processes the data coming from forecast.io. In between the two parts, there is the Particle cloud that helps to connect the firmware with the script. To help you better understand the correlation between different parts of the software, Vanier created a graphic to visualize it:
If you want to learn about the complete project detail, please refer to the project profile on hackster.io. TechDesign plans to continue highlight individual projects shared by fellow makers, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them with us at the comments section.
