I dove into the capabilities of Arduino, an open-source electronics platform to make a prototype of a personal protection device that I designed.
The main idea
As a part of a Design Research project I had during my graduate studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, I found that many women do not feel safe walking alone, for fear of being attacked or assaulted. Female college students are particularly at risk as they often walk back to their dorms late at night.
I wanted to create a device that could be loud and bright enough to startle an attacker, so I focused on ramping up something that most college students wear... a backpack.
I also thought about ways to lessen the stress of "being constantly alert to everything" so I incorporated vibration motors used for cell phones, and programmed them to activate with varying levels of intensity depending on how close someone stood behind the backpack.
Keeping in mind that a student would sometimes walk with friends, I included a switch to select "social mode" where the proximity sensors would be inactive.
Figuring out the code
After watching a million tutorials, I decided to try implementing some codes of similar projects I found. The great aspect of open-source programming, is that you can often piece together bits and parts of code from other projects.
Major oops!
During the initial testing of my prototype, I used an external battery to supply power to the alarm, but it was not strong enough to power the strobe light. So I rewired the strobe light to connect it to a 3-prong outlet plug. As soon as I hooked it up, it worked! (Big accomplishment when you're rewiring things and dealing with piecing code together.)
That's when an angel, aka staff member of the Hybrid Lab walked by and noticed what I was doing. I was unaware of the dangerous situation that I created by having exposed wires leading to a high-voltage outlet plug port. x-P
I quickly disconnected the power, and carefully wrapped up the wires with electrical tape and secured the power unit in a separate box. Phew!
Finally, it is complete
After four weeks of tinkering, trials, and user testing, my prototype was complete, functional, (and safe!). I got great feedback, as well. Many of the women I tested it with loved the rear-facing camera feature because they could check their surroundings on their phone, while not looking like a paranoid scaredy cat by consistently watching their six.
I learned a lot about coding in general, in that takes many tweaks and sorting through the code to find hidden bugs that may be keeping your code from rendering correctly. Arduino is a great platform that I would definitely recommend trying for yourself. It's easy to learn, relatively inexpensive, and there is a ton of resources available for all kinds of DIY coding projects.
Comments