Annoying Alarm Bot

Using an Arduino to help people wake up and get out of bed on time.

CPSC 581 - Human Computer Interaction II
University of Calgary, Fall 2023

Ariel Lin, Britney Phan, Alokik Kinra, Yvonne Ng

Live Demo

Source Code

Concept Video

Demo Video

Concept Sketches

My concept sketches mainly focused on home automation, and using robots to help us with our smaller day to day tasks. My hobbies include a lot of tinkering, so I often lose small bits and screws if I don't have an organized system in place. These helped me form my ideas into larger scopes of organization that can be used almost anywhere from an everyday standpoint.

Refined Sketches

The refined sketches are for the two main ideas we honed in on initially. Then as a group, we chose to develop Britney's "running alarm clock" idea. These refinements came down to more physical appropriations and iterations, like where buttons would be placed, and how we would convey the information we chose. Some smaller ideas that we explored were with how the robot would interact with its surroundings, its movement, etc.

Final Design & Implementation

The Arduino UNO R3 was used as the main logic board for our implementation, using C++. We also used these main components:

1 x L298N Module
2 x TT Motor
2 x Ultrasonic Distance Sensor Module
2 x IR Obstacle Avoidance Module
1 x Pushbutton
1 x Passive Buzzer
1 x PCF8574-based, 39 LCD 16 x 2 (I2C)
1 x 220 Ω Resistors

All parts used came from the following kits:

Contribution

I mainly directed my focus on the overall code and circuit for the alarm, then the merge of the circuits for the car and alarm. I worked with Ariel on the physical connections of our pieces, ensuring that our connections were working. I also created and debugged both the Tinkercad circuits for our Live Demo, and the simple alarm iteration. Combining the circuits involved transferring from the starter kit 16-pin LCD to the 5-pin I2C LCD, and adapting the circuit to fit all of the pins that the car used.