Cubicool

Cubicool Internals
Cubicool Container
Cubicool Website

Inspiration

The inspiration for our hardware hack came from one of our team members. They told us about how they were constantly losing small items, such as rings and zipties, and whenever they tried to find it they would spend hours looking at drawers and cabinets that MIGHT have a chance to be there. That’s when the idea of having some way to organize and keep track of where we store these items came in the form of Cubicool.

What it does

Cubicool stores your items in an organized way that helps you save time from finding lost items. The app allows you to select a few options; add items (manually or automatically), remove items, and search items. Manually adding your item prompts the user to input the item name and item category. The category is then automatically assigned to a drawer that will hold other items of the same category. The automatic option uses Google Vision to detect the item to add to the database. Once the item is assigned to a slot, the slot-designated LED will light up to tell the user where the item should be stored. The last option allows the user to search for items and remove them from the box. This is a retrieval function that shows where the item is stored and will update the database that the item has been removed. Our display page will display the available categories and how many items are in that box.

How we built it

For the hardware, we used scrap wood to build a box that carries multiple 2’ by 2’ compartments. The cut wood adheres with super glue. For the electrical components, we created a custom wire harness within the box with LEDs and a stepper motor that will spin the box. A BeagleBone board was used as the CPU of the solution. For the software, we used html, css, and javascripts to display and control the components needed. We are using Flask to run our server.

Challenges we ran into

Some of the challenges that we ran into involved creating the UI and being able to add form popups with usable data. This was the trickiest part since we are not that well versed with web development and creating websites with HTML5, which took up most of our time troubleshooting the functionality and the aesthetics of the Cubicool. We were also short on time so the implementation of the Google Vision technology was unfortunately unable to be implemented.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For our first time creating a UI and website, we think that it came out really well. It was certainly a challenge, but for the time provided and our knowledge of it, the design and functionality of our website is pretty good! The different aspects of our project, like the creation of the Cubicool shell, the wiring and implementation of the Raspberry Pi and the flask server, were all something we were proud of being able to implement given the timeframe that we had.

What we learned

Since our team had two members new to TAMUhack, they got to try out how to use GitHub for projects such as this. Since they were fairly new to a hackathon, they needed to learn how to use the basis. As a team, we also learned how to go ahead and be able to implement and create a website UI from scratch using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. Attending the web development workshop really helped us understand the basics and be able to give us our final product.

What's next for Cubicool

Cubicool is just a small prototype of what we can create. Not only would this be helpful for individuals who struggle with misplacing things, but can also be further improved upon with IoT and a mobile application. Being able to track what items are within your Cubicool can make it easy to search up what you have and what you need when going shopping, and with IoT, it’s possible to be able to buy items a person might need automatically. The possibilities are endless.