Sensor Sentinels

Brief Look

Inspiration

Interest in how Apps on our phones that are connected to the devices at home communicate

What it does

Monitors all your sensors Temperature, power consumption, humidity, voltage, CO2 levels, and more all in one unified interface
Controls your actuators: Toggle HVAC systems, lights, fans, and other devices with a single click
Provides AI-powered insights: GPT-powered analysis that identifies energy waste and calculates potential cost savings
Tracks historical data: Visualize trends over time with interactive charts showing 24-hour sensor histories
Calculates real costs: Converts raw sensor data into actual dollar amounts using Cincinnati's electricity rates
Exports everything: Download your data as CSV or JSON for further analysis ## How we built it Frontend Stack:

React + TypeScript - Type-safe component architecture Tailwind CSS - Responsive design with custom UC-themed color palette Recharts - Interactive data visualizations shadcn/ui - Beautiful, accessible component library Vite - Lightning-fast build tooling

Backend Integration:

KV IoT API - Real-time sensor/actuator data fetching Supabase Functions - Serverless OpenAI integration for AI summaries Custom API wrapper - Rate limiting, error handling, and retry logic

Key Technical Features:

Intelligent data caching - Prevents data loss during API timeouts Optimistic UI updates - Instant feedback for actuator controls Batch processing - Efficiently loads 50+ sensors without overwhelming the API Temperature conversion - Automatic Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion for US users Real-time activity log - Tracks every system change with timestamps

Challenges we ran into

502 Bad Gateway Nightmare, The API became very sensitive around the end of the hackathon, Quality of data was inconsistent

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We completed a full blown website that just doesn't display all the sensors and let you control them. But we decided to take a step further and implement AI to provide Summaries and even made a monthly savings calculator node to really give that Smart Home Dashboard vibe.

What we learned

We had a lot of opportunity to understand API requests at a data transfer level. We took some time to also expand our knowledge of React and TailwindCSS through this challenge.

What's next for Sensor Sentinels

Hopefully the judges are as happy with the final result of our product as much as we are! This project has been a trail and error journey for the last 24 hours.