Womp Womp

WompWomp Render 1
WompWomp Render 2

Inspiration

As college students with horrendous sleep habits, we all have roommates who can attest to the same pain point: our crazy loud alarms seem to wake up everyone BUT us. It routinely takes us five alarms to wake up, which led us to think “how could we solve this problem so my roommate doesn’t want to murder me for the 15th time?” At first, we thought it was a bit silly, trivial really. But then, we thought about how many people experience this pain point and began researching sleep inconsistencies from children to senior citizens.

What it does

Womp is a smart, haptic alarm designed to wake up only the user without disturbing roommates, addressing a common pain point among college students sharing living spaces. It operates by vibrations until the user physically gets up, ensuring an effective wake-up without noise. Additionally, Womp is equipped with environmental sensors to measure and optimize sleeping conditions through temperature, humidity, and light levels, which are visualized through our custom dashboards. This integration of hardware and software creates a personalized, disruptive-free sleeping and waking experience.

How we built it

We built Womp using a combination of technologies and tools. The hardware core was developed with Arduino and programmed in C++. The software interface was designed using HTML, Javascript, and Webflow for web interactions, while Python scripts integrated with Grafana and InfluxDB for data handling and visualization. Design elements were crafted in Figma, Spline, and modeled in Fusion 360. We also incorporated AI interactions using ChatGPT for enhanced user engagement.

Challenges we ran into

In the words of Jones Mays II, our beloved teammate, “we really threw the whole kitchen sink at this project.” Our greatest single challenge was keeping up with our own ambitions and tendency to spread ourselves too thin. We quickly realized how easy it was to overestimate the speed at which we could complete tasks, and after spending hours towards the beginning, working on the simplest tasks, we realized that we needed to start making compromises and scheduling in our inefficiencies. Over thirty-six hours, I think the most amount of sleep any of us got was 2 hours. So naturally, fatigue (and countless learning curves for our endeavors) provided plenty of growth opportunities from the weekend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We overcame our initial limited knowledge of hardware, learning extensively about both software tools like Grafana and Figma while utilizing various physical materials, including unconventional items like HackUPC shirts and sleeping masks. Our product is as multifaceted as our team - we merged product innovation, SaaS technology, and hardware technology, pushing the boundaries of what we thought we could achieve.

What we learned

As this was many of our team members’ first hackathon, we gained invaluable experience being immersed in this environment. Not only did we learn about the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration, agile learning in technology, and the intricate balance between user interface design and backend functionality, but we also loved meeting other teams, making connections, and experiencing the thrill of rapid innovation within a supportive community.

What's next for Womp Womp

Looking ahead, we plan to first refine Womp’s ergonomic, human-centered design for the best user experience possible. Then, we aim to enhance its integration with personalized data on a user’s dashboard, broadening usability and optimization. Additionally, we will train our machine learning algorithm to analyze sleep patterns more effectively, allowing for tailored sleep enhancement recommendations. This will not only improve individual sleep quality but also expansion efforts to introduce Womp to audiences in addition to college students.