Inspiration
PiLet was born from the idea of energy consumption. We could not stand how much energy is wasted around our city. We had to do something about it. Things could not stay as they were. That's when we thought about the idea of PiLet!
What it does
PiLet allows you to cut your electric bill in half! PiLet connects to any outlet in your house and allows you to wirelessly speak to any device that's plugged in! At a certain distance away, the outlet will automatically shut off as to conserve power and money!
How we built it
Using a Raspberry Pi, and an Android phone, we are able to communicate between them through the WiFi network. This allows us to control a relay connected to the Raspberry Pi allowing us to control power flow for any plugged in device wirelessly! All these parts combined cost us less than $15.
Challenges we ran into
Raspberry Pi was only familiar with one of the team members leading in slowdowns when things needed to be done. Networking issues ensued when the Raspberry Pi wouldn't connect to the network. Connecting the Raspberry Pi to the relay proved to be more difficult than we had anticipated.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We were able to connect the android application to the Raspberry Pi wirelessly over the WiFi network. We also accomplished our goal we had. We were able to control the lamp using the WiFi signal.
What we learned
We all learned a lot about Arduino which we weren't too familiar with. We also learned a lot about server and client sockets and connections.
What's next for PiLet
We are planning to convert our setup into a 6-outlet extension, giving consumers control over six outlets with only one Raspberry Pi. This would significantly cut the cost of the product as well because there would only be one Raspberry Pi which is half the cost but for the control of five more outlets.
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