By: Akshata T.
Year: 2022
School: Aliso Niguel High School
Grade: 11
Science Teacher: Robert Jansen
Alarm clocks aren’t very efficient because users just snooze the alarm clock due to their tiredness. Based on this problem, Adit’s overall question was “How can I build and design a more efficient alarm clock,” an alarm that can only be deactivated through various different tasks.
By answering this question, Adit was able to design a prototype that solves the original problem. The criteria were that the prototype must: determine the difference between the time the user sets the alarm and when the alarm is set for; not make any sounds or physically chance while it is waiting for the alarm to go off; have a mechanism in place to wake up the user when it is time for the alarm to go off; have a way to be deactivated once the alarm goes off; have a clean and neat user interface.
The constraints were weight, size, money, time, and knowledge.
“I decided to build my prototype using Arduino Boards because I had many Arduino pieces and relatively had a lot of knowledge for Arduino Boards,” Adit says. “I built my prototype by connecting various different Arduino parts to ground, power, or the Arduino Board using wires or resistors. Then, I coded my board using the Arduino Software. I realized that my prototype wouldn’t work properly when the user enters something that the infrared receiver can’t read or enters something that doesn’t count as valid for military time(eg: entering a three as the first digit).”
Data was collected by checking whether a certain number that the user entered was valid for the digit in military time that the user was on, based on what the computer returned for that digit. The horizontal axis of the table contained the numbers 0-9, and the vertical axis contained the different digits of the military(1-4).
“After all my testing, I concluded that my prototype was validated because the computer returned ‘You pressed an invalid button’ when the user pressed a button that wasn’t valid for military time,” Adit explains. “Also, it generated relatively random numbers, which was the main point of my project. Also, my prototype meets all the criteria I set forth earlier in the project.”