This project is about motivating people to stay hydrated in office environments. The idea behind HydroScale, is that, people only drink water when they are thirsty, but this is late mechanism. So when we are thirsty we are in a way dehydrated. So with this motivation we created a device that would motivate the people to stay hydrated.
The initial stages (scale and circuit) started with a basic digital kitchen scale during the design studio course project. Inside the scale the load sensor was connected to a simple signal amplification circuit because the variation in the voltage that the Arduino Uno can detect was to low.
After the initial stages we looked at the prototype and decided to better it, by creating a new shell for it since it wasn’t aesthetically good to look at. Also we wanted place all the necessary electronics in one unit.
The way we decided to give the user feedback on their hydration state was by using LEDs that would light up after the user drank water. A ring and the lid were made transparent in order for the light to shine through. We also included a bar graph to indicate goal completion; this represents a visual representation of how close the user is to completing their goal. Due to the size of the prototype we opted for an Arduino Nano because of its size and that it has the same features as the Arduino Uno.
The current version has a flat surface because we found that it wasn’t easy to view the bar graph