For my final year project at University I designed and coded a smart home tablet app, which controlled the colours of a lamp, wired by an Arduino board and LED Strip lights.
View my development blog here: https://iuvoproject.weebly.com/
Iuvo is the Latin word for 'help' or 'assist' and I thought that would be the perfect name for my project as a Smart Home is there to help and assist you for an easier life.
For my final project at the University of Hertfordshire, I created a tablet application for a mockup company that creates smart homes called Iuvo. The app allows users to control LED strip lights that I connected via an Arduino board circuit. I placed the LED strip lights inside a lamp to make it look real and professional at my final year exhibition. My main passion is User Experience and User Interface design, so I wanted to create a project that conveyed my Ui and Ux design skills but also showed off my ability to develop/code.
I started this project by sketching possible layouts for the app. I wanted a simple layout that could be used by all ages as if it was really going to be used in a home. I liked the layout of Apple's App Store and wanted to emulate the large rounded images as this is easy to use for all ages yet still aesthetically pleasing.
I researched existing smart home companies to get a better understanding of the controls and functions I would need to include in my application. The main trend I became aware of was the use of a dark background and a colour wheel for the lighting control.
When it came to actually developing my app, I began by researching online tutorials to aid me in the process as I had never coded or developed an app before this project. You may be thinking why would you choose to give yourself such a big task? I wanted to push myself for my final project and show that I am a fast learner and will put in the time and energy to deliver the results I want.
I found an online tutorial by Makezine that connects LED strip lights to an arduino board that can be controlled using an app. This was exactly what I wanted so I bought the specific items I needed and got to work.
The tutorial for creating the circuit was fairly simple to follow and I was able to create the circuit with little to no issues, however the only issue was that when I moved my finger over a specific colour on the colour wheel, the light on the LED strip didn't match up, but by changing a few numbers in the arduino code I was able to fix it.
I first started to develop my app in MIT App Inventor. App Inventor uses a drag and drop functionality to design the app screens and then a 'puzzle blocks' system for writing the actual code. However, the software was extremely limited and didn't allow me to do certain functions I wanted within my app. For example, I could not get it to connect to my arduino board, therefore I started to teach myself how to use Android Studio and code it from scratch.
Because of the switch of software, I was left with limited time to complete the project but I knew I was more than capable of completing it and kept calm. I started by reading through the Android Studio website and following tutorials to get myself familiar with the software and then began to find tutorials on YouTube to help create the screens I wanted for my app.
For my University exhibition I wanted to create a smart home set up to bring my project to life. I went to Ikea and bought all the relevant furniture and was really pleased with how the set up turned out.