SCREEN VERSION 1.2

Smart-Shower

This is an extended version of the project I made for my computer arquitecture class.

Goal

The Smart-Shower aims to provide a more efficient, personalized, and intelligent way to manage the shower experience. In many homes—mine included—it can take several minutes for water to reach a comfortable temperature due to the delay in hot water arriving through the pipes. Manually adjusting the valve each time is tedius and this system introduces a smart interface to control the shower valve (or other applicable valves) with a focus on user comfort, energy efficiency, and system safety.

Features

-> Personalized Temperature Presets: Each user can save their preferred shower temperature settings for one-touch access.

-> Remote Start Functionality: Users can activate the shower remotely, allowing the water to reach the desired temperature before they step in—eliminating wait time.

-> Hot Water Monitoring: Tracks the decline of hot water temperature and alerts the user when they are about to run out—especially useful for homes that use hot water tanks.

-> Usage Tracking: Monitors water and energy usage per session. Data is logged and associated with individual users for long-term insights and potential conservation.

-> Cold Temperature Alert: Sends a warning if pipe temperatures drop too low, helping to prevent frozen or burst pipes—especially relevant for homes in colder northern climates (like mine).

Planned Future Enhancements

-> Rich Media User Interface: Build an advanced touchscreen UI that supports media platforms such as Spotify and YouTube for a more immersive shower experience.

-> Metal Contamination Detection: Integrate a sensor to detect the presence of metals in the water—an issue that affects my home’s plumbing.

-> Smart Safety Alarms and Automation: Extend system logic to trigger alarms and automated valve actions based on detected anomalies in temperature or water quality.

The first version was made using an ATMEGA 168A, coded in assembly and all the assembled componnets were placed with loose wires in some protoboards.

Note

-> Because this application utilizes threads, I started to move away from the HAL functions. At first, when I started migrating from one thread to another multithreaded environment, I started adapting my working functions within certain threads. However, it was later on determined that the HAL function are not thread safe, and the programming was breaking randomly when trying to run some HAL functions. To solve this issue, I started to manipulate the register in a low level manner. Trying to avoid reinventing the wheel, I started reading the STM documentation and controlling the registers using the variable names in the RM and the macros that are provided in the STM header files. With this approach it was possible to create mutaxes and make sure that no race condition is preventing my code from running.