Carole

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  Carole

Inspiration

Science fiction stories like Star Trek feature a comm system in which the user 'opens a channel' to a nearby ship, without necessarily knowing any details about the ship itself. Why can't we use a system like this in cars?

What it does

The system enables a driver to open a communication channel with another driver, identified by their license plate number. Once communication is requested, the receiving driver may accept or decline the call.

How I built it

The radio aspects of the device are implemented with the NRF24L01 modules and Arduino microcontrollers. Libraries were used to control the radio modules, while our own code adds on to them to allow networking based on license plate identifiers.

Challenges I ran into

It was difficult to read data from a microphone and have the sound reconstructed because the Arduino Uno does not have a readily available digital to analog converter. Creating a protocol for the radio communication such that only the targeted driver was sent a voice message request.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud of our idea, and believe it has potential. Also, some of the more successful parts include three identical amplifier circuits were soldered to a prototype board, and these successfully allowed us to use speakers as microphones - a workaround justified by the microphones having nearly invisible readings. The state-logic for our networking protocol is simple and efficient. Furthermore, as a testament to our dedication, our group probably has the most hours awake per member as the average hours of sleep for the entire weekend was about 4 hours. Lastly, we made some cool cardboard props for the demo.

What I learned

This Hackathon allowed us to explore a lot of different types of hardware, including the Raspberry Pi and the NVIDIA Jetson - despite not using the boards in the end. Additionally, since the project required a variety of knowledge from within the fields of circuitry, hardware, software, and radar, knowledge from each member's particular engineering speciality was diffused as we helped each other in the design phases of the project.

What's next for Carole

The framework for the networking was the main experiment of this Hackathon. Next, the system can be extended to use a phone application - drawing upon the available GPS, WiFi, microphone, speaker, and additional phone services. Additionally, since the system is somewhat generic, it does not need to be restricted to the case of driving and could potentially be implemented for any vehicle, as well as within non-vehicular applications. For example, using Carole's framework, a person could address a text message to a person within their proximity without knowing their phone number or any of their personal information. Lastly, a user review system could be put in place, such that people can filter out users who spam advertisements or those who have low ratings.

Built With

• arduino
• audio
• radio