Future Home

Inspiration

We wanted to experience a fully-equipped smart home without having to spend the money or time setting up a bunch of IoT devices. So we made a concept smart home that has all the IoT anyone could ever want, including a smart mirror, TV screen walls, and programmable lights! Best of all, it's all controlled from Google Assistant in real life, which adds to the immersion of the experience.

How we built it

Voice commands are given to the Google Home Mini, which is set up with custom IFTTT applets that edit OneDrive files. We then read these files into Unreal Engine 4, and can change features of the virtual world from the real world. We even rendered the hands using a Leap Motion

Challenges we ran into

Getting Unreal Engine variables to interface with real-time updated data files was no small feat, and configuring Google Assistant to respond to custom commands takes a lot of setup.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In spite of these barriers, we were able to get Google Assistant to write variables and update objects in the virtual world with minimal lag. Best of all, after initial setup, users can program their own smart home devices and see if it's really worth it to have a toaster that can toast the daily forecast on your bread.

What we learned

We learned to spend less time aimlessly brainstorming ideas without a concrete goal or technology for our hack. This would've saved us some time in the beginning.