About LINT
LINT (Laundry Information Notification Technology) is a computer system designed to improve the efficiency and user experience of communal laundry rooms. It began January 27, 2016 as a project of the Computer and Electrical Engineering Club at Geneva College, and is now developed and maintained by Timothy Johnson and Michael Parkinson.
Features
There are lots of great features of LINT to improve the laundry experience. First is the ability to view the status of machines in a laundry room from your phone or computer, complete with estimates of when machines will be finished. No more lugging your laundry just to realize that all of the washing machines are taken! Second, you can use the kiosk in the laundry room to receive a notification via text or email when your laundry is done.
LINT is still in early development, so there are also some exciting features that we plan to implement in the future. If the laundry room is full, you will be able to sign up for a waiting list which will notify you when a machine is available. The Laundry Planning Chart (LPC) (temporary name) will show how busy the laundry room is at different times during the week, so you can schedule your laundry with confidence that there will a machine available for you.
Cooperative Laundry Migration (CLM) has the potential to remove an entire trip to the laundry room. Currently, students cannot put other students’ laundry in the dryer for them because the load may contain clothes that should not be machine dried. Instead, clothes are heaped on top of the washer or placed into a bin, soaking wet. With CLM, students will be able to use the kiosk to specify whether or not they would like their clothes put in the dryer, and what settings they prefer. The option will be off by default, so you can still do it yourself if you desire. Aren’t two trips to the laundry room better than three? CLM will require cooperation to be successful, so if someone puts your laundry in the dryer for you, return the favor!
If for some reason you don’t want to use LINT, that is still an option. LINT does not require action from anyone; it only exists as an information provider. It is a completely optional service: free of charge and free of hassle. Our primary mission is to make your laundry experience as smooth and easy as possible.
How It Works
LINT is actually a very complex system, contrary to how it may seem. It involves many skills including Computer and Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, website design, database management, user experience design, security, machine learning, 3D printing, cost minimization, and even legal knowledge.
The primary core of LINT is the Raspberry Pi 3. This tiny $35 computer does so much, including (but not limited to):
- Gathering the data from the washers and dryers and processing it into useful information
- Determining the cycle of the machines
- Calculating the amount of time until the machines will finish
- Displaying machine statuses on the screen
- Processing user inputs from the screen
- Creating or retrieving account information
- Sending notifications
- Lots more
The data from the machines is gathered by a magnetic hall-effect sensor attached to the machine’s power cord. It is attached using a custom 3D-printed clip, so it is easily detachable and is not hard-wired. This hall-effect sensor's output voltage changes based on the strength of the magnetic field created by the current flowing through the cord. This voltage is then carried to an ADC (analog-digital converter), which converts it to a series of digital signals since the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins do not support analog inputs. A small circuit before the ADC filters out noise in the signal so that it is more accurate.
Python is the primary programming language used on the Raspberry Pi. The TensorFlow neural network library is used to interpret the voltages from the hall-effect sensors; it does this using machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence (Yes, an AI is telling you when your laundry is done. Pretty futuristic). LINT keeps track of the states a machine has been in, and from this determines what cycle is being run. An estimated time of completion can then be calculated and displayed on the website and kiosk.
The SQL database stores machine information and user account information, among other things. The machine information includes the machine’s name, type, model, current cycle, cycle start time, time of completion, and user list. The account information includes usernames, encrypted passwords, settings, email and phone number, etc. This information is used and updated both by the website and the Raspberry Pi; it is a bridge between the two.
This is the website (obviously). It is designed to be as simple and easy to use as possible, because a bad GUI ruins an otherwise great product.
We hope you enjoy using LINT!
- The Lintineers