All through human historical past, technological breakthroughs have constantly been met with skepticism by most people. Frequent considerations embody the potential for brand spanking new innovations to displace human employees or have a corrupting affect on youthful generations. Nonetheless, regardless of these reservations, it’s plain that know-how has considerably improved our lives. At present, we take pleasure in the next high quality of life than previously, and we owe this prosperity largely to technological improvements.
So relatively than fretting about technological developments, we’d do nicely to hunt out any alternative we are able to discover to enhance the world round us by way of know-how. Engineer and artistic technologist Chris DeLaurentis got here to the conclusion that the exhausting hat, which has little modified in its roughly one-hundred-year historical past, is manner overdue for an replace. This straightforward security gear has saved numerous lives and prevented untold accidents over its lifetime, however there are different issues which have but to be solved.
Yearly, lots of of employees — particularly on development websites — die or undergo different critical accidents on account of heatstroke. Naturally, having a tough plastic shell that can’t breathe on one’s head doesn’t assist this case any. So DeLaurentis determined to offer exhausting hats some intelligence. He reasoned that by monitoring the temperature within the hat, one could possibly be alerted when it will get too scorching. That may give them a transparent warning that they should take a break earlier than a critical situation develops.
Measuring temperature is easy sufficient, however regarding measurements additionally must be reported to the wearer of the hat, and maybe a supervisor, to make sure that swift corrective motion is taken. Because of this, DeLaurentis selected to work with a Particle Boron growth board. These boards are tiny, making them fairly comfy to suit inside a hat. Extra importantly, they provide mobile connectivity, which makes it potential to ship notifications from nearly anyplace.
The Boron was paired with a temperature sensor breakout board, a 2000mAH LiPo battery, and an RGB LED (for seen alerts). For the prototype, the {hardware} was wired collectively on perfboard. A 3D-printed mount was additionally created to connect the {hardware} contained in the hat, the place it could be out of the best way. The LED was mounted on the brim of the hat in order that it could be seen within the wearer’s peripheral imaginative and prescient.
Customized software program was developed that reads knowledge from the temperature sensor and appears for 2 forms of occasions — sudden spikes in temperature and a excessive absolute temperature. The colour of the RGB LED is modified to symbolize the present temperature, and within the case of both kind of occasion being detected, a warning electronic mail is shipped to a delegated handle. This might simply as simply be a textual content message or cellphone notification if the actual use case requires it.
This work is a superb begin that solves a real-world drawback, however DeLaurentis is just not stopping right here. Sooner or later, he sees his good exhausting hat detecting harmful gasoline leaks, watching out for head impacts, and extra, to make the jobsite safer for employees.This good exhausting hat watches out for heatstroke (📷: Chris DeLaurentis)
A Particle Boron is on the coronary heart of the gadget (📷: Chris DeLaurentis)
Configuring a webhook to ship electronic mail alerts (📷: Chris DeLaurentis)
