Lunaware is an ambient device that tells you when your period is coming and when you are ovulating in a discrete way.
Conceptual Design
I worked with a peer, Olivia, a Mechanical Engineer on this project. Our design concept was to create a personal device that could be used in the home or workplace to help women track their period in a discrete way. The original design was to be comprised of a ping pong ball with an LED inside and a half sphere that spun around it. Olivia felt that we could make a 3D printed moon, so we decided to paint half of it black and half white. This approach necessitated that we move the LED to the outside, but allowed for a more stable connection of the moon to the servo.
We also realized that with the LED we could make the color change from white to amber, like the real moon. With this functionality, we decided to add a feature and incorporate an alert of the user's ovulation window.
Process
Once we had our concept finalized, we had our work cut out for us. We found CAD for a moon and 3D printed it at 60mm in plastic. We spray painted the moon and started a draft of the code. While we worked on the code and moon, we created a foamcore box and hooked up the LED and Servo motor to our breadboard. The first test was to get the motor working and LED lighting up in the correct color. Once that was sorted, we added in the IFTTT applets and synced with Olivia's google calendar. Once the troubleshooting was done we integrated our parts into the box and finalized all of the pieces.
OUtcomes
The final product is an illuminated moon that spins within an attractive box and shows the phases of the moon. The user interacts with the object by receiving the visual output and interpreting the data. The abstract nature of the representation makes it difficult for others to interpret, but obvious for the user. As the user's period approaches the moon moves toward full phase. When the user is ovulating the moon becomes amber instead of white.
There were some areas that we would like to improve in the future if we were to revisit the project. The layout of the final box was a difficult task and we forgot to account for the off-center axis of the servo and the LED was difficult to package. If we were to do it again we would also add space into the housing to cover the breadboard.
