eMU K9 Mobile Sentry

Proof of concept for any remote environmental monitoring such as boat, boat house, trailer, construction site, garage, etc.

I really built it to monitor the safety of my dog Shayna when I need to leave her unattended in my truck for short periods of time.

Unfortunately, I cannot always find shade to park in, and it gets hot in south Florida.  Even though I always leave windows down a bit, the truck running with the air conditioning on, and leave her fresh water,  I still wanted to be sure the truck was at a safe temperature.  I also built in a 15 minute reminder timer just in case I should get distracted and lose track of time. Once activated, it will remind me on my phone with a beep, and an audible voice saying "Alert Alert - 15 minute reminder" every 15 minutes.

The original version of the K9 Mobile Sentry prototype was Particle Core based with built-in WiFi, a temperature sensor, a motion sensor, and 4 relays.

The current configuration features a High Heat notification at 95 degrees with relay activation for an auxiliary cooling fan, and an Overheat notification at 115 degrees with relay activation for audio/visual alert and optional fan, window drop/door release, etc.

Paired with a wifi hotspot, the K9 Sentry sends configurable notifications via text/email and mobile apps which alerts my mobile phone immediately as well as offer control.

Notification is done through various services including PushingBox and IFTTT that sends an email, a text, and a push-notification to an Android app Newtifry that alerts me immediately with a Text-to Speech (TTS) notification on my phone that calls out: ""ALERT! ALERT! High temperature notification. ALERT! ALERT!"

The web control interface allows setting High heat and Overheat trigger temperatures, turn on and off notifications, manual/override control of the relays, and LED disable for night/stealth use. The 700+ lines of code for the firmware is written in C++.

A web based interface means it is device independent and can run on any internet enabled device with a browser.  There is no need to write custom software for each of the mobile operating systems.

The Particle Core itself was limited to 4 custom function calls , and - in general - I hate limits. I needed more functions to make my system work, so I wrote a single function that reads a 5 character command and 2 control parameters. This way, with only one function, I can create all the functions I want!! I'm currently up to 15 functions built into the firmware giving total control.

My second running K9 Sentry is Particle Photon based, and for this project I used my new Particle Electron which is cell enabled allowing me to ditch the wifi hotspot. 

For relay control I made a harness (shown below) that plugs into the back of the K9 Sentry and into the accessory 12V port in my truck (lighter plug) to control an auxiliary cooling fan and a strobe/LED flashing device for outside the vehicle.

Added to the project was the free IDT wireless power transmitter and receiver I received for the Power Without Borders Challenge. 

Thank you IDT, Digi-Key, and Adam Benzion!!

I must admit it was a bit of a pain to get the wireless power working well.  Simple to wire it in,  but challenging to find any protective housing for it.  The close proximity needed doesn't allow for much plastic to be in between.   Even with a rather standard to thin enclosure housing for my project, I still needed to finally just go with some heavy retail packaging plastic to cover the transmitter to get enough power to transfer.

Video Demo:

Thank you :)