I did another round of brainstorming to start off my process continuation:

Started by looking back at some notes that I took in class

Then I made a pro and con list of the studio environments and the elements in it. It turned out to be very con heavy…

I really believe that if we can make our infrastructure greener at its core, society can easily become more sustainable because normal actions have fewer consequences and a smaller carbon footprint.

So, I wanted to focus on sensors that are connected to the turning on and off of outlets for energy conservation.

I first tried to contain the sequence in the SmartThings application on my phone. In theory, this should work by connecting my phone to the arrival sensor and to the MM211 Power Switch. I got the connection between my phone and the power switch to work. I can successfully turn it on and off while using my mobile device. However, when I tried to configure a series of events (either turning on when I arrived or turning off when I left), it did not work.

SmartThings Interface on iPhone

        

Peter helped me come up with a solution: use IFTTT to get around some of the bugs in the system. I used iOS locator to track my location and SmartThings to connect to the power switch. The iOS locator was supposed to track when I entered and exited the E Studio and then notify the SmartThings application so that it would turn on or off the power switch. Unfortunately, after lots of trials of walking in and out of the whole building, adjusting the maps, restarting the recipe, etc., I still could not get it to work.

IFTTT Interface on iPhone

        

IFTTT Interface on Mac Computer

     

My narrative for this demo can be summarized pretty easily in a few photos:

Enter: On

   

Exit: Off

   

There are a significant amount of flaws with the SmartThings app and the SmartThings sensors. It has a very delayed response time. It also seems to get extremely overwhelmed the more people are connected and using the system. Everyone has become furious with the amount of notifications that it produces. We have definitely reached a threshold with the technology; it is doing much more harm than good. I think I came away with the lesson that too much information can be a bad thing. Sometimes it is better to leave some things to be discovered later.

notification evidence…