Every day students sleep after their alarms and miss busses or rides. We had this in mind when we built our project. The problem isn’t the lack of sleep; rather, it is purely based on students not wanting to wake up. Most students are late to school because they wake up too late. Adding on, many students sleep-in. I myself have been late to my bus multiple times because I was lazy; I’d turn the alarm off and proceed to sleep. Students needed a motivation to wake up on time. We delivered.

    What a journey it was to get to our final problem and solution.  The original problem we focused on was that of our school’s vending machine being too slow and hard to use. We came up with multiple solutions to this problem; our most reasonable solution was a locker system with a lunch code system implemented so that you wouldn’t have to have cash on hand. But issues arose when (1), we couldn’t use lunch codes, and (2) the locker system vending machine was already being used elsewhere.

We then thought of a cubby system in which one person could put an item in and get a code to give to someone else who would open the cubby. This could be used for many things: Secret Santa, Valentines, borrowing items, etc. The only problem was that not many people wanted to use such a creation as it was too similar to a regular locker.

Next, we moved on to the idea of having heated/cooled compartments for those with beverages in the media center and a locked charging station for phones. The problem about the drinks wasn’t security, so a fancy locking system wasn’t required. We decided that the hot/cold drink problem could be solved well by a simple a fridge or a red lamp. For the phone-charging idea, we didn’t think many people would want to leave their phone behind. Everyone wanted their phone to be on them, so we moved on to our next idea.

We came up with an arcade-style game in which one would press a button to initiate a ring of lights to start moving. These lights would spin until they lost momentum and landed on an item. You’d receive the item and be on your merry way. This wasn’t as appropriate it was similar to gambling, and it wasn’t original. Finally, we moved on to the problem of getting up in the morning; this problem we solved with the Fiesta Box.

    Our prototype contains a locking mechanism which locks the box when the alarm has been turned off for a certain duration. The box consisted of a switch, lights, lock, and the box itself.  The prototype would count a specific length of silence before it would count a loud noise as an alarm; during the night there was little noise. Once an alarm rang the Arduino in the prototype would count a specific duration in which it would allow the box to be opened from the flip of a switch. Once the switch was flipped, NeoPixel lights would turn on in a circle and slowly turn off similar to momentum. Inside the box there is a prize put in place by friends or family.

The next step would be to create an automatic prize dispenser so there would be no need for a middle man (family or friends.) We would also want the product to either to have its own alarm or connect to one; this would make it harder for the machine to be cheated and eliminate most false-positives. False-positives could cause the box to open if someone came from school after a long period of silence during the day. Adding on, we could add a mist sprayer to physically force someone to wake up. Also, we could add a coffee maker inside as many wake up from the caffeine.