Toilet Flushing Monitored Through Twitter

Overview

This Hacklab Toilet project aims to make a toilet post message automatically to twitter for every flushing activity.

Explanation

The assembly of the device uses the Arduino Ethernet and the WIZnet module which are then plugged to the Arduino. Using a couple of screws, the Arduino was attached to the wall without using any fancy enclosure but merely the board, shield, and module, connected to power and switch. The toilet lever switch was constructed wherein a mercury tilt switch was wired up along with two resistors using a small bit of perfboard. Three wires comprise the board where one connects to an Arduino input pin, one to the +5V, one to the ground.

During the operation, a bit of jiggling of the mercury in the bulb will be the effect after the lever has been pushed down. An adequate debounce time should be ensured for reading from the switch input so that the device will not post to twitter multiple times for each flush. The debounce time was set to 3 seconds.

Generating the HTTP POST required to send a message to twitter was easily done by using a code as the standard template.