Many people might find it difficult to know if a room is the correct temperature. For example, parents of young children, or autistic people who have low sensitivity to heat.
I am autistic and i struggle to know if i am “too hot” or “too cold”, so i have built myself a mini tempreture gauge which shows me if the room is hot or cold in a visual icon based way.
Depending on the tempreture of my room it shows me one of three icons:
If the tempreture is 24c it shows me a Tick.
If it is too hot, but not too hot too worry about (anything from 24-27c) it shows me a cross.
If the tempreture is below 24c it shows me a t-shirt.
Finally, if the button is pressed it displays the current tempreture on the screen.
The temperature monitor uses a BBC Micro:bit which is a mini controller based computer the BBC gave to year 7 students and can be brought online for about £15.
I wrote the software using mu in python. The code can be downloaded from my github account. The download includes setup instructions.
The tempreture sensor is not super accurate so when you set it up you will need to add an offset. The offset for my microbit was 5c, to edit the offset change the value of the “temp_offset” setting.
I like my room to be 24 or below, so i have the temperature set to 24c. To set it to a different tempreture, change the “base_temp” setting.
This is my first micro:bit project and i am impressed with it. The little device is very capable and it’s already proving to be useful in my life.
