Soap Alarm

a makeUofT 2024 hackathon project. the idea is simple and a little bit petty: detect when someone doesn't wash their hands for long enough. looking at you, engineers.

the whole thing runs on an arduino. it tracks the time between when the bar of soap is picked up and when it's put back down, which is a decent proxy for how long you actually scrubbed. a sensor under the soap detects when it leaves and returns, and the arduino times the gap in between.

if the time spent is less than the required amount (10 seconds), an alarm goes off. an LCD gives live feedback on the front of the box, sitting on standby until you use the soap and flashing a verdict once you put it back, "Good Job!" if you washed long enough, or the alarm if you cut it short.