Development of Intelligent Clothesline Sytem

Abstract

Drying clothes on a clothesline is a method that is commonly used by most of the housewives. This is because this method is very efficient with low cost needed.Nevertheless, when there is a sudden rain, the effort of clothes drying will be in vain if the housewives are not aware of it. Hence, the development of an intelligent clothesline system that would be functioning according to the weather is needed to solve this issue. In this study, light dependent resistor (LDR) and rain sensor were installed to detect the change of the environmental condition and send the input signals to the Arduino microcontroller. The characteristics of the sensors would be studied to obtain the threshold values by measuring the voltages across both sensors in different conditions. The threshold values obtained were set in the program to allow the system to determine the brightness and availability of raindrops in the surrounding. The portable prototype was designed to have a large basearea for high stability. It was also allowed to be assembled and disassembled for storagepurpose with a few simple steps needed. The completed prototype was tested outdoor ondifferent environmental conditions. The DC motor would be activated and expose theclothes when the condition was bright and not raining. Else, the clothes would be coveredunder the roof designed. The results recorded from the prototype test showed that theintelligent clothesline system developed in this project was successful as it was able todetermine the suitable condition to dry clothes.