A cross-disciplinary opportunity

At Georgia Tech they have created an email list titled, "ID-request." This is typically used by clubs, organizations, or other students who are looking for some help from industrial design students. A lot of times it is a logo, a t-shirt, or other small projects that I typically just ignore, but this summer an email went out from a group of mechanical engineering graduate students looking for some help with the housing and interface design of a smart sprinkler system. Since I do have a bit of extra time and some background in mechanical engineering, I have decided to pursue this opportunity. At this point, I have been brought up to date on their initial research and prototyping, and we have had a few meetings to discuss design and direction. As I first began brainstorming, my mind went wild with crazy ideas like using wifi to access a local weather station and adjust water according to expected rainfall, and integrating a mobile app to access the system when you're gone. Unfortunately I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to smart sprinkler controller design, go figure! It turns out that all of my great ideas have been readily implemented. The mechanical engineers gave me a list of features and technical specs that they are confident will differentiate their product, so I've made it my job to also differentiate the product based on user experience.

The current state of "smart" controllers