Project 4: Package Security

City Dwellers Combating Package Poachers

As more and more people start to conveninetly order things online and get them delivered in front of their door, package poachers became more prominent too. This made many people nervous about their package being left outside of their house for too long. Which can explain the reason why many people choose to purchase security cameras just for this reason. (video doorbells sales globally could hit $1.4 billion over the next year.)

Concept & Context

Package Delivery Tracking & Package Security

On the previous version of the project I tracked if the package was delivered or not. For this project I thought about the security of the package. If the package is here can I determine if it is stolen or not? I also wanted the system to be able to notify the user if their package was stolen using IFTTT and visually represent the states through P5js.

Impetus

Why do you want to build this?

As a designer, user's privacy and security is one of the most important subject. I want to communicate with users in the products and systems to help them feel safe. This package security project would help me further think about how I could protect the users and let them be sure that they could trust it.

Also, I was thinking about what I can add to the original function of project 3 and it lead me to one of the things I get anxious about when I order packages. What if I come home and the package that I ordered is missing? The worst part is that you don't know if the package is missing or not until you come home.

Goals

The project would be sucessful if it all the sensors are able to communicate with each other to send out the right states to alert the users.

Precedents

Backpack Alarm Project

Backpack Alarm Project by Tomi Chen was a project that was similar to mine. The project was able to successfully sound an alarm when someone was trying to steal a backpack.

This project used compass/accelerometer to detect if the backpack was stolen or not and it used a key in order to stop the alarm. Though I think that using a audio jack as a key was a great idea, I thought that for mine a switch would be great just incase the key is lost.

Ring

Ring is a home security and smart home company, It uses camera to secure people's homes as it takes a video whenever it sees that someone is around the house. Ring is very effective because people are able to see what's happening outside their home whenever they are not home.

However, on the other hand it violates privacy of other passerbys and delivery man as even if they aren't doning anything wrong, their actions and faces are being recorded, sometimes without them knowing. My project will detect package poachers without using a camera therefore, it won't violate others.

Tools & Methods

Coding Process

At first I had to define what all the sensors meant and think about what actions needed to happen depending on what sensors were going off. I also had to think about what ways to differentiate the thief and the user. How could the system know if the package was stolen?

This is when the switch came in. I thought that since the user would only have access to the inside of the house having a switch inside would work. When the user leaves, user turns on the switch. If the switch is on and the package is not there (determined by button unpressed or distance sensor = 0) then the package is stolen.

In Arduino, I created a new sketch for the project and added alarm states & notify states and add new feeds on to adafruit.io as well.

Connect sensors on the breadboard

Worked on P5.js to visually show the different states and connected it with IFTTT in order to send text whenever the alarm went off.

Final Prototype

Future Iterations

I think that the distance sensor could be used in another way. Instead of it working as a way to see if the package is there, I think it could be used to sense the thief's movement and have levels of warnings as they come closer.

Design the physical look of the control.