DrySense

Background and Problem 

In India, kids grow up watching their moms and grandmas struggling with the daily task of washing and drying clothes. We were no different. Drying clothes is a tedious process in which clothes are hung on a rope/string to dry in the sun and wind. It is a tiresome process especially for the elderly and those with back problems. Currently, there exists a basic drying rack that easily fits in the balconies of apartments. It can be lowered to hang clothes and raised out of the way to let them dry. However, this design also requires the physical work of walking along the length to hang clothes and to collect them after they’ve dried. The process is boring, not very user-friendly, and time-consuming. After interviewing many housewives, it was clear that they end up taking the help of their kids or husband for this task. Also, it was quite a task for them to lower the rack and gather each of the clothes individually at the end of each day. Keeping these inconveniences in mind, an intelligent drying rack was designed that would add automation to this menial chore and reduce the physical efforts of housewives.

Solution

For crafting the solution, we studied the daily routine for housewives for different house architecture. Through this study, we got many useful considerations such as space for typical Indian wardrobes namely saree, level of customization needed for different mounting locations in the specific areas of the house (such as bathrooms, balconies, narrow passages), etc. We started experimenting with creating different mechanisms by taking inspiration from the conventional systems which are made of metallic bars, pulleys, and ropes. We were focusing on making the system compact, interesting to look at, cost-effective, and most importantly ergonomic. After a while, we crafted a system with an interesting mechanism.

The system consists of the following components – a fabricated rack, pulley mechanism, special hangers and clips, moisture sensor, microcontroller, and a DC motor.

To dry the clothes, the user has to pull down the rack and hang the clothes on the clips which are all collected at one end of the rack. After hanging the clothes, the user pushes a button that activates the motor and spreads all the hangers along the rods of the rack. Dry Sense uses a moisture sensor to sense the moisture content in a reference cloth which takes the longest time among common laundry items to dry (we used Denim jeans fabric). When the moisture in the reference cloth falls below a threshold, the drop mechanism is activated. The motor rotates the pulley mechanism which pulls all the hangers together to one side. The clips bunch together and push against the edge which causes them to open and drop the clothes. All the clothes get collected in a basket kept under the rack. After that system informs the users: ‘clothes are completely dried.’

The system is now again ready for a new lot of clothes. As the hangers are all bunched together, the user can hang all the clothes standing in one spot instead of moving along the length of the rack. When the user is done hanging the clothes, they just have to press a button to activate the motor-pulley mechanism which will spread out the clothes across the length of the rack. All the parameters such as length of a rack, numbers of bars on a rack, base height are customizable depending on the comfort of the user.

Prototyping for validation 

The construction of the rack is fairly simple, with multiple horizontal aluminum rods (prototype in MS) held together by two end beams. The number and length of rods can be customized depending on the space available at each home and their laundry needs. The design of the rack along with the special racks allows it to hold the maximum clothes in a compact space. It can conveniently fit in multiple locations inside the house such as – bathrooms, balconies, stairways, and hallways.

The hanger and clip system is designed in such a way that the hangers are automatically spaced equally along the length of the rack. This is achieved by a simple but efficient design. Beads are fixed to the rope at equal intervals along the length of the rack. When the motors rotate the pulleys, the beads pull the hangers away from each other, but only to a certain extent as they are limited by the beads. Thus, the system ensures that there is enough space between two clothes to allow the flow of wind which accelerates the drying process.

The electronic part of the system consists of an Arduino microcontroller, a DC motor, and a moisture sensor. The sensor communicates the level of moisture of the standard cloth to the Arduino which triggers the motor for the automatic drop mechanism. 

(Unfortunately, I have lost all the 3D files and Simulations in a Hard Drive crash; I am trying to retrieve the data)

Happy Users!

The product was well received by the target customers, namely housewives and the elderly. They were happy that their daily effort had been reduced and they had one less thing to worry about now that the clothes would be collected automatically after drying. It also helped that they were already familiar and used to a similar rack-type device. The product was also simple to use and did not need any additional effort on the user’s part to use it.

Future scope

The system we designed was working on data that was collected by the moisture sensor which may compromise the reliability of the system. Many factors can affect the reliability of the system. Factors such as humidity, drying time as it depends on the weather conditions, certain types of heavy & decorated Indian clothes, etc. As the system can connect to the cloud, it can be trained over time by processing the collected data for better reliability. Furthermore, the function can be extended to such an extent that the system can be integrated with smart washing machines for better user experiences.