How to alert someone in another area of the house.

Projects General Guidance
1

I know nothing about electronics but have an idea for a project. I've browsed tons of projects but none of them seems to fit the bill. My project idea is as follows.

We have a combi boiler and bathrooms on the first and second floor of the house. If someone runs the tap in the kitchen the person in the shower loses supply.

I thought it would be neat to be able to notify the person in the kitchen from upstairs in either bathroom that they should stop running water (without screaming the house down).

I figure there's numerous ways of doing this but guess the simplest is some sort of Bluetooth controller which could trigger a toy to move/make a noise/light up accordingly down in the kitchen.

I've so far not found a suitable project that I can adapt to this end. Cam anyone set me on the right path?

Thanks

2

I think the cheapest solution would be using a wireless door bell:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wireless+door+bell
Unless you want to re-invent it yourself and involve an arduino (with XBee, displays, buzzer etc etc). YOu will spend some money, but may have fun in the process :slight_smile:

3

There are a number of ways of doing this. A simple battery (it's the bathroom, right?) operated bell would do this. You can buy wireless ones in B&Q that are quite cheap.

My solution was to put a constant temperature mixer tap on the bathroom shower. It cost me just over 100 UK pounds from Grahams, and results in the flow of shower water diminishing but the temperature remains the same.

Doing this with an Arduino means that you need to consider several steps.
1). decide if the bathroom shower is in use and inform the kitchen of this fact. An LED would do this
2). detection of water flow in the kitchen so that the bathroom is notified immediately.
3). decide what to do about this. Is the bathroom shower in use?
a).If it is not, do nothing.
b). If it is in use, inform the bathroom.

An audible signal will probably be better than a LED or other light since you can;t see an LED when your head is covered in shampoo.

This can be a fun project and many here will have lots of ideas.

4

What if the person in the kitchen is turning the hot water on just to irritate you in the shower? Letting that person know you were irritated probably won't help.

Before you go off on the bluetooth tangent, look at the range that they have. Generally, 10 meters, line of sight, or less.

5

It has nothing to do with Arduino, but my wife now just calls my cell phone number if she needs to reach me, and I'm in another part of the house (this was particularly when health issues meant she couldn't just get up and yell for me).