Domestic energy consumption was a pressing concern for several of the people that took part in our initial studies of domestic technology used. The aim of the Kuckuck project is to design meaningful and useful interfaces which display information about home.
Sensor Hardware
Particle Smart-It's are used to broadcast sensort data wirelessly from electrical current flow sensors and temperature sensors which are attached to water pipes. Considerable effort has gone into writing software for the particle Smart-It's which conserves the battery life of the particle, whilst at the same time delivering data with sufficient granularity when there is significant change in sensor readings.
Sensor Display
The project aims to produce interfaces which show domestic energy consumption in a meaningful but also playful way.
One of our earliest ideas was a cuckoo clock that would "Cuckoo" every time a pound was spent on electricity.
We took this display idea, and several others and showed them to potentials participants in our trial in order to get feedback on the kinds of interface that people might want to see and might be prepared to live with.
Now that we have raw data from the sensors that we can show to participants, we are working in user-centred iterative design process to create an interface which best suits the needs and curiosities of our participants.
Installing Sensors in Real-World Environments
In the kuckuck project we have installed sensors in a domestic environment. The process of doing this has raised many issues to do with ethics, safety and technical performance.
The hardware and software that is involved in the Kuckuck project has been trialed, at first in the lab and then in the home of one of the Kucuk team before it is deployed in a "real" home.
Still, real-world environments continue to throw problems which are difficult to anticipate in a lab setting.
