{"id":15222,"date":"2016-07-08T09:30:54","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T16:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.digilentinc.com\/?p=15222"},"modified":"2024-12-28T16:18:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-29T00:18:24","slug":"build-a-portable-personal-cooling-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/build-a-portable-personal-cooling-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Build a Portable Personal Cooling System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summer can be a magical time, one of of hot days, late nights, and lifetime memories. Those unforgettable moments that we carry with us long after the season itself ends.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN3382\"
Image of summer (according to Google Search). Photo courtesy of moda.com.\u00a0<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At least that is what I have heard from the Gossip Girl novels and Tumblr. In my actual personal experience, I (and my unfortunately lackluster\u00a0ability to regulate my body heat) tend to spend most of the summer months either holed up in my nicely air-conditioned workplace or laying on my floor at home whilst sweating and complaining.<\/p>\n

\"cooling\"
Actual image of what I usually see during the summer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Displaying\"Displaying\"DisplayingI have long dreamed of a way to shed this suffocating heat, and while many find refuge in nearby lakes or pools, all I\u00a0have access to here in Pullman Washington is a questionable stream downtown and a small fountain by the library that is apparently “not for that use”. Well,\u00a0Thomas Edison once said that genius is 99 percent perspiration\u00a0and 1 percent inspiration\u00a0and by god I already had the sweating part down, so all that I needed now was the idea.<\/p>\n

So, after some pondering I came to the conclusion that the answer was going to involve building myself some sort of AC system. Unfortunately I figured that I possessed neither the technical skills nor the money to build a D.I.Y swamp cooler,<\/a> so after some careful consideration and the abandonment of any moral obligation toward anyone but myself, I decided to focus on how to build a personal<\/em> AC system.<\/p>\n

You see,\u00a0I figured it would be easier and take less power to just alleviate one person of the heat instead of a whole room\/house… plus my last pack of Oscar Meyer hot dogs had recently undergone a mysterious disappearance,\u00a0so I decided to remove my housemates\u00a0from the consideration pool.<\/p>\n

Alas, the Personal Cooling System<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The design involves running ice-cooled water through tubes that are held again heat-sensitive parts of the skin. The current setup includes a “Cooling Pack” that is kept pressed against the back of the wearer’s neck, which is automated to be sent fresh, cool water when a button mounted on the shoulder is pressed. The intent is to allow for an efficient, portable, reusable cooling system.<\/p>\n

I used a chipKIT uC32<\/a> as the brains of the project, which is able to control two servos which are attached to the syringes. The code runs off the push of a button and each time cycles ice-water from the CamelBak to the Cooling Pack.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This project is currently a bit of a work in progress, however it does function as intended even if it is not the most…attractive looking aesthetic. My next steps include hiding the mechanics within the backpack so I can carry it outside without attracting judgmental looks from strangers and\u00a0law enforcement, as well as adding a sweat sensor for autonomous cooling (without having to press the button each time).<\/p>\n

I am planning on using\u00a0the concept of galvanized skin response to create the sensor, then setting a threshold in the code for at what point the wearer is\u00a0“too sweaty” and needs cooling.<\/p>\n

An awesome example of a project that uses similar design\u00a0comes from a 2016 finalist team in the Digilent Design Contest Europe<\/a>.This team created a Wearable Wellness<\/a> system using the Zybo ARM\/Zynq<\/a> FPGA development board, PmodOLED<\/a>, PmodRF2<\/a>and PmodIA <\/a>that can measure changes in skin impedance.<\/p>\n

\"measurement
The Wearable Wellness System.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While their team focused on the stress aspect of wellness, it could\u00a0also be applied as a sweat\u00a0sensor so your Cooling System would be completely autonomous.<\/p>\n

Feel free to check out the full instructions on how to make the Personal Cooling System for your own usage with\u00a0my Instructable<\/a>, and let us know how you intend to beat the heat this summer!<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div>
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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stay cool and look even cooler with this project!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":15231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4327],"tags":[104],"ppma_author":[4485],"class_list":["post-15222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects","tag-project-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/13422849_293725190962640_818825289_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":4485,"user_id":36,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mirandamay7","display_name":"Miranda Hansen","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bcab037c32924b9f9b3ca4898e179f2764cb7d9a82aa2bd475170c8aaa884e1c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":"","9":"","10":""}],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31209,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222\/revisions\/31209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15222"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=15222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}