John's Alert Warning System

This project was designed for my dad, John Wong, with the purpose of helping him while he watches TV. The commercial break, a staple of cable television, is a segment he despises watching, causing him to get up and do other activities such as getting food or using the bathroom. Unfortunately, he loses track of time easily and before he knows it, he comes back and commercial break has long ended, leading to him missing out on a decent portion of his program. Enter JAWS (John’s Alert Warning System), a device that solves this problem by alerting him to when a commercial break ends. It is entirely based of a certain feature of several cable channels: the logo of the channel will disappear when the break starts and comes back when the commercial ends. Therefore, it works by using a color detecting photoresistor that rings when it has noticed that the logo has come back, or if this fails, will ring after three minutes which is the average commercial length time. Several channel logos have vibrant colors such as ESPN or NBA TV, therefore a photoresistor with a color gel coded to respond to a certain amount of this light frequency will sufficiently accomplish this. Overall, this is how the device is going to work: prior to use, it is adjusted to height based on the TV using the included stand, and volume is adjusted using the potentiometer; then the user gets up during the commercial break and pushes the top button which will turn on the device and a status LED. This will activate the photoresistor which will detect the logo color and cause a piezo to sound for five seconds to get my dad’s attention. After that, the device turns off to save battery life.