Cactus

Cactus is a power strip that allows the devices connected to it to be controlled based on preset times or device location via geofence/bluetooth.

  • Personal Project
  • Energy Tech
  • Consumer Product
  • Electronics
  • Design Challenge
  • Cactus was meant to allow one schedule any device that plugged into a NEMA-15 outlet, for example to turn on a rice cooker 30 minutes before you get home. It also had basic power metering capability to monitor energy use or alert you if you had left something on, and had the ability to trigger based on the strength of a bluetooth connection, with the idea that you could have lights turn on automatically when you walked into a room.
  • My Work
  • I designed all of the electronics, did the PCB layout, and built the first prototypes. The controller is a Particle Photon.
Cactus was meant to allow home automation in a way that was beautiful and easy to use.

We strove for an attractive design to make an object that could be part of the home rather than hidden in the background. The electronics were built to be safe and versatile so as to support unanticipated use cases.

See the Github
  • Target UserEnvironmentalists, Home Automation Enthusiasts
  • Type of WorkElectronics, Coding, Interaction Design
  • Tools UsedEagle, Particle, Soldering Iron, Solidworks
  • LocationProvidence, RI
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