We formed a conjecture in class that designing the temperature sensor would be simplest if we design it with battery and WiFi in mind. Much like anything else, there are pros and cons to anything. Some of the pros for a battery and WiFi sensor are:
- Portable
- Pretty
- Existing infrastructure
- Storage
If we design the sensor to be a battery powered sensor it gives us the freedom of placing these sensors in areas that would not normally be accessible to an outlet. These places can include places that are hard to reach like nooks and crannies and places that are inherently restrictive. This is the case for the organ since we would not want to ruin the decor with wires. This also make our sensor much more subtle and pretty than it would be having wires coming out into the outlets. The main advantage of using WiFi is that the infrastructure exists. Most, if not all, of these building already have WiFi connections. We can then use these to send out data and having this avability also allows us to not have to store data in our sensor. Some of the cons for this would be:
- replacement of battery hassle
- unreliable
- power consumption
If batteries are used then when the batteries die someone will have to go in and replace those batteries. This can be a time sink for those in charge depending on how many sensors are in place. If these sensors are placed in areas hard to reach then it will hard for a person to change the batteries. Replacing batteries could also be something that can be easily forgotten, and our sensor would prove useless. The fact the batteries can die without being noticed also makes our sensor less than reliable.
I think that batteries and WiFi will ultimate be the waqy to go, but there will be considerations that we will have to make.