The Bathtub Becomes Automated and Arduino-Compatible

After a grueling 3-hour workweek, there’s nothing like coming home and soaking in a hot bubble bath. The problem is, most of us are too tired to even attempt to turn on the water, much less pour in the bubble-bath concoction. Lucky for us, inventor raptor_demon has made it remarkably easier to turn on the hot water and add our bubble flavor of choice with the help of an Atmel microcontroller.

His design uses an Arduino-compatible Atmel ATmega328P microcontroller to trip three relays, one for a fill-valve and pump, one to dispense soap and for the drain-valve and pump. Filling the tub with water is time-based rather than using a floatation-switch, which is calibrated manually. To monitor the temperature of the water in the tub, raptor housed another Atmel microcontroller sealed inside of a rubber duck (my favorite part). The duck sends the temperature data wirelessly (using a 434MHz transmitter) to the other controller (AKA- Bath Computer v2), which can then be monitored on an Adafruit LCD Shield.

Using his setup allows users to take a bath by just pressing a button on the control box rather than doing everything by hand, because taking a soothing bath shouldn’t be an ‘manual ordeal’. Raptor is looking to upgrade a future version for use within an IoT environment and integrate it into smart-home platforms. I can see it now… one button for remote bath running… then flooding. Do that yourself at Instructables!