Smart Home
2025
Omni
A smart-home hub that turns critical sounds into light for deaf and hard-of-hearing users.
Type
Smart Home Hub
Focus
Accessibility
Team
Team of Five
Timeline
One-Week Sprint
Project: Omni
Omni is a smart home hub designed to bridge the accessibility gap for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. It utilizes a 360° projection system to visualize critical audio cues in real-time, translating sounds into intuitive lights, colors, and symbols for a seamless home experience.
The Challenge
In an intensive one-week sprint, our team of five developed a complete product ecosystem, from initial concept generation to a full business plan. The goal was to address the needs of the 11 million people in the U.S. with serious hearing difficulty by creating a viable smart home concept that ensures safety and connectivity without relying on auditory perception.
The Solution
360° Visual Interface: Engineered an optical system using a wide-angle projector and a projection mirror to cast alerts onto a tempered glass surround, ensuring visibility from any angle in the room.
Sensory Translation: The device uses a microphone array to detect environmental sounds (like doorbells, alarms, or voices) and converts them into distinct visual distinct cues.
Compact Engineering: Designed a dense internal component stack, including a custom circular PCB, active cooling (blower fan), and an 8-cell Li-ion battery for portability.
Smart Integration: Features include NFC for quick pairing, wireless charging, and laser sensors for gesture/proximity interaction.
