Bengaluru engineer Pankaj’s AI roommate: A unique solution to his sleep problem.

A software engineer from Bengaluru has found a unique solution to his sleep problem. Fed up with the problem of sometimes feeling too hot and sometimes too cold at night, he created an AI-powered ‘roommate’, which automatically turns the fan on or off after seeing his sleeping pattern.

The name of this engineer is Pankaj, who is known by the name @the2ndfloorguy on social media platform X. He told that he would often wake up at 3 o’clock in the night drenched in sweat or shivering from the cold.

To overcome this problem, he prepared a system which, by looking at their body position, understands whether they are feeling hot or cold.

How does this system work?
Pankaj has installed a camera in his room, which monitors his sleeping position. The system runs on a pose detection model called MediaPipe, which he has setup on his Raspberry Pi home server.

When they take their hands or feet out of the blanket while sleeping, the system understands that they are feeling hot. In such a situation it turns on the fan.

If their hands are folded near the body, which makes them feel cold, then the fan automatically switches off.

To control the fan, he has installed a ‘remote button pusher’ device. This small device physically presses the fan switch when a signal is received from the system.

Received praise on social media
Pankaj shared the picture and demo of this innovation online, in which the joints of his body were seen marked on the camera screen. The post went viral and people praised him a lot.

Many users called it an example of ‘real smart home’. Some people jokingly wrote that their AI roommate is more useful than a real roommate. At the same time, many users also asked him for a tutorial or GitHub link of this project, so that they too can create such a system.

Overall, this innovation shows that with the right idea and technology, great solutions can be found to even small everyday problems.