This smart pillow was designed to prevent sunburn by letting you know when it’s time to move.
With school out for the summer, that means countless hours in the sun, whether that’s either soaking up the rays alongside a pool or digging your toes in the sand at the beach. Wherever you are, the likelihood of experiencing some form of sunburn is rather high. And while many will of us will use sunscreen, others will forgo it altogether and learn the hard way about the importance of SPF whatever. However, even those who apply the lotion will find that between it being absorbed by the skin, washed off by water or diminished in protection because of sweat, they’re still apt to get burnt.
With this in mind, Maker Dominik Merle has created a pretty slick smart pillow as part of a recent school project — which we came across after a quick search for “Arduino” on Vimeo. Dubbed Tanny, the prototype is designed to inform a user of when they should move their body to avoid extended exposure in the sun’s rays.
As the video below reveals, Tanny enables its users to get color in a much healthier fashion using the powers of embedded technology. To get started, simply twist the pillow to turn it on, then twist again to set a skin type. The gadget is apparently also equipped with a cooling fan for those super hot summer days and can emit an alert when it’s time to turn around. While the demo doesn’t provide too many details into its inner workings, which we are led to believe is based on an Arduino board of some sort, the idea is cool nevertheless.
