About Thermominator

Built by MIT 6.9000 Team 2.

This project was built for MIT 6.9000 (Spring 2026). The purpose of the system is to understand the local heat experience on different parts of the MIT campus.

Brian Goldberg’s presentation from Lecture 2 is available to review.

* → *** indicates level of importance.

• (***) Accurately measure exterior air temperature and humidity while walking, with dynamics appropriate for the use case.
• (*) Measure sun exposure while walking, with dynamics appropriate for the use case.
• (***) Very small, portable, and easily affixed to a backpack (or similar) for walking around.
• (**) Report faults (battery failure, mechanical destruction, etc.).
• (***) Inexpensive (COGS ≤ $20 USD).
• (***) Electronics can be fabricated and assembled by JLCPCB.
• (***) Environmental data from each sensor node connects to the location where it was obtained.
• (***) Maintain privacy.
• (***) Battery lifetime of 3 months or at least 24+ hours between recharging.
• (***) Rugged for summertime Boston-area environment (heat, rain) + typical jostling during transit.
• (**) Transit environmental data can be connected to spot measurements of the person’s body temperature.
• (***) Multiple systems can be used simultaneously.
• (***) Present information on a dashboard in real-time or near real-time, and allow downloading raw data.

We treated this as a sensing → interpretation → decision problem. A small fleet of devices collects local conditions, and the dashboard turns that into a map you can act on (where to avoid, where to go), with time controls to compare “now” vs earlier.

Technical details (API layout, DB schema, seeding, etc.) live in the linked docs below so this page stays readable.

Add links here for your writeup and presentation. These can point to Figma, PDFs, or repo files. There is also a FAQ that might be useful.