IntelliFan⚡Smart Portable Fan, PSoC 6 AI Evaluation Kit

When summer rolls around, nothing feels more refreshing than a cool breeze right where you need it! Despite this, traditional fans often leave you chasing their airflow across the room, often wasting energy and leaving you still sipping on that heat.

That’s where we got the idea for IntelliFan from. Inspired by the need for a truly personal and efficient cooling solution, we set out to build a fan that thinks, follows, and responds, powered by Infineon's PSoC 6 AI Evaluation Kit.

Demo & Explanation

Inspiration & Early Ideas

We noticed two frustrations with off-the-shelf fans: they blow air in one direction, and users must manually adjust them. What if a fan could automatically lock on to whoever needs cooling, adjust its speed at a gesture, and even be controlled from your phone?

We sketched out a portable fan that could:

• Track people in its field of view
• Recognize simple gestures to change settings
• Offer a web-based GUI for remote control

With our goals clear, we dove into hardware selection and design. Our bill of materials (BOM) can be found in the Things section.

Prototyping & Further Iterations

Gesture Detection

We began with Infineon’s radar sensor on the PSoC 6 board. By integrating DeepCraft’s pretrained gesture model, our system learned to recognize five distinct swipes and push gestures.

Mechanical Design

Using an Ender 3 V2 3D printer and PLA filament, we designed a snap-fit base to house the PSoC board and wiring. A simple turntable mechanism driven by an SG90 servo let the fan pan smoothly left and right. The models we used can be downloaded from the CAD section.

Control Electronics

Fan speed required more power than the PSoC could supply directly, so we added an H-bridge for precise PWM control, fed by a boost converter stepping 3 V up to 12 V. After a few rounds of soldering and re-routing, our wiring became neat, robust, and serviceable. Each iteration brought adjustments: tightening the snap-fit lid, recalibrating servo limits to avoid clipping, and tuning PWM parameters for whisper-quiet speed control. More details can be found at our GitHub page.

Features & Functionality

Gesture Control

• Swipe left/right to switch the person being tracked
• Swipe up/down to increase or decrease fan speed
• Push to toggle tracking on and off
• Automated Person Tracking

Using this, the fan will detect multiple people in view, lock onto a selected individual, and follow them seamlessly through the turntable mechanism.

Web-Based GUI

• Hosted on the PSoC through an HTTP server over Wi-Fi
• Accessible via any phone or tablet

The GUI displays live detections and lets you tap controls for speed, tracking, or manual positioning

Conclusion & Next Steps

After a few months of development, we were able to create IntelliFan. It’s portable, intuitive, and surprisingly efficient, only spinning up the motor when it senses you need it most. Overall, we were quite happy with the end product, and it was a great experience working with the PSoC 6 AI Evaluation Kit.

We plan on exploring things such as voice commands, battery operation, and even a tower based design for maximum airflow. But for the upcoming summer, our current prototype IntelliFan is ready to keep you cool, smart and effortlessly.

Thank you to Infineon, Hackster.io, and our fellow makers for inspiring this journey. We can’t wait to see where personal cooling goes next!