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Throughout human history, technological breakthroughs have consistently been met with skepticism by the general public. Common concerns include the potential for new inventions to displace human workers or have a corrupting influence on younger generations. However, despite these reservations, it is undeniable that technology has significantly improved our lives. Today, we enjoy a higher quality of life than in the past, and we owe this prosperity largely to technological innovations.

So rather than fretting about technological advancements, we might do well to seek out any opportunity we can find to improve the world around us through technology. Engineer and creative technologist Chris DeLaurentis came to the realization that the hard hat, which has little changed in its roughly one-hundred-year history, is way overdue for an update. This simple safety gear has saved countless lives and prevented untold injuries over its lifetime, but there are other problems that have yet to be solved.

Every year, hundreds of workers — especially on construction sites — die or suffer other serious injuries due to heatstroke. Naturally, having a hard plastic shell that cannot breathe on one’s head does not help this situation any. So DeLaurentis decided to give hard hats some intelligence. He reasoned that by monitoring the temperature inside of the hat, one could be alerted when it gets too hot. That would give them a clear warning that they need to take a break before a serious condition develops.

Measuring temperature is straightforward enough, but concerning measurements also need to be reported to the wearer of the hat, and perhaps a supervisor, to ensure that swift corrective action is taken. For this reason, DeLaurentis chose to work with a Particle Boron development board. These boards are tiny, making them quite comfortable to fit inside a hat. More importantly, they offer cellular connectivity, which makes it possible to send notifications from just about anywhere.

The Boron was paired with a temperature sensor breakout board, a 2000mAH LiPo battery, and an RGB LED (for visible alerts). For the prototype, the hardware was wired together on perfboard. A 3D-printed mount was also created to attach the hardware inside the hat, where it would be out of the way. The LED was mounted at the brim of the hat so that it would be visible in the wearer’s peripheral vision.

Custom software was developed that reads data from the temperature sensor and looks for two types of events — sudden spikes in temperature and a high absolute temperature. The color of the RGB LED is changed to represent the current temperature, and in the case of either type of event being detected, a warning email is sent to a designated address. This could just as easily be a text message or phone notification if the particular use case calls for it.

This work is a great start that solves a real-world problem, but DeLaurentis is not stopping here. In the future, he sees his smart hard hat detecting dangerous gas leaks, watching out for head impacts, and more, to make the jobsite safer for workers.