1B – Arduino Project – Algorithm of the Cave

Group Members: Alice Borie, Luke Hottinger, Horace Hou, Vivian Qiu, Rebecca Wolfinger

Roles: Alice Borie as Scribe, Luke Hottinger – Integrator, Horace Hou as Designer , Vivian Qiu as Designer, Rebecca Wolfinger as Tutor

 

Introduction

Change, something that we all experience multiple times in our lives whether it be transitioning from high school to college or moving to another city. These changes bring unnecessary stresses to our lives, however, given time we are able to adapt and calm ourselves down. The relationship of change and stress is something we tried to highlight in our project.

We related our idea to the allegory of the cave where the people chained up in a cave are used to experiencing the world through shadows, when one prisoner is freed, he experiences a shocking change where his whole belief of the world is suddenly destroyed. However, given time he slowly gets used to his new surroundings and thus returns to his previous calmness.

In our project we aim to show a system that responds stressfully when there is a change to the system. Over time the system gets used to the new environment and returns to the initial resting state. In our project the wooden box represents the cave in the allegory of the cave and the mini acrylic boxes represent the prisoners. One of the acrylic boxes has the sensor and arduino embedded in the box to represent the freed prisoner.

Video

 

Technical Notes

Our project uses a light sensor to detect a change in the surroundings. Once the sensor detects a change in the systems, the LED’s stress out and flicker between colours. For this project we used the RGB LED’s to allow for a greater control of the colours output and allow changes in the colour. There is also a motor that is turned on when the system is stressed. The arduino compares the average light readings over time and thus allows the system to get used to the new environment and calm down. In its resting state the box slowly fades between turquoise and green. A hole was drilled in the box in order for the light sensor to more accurately measure the amount of light in the environment. The light sensor was also blocked from the LED’s in order to prevent the light sensor from measuring the light being emitted by the LED’s.

 

Photos

 

IMG_5008Prisoner in calm state.

IMG_5015Prisoner in stressed state.

fritzcaveCircuit Diagram

IMG_1370

Actual Circuit