Remote Lighting Project Plan

Dillon Shu and Jack Rooney

Our proof of concept, like the straightforward nature of our project, would simply be focused on the actual mechanism turning off the light. The uncertainties that we would like to figure out mostly lie in how to best move the block properly with the servo, since we messed that up when we worked on the ambient telepresence assignment. As of right now we’re planning to leave the block (and as a result the servo) in a neutral state between presses. In other words, the servo pushes down the switch, then moves back up to a state where it is not pressing down on the light switch. Gauging the success should be straightforward in that if the light switch can be turned on/off smoothly we can consider it a success. 

A few things that we’ve thought about that may cause potential issues are

• Does keeping the servo in a neutral state require a constant feed of power? Since it probably does, is there a better approach? 

• How does external influence affect our device? For example, how do I account for if I manually turn off the light without using the device?

• How can we add more features to something simple like our project?

Given the practicality of our project there’s pretty much nothing we’re planning on dropping (for being unfeasible) from our original idea. But, we’re going to be ignoring the wall mounting for the most part at the moment. We want to make sure the meat and bones of the project is working before we move to that. Something else we’re ignoring at the moment is how to feed any information from the weight sensor over to the arduino. It’s doable, but we just haven’t even decided on a way to detect the weight yet so it’s probably not worth figuring out how we’re going to relay the information to the arduino until we figure that out. 

A general outline of our plan as of right now is as follows –

• Solidify the pressure plate/phone sensor idea with sketches and decide on a weight sensor mechanism.  
• Produce a working mechanism to turn off the light switch (proof of concept).
• Focus on the weight sensor and connect the output to the arduino. 
• Wall mounting the device and creating hiding any wiring on the weight sensor. Basically create a nice looking platform to rest the phone on. 
• Continue to add features like a remote control, using speakers to broadcast a daily schedule that will trigger when your lights turn on in the morning, sync lights turning on with alarm clocks so it’s harder to fall asleep again, etc.  

We plan on working on most of the initial steps together to make sure we are on the same page. We want our hardware to be the same. At some point, most likely with some of the code, we’ll probably divide and conquer. At this stage though, we’re going to mostly try to work on everything together. 

We will stay in touch through email/text and meet on zoom. We will collaborate on each part of the project and with the goal of producing the same device. We’ve only had minor scheduling issues so this collaborative plan should be feasible. 

Our material list so far is –