Shimmering Light - Sketch 2 Presentation

From the last update, we started making the prototypes of Shimmering Lights. We gathered all the materials, starting one thing at a time. For this week, we decided to make 4 of the 8 Shimmering Lights for the final installation. We chose to use acrylic tubing, and laser cut the caps.

Inside each Shimmering Light contains 3 LEDs which are soldered onto resistors. 

After all the physical aspects were accomplished, we went on with the technical part. We connected 2 Arduino boards with 4 touch senors controlling 4 servo motors. 

It took us a long time to do coding as it is not our forte. However, with modified code and GSR sensor, we created a Shimmering Light prototype that gets the message across for now.

As users walk through the installation, the Shimmering Lights will evolve around the users. The closer the user gets to the lights, the brighter the lights will get. We also incorporated a mood changing effect on the Shimmering Lights, changing colors depending on users mood. 

We ran into a couple of technical difficulties. After everything worked, we uploaded our code onto an Arduino board. However, we were getting random results and were not as accurate as before. It took us a very long time to isolate the problem by removing and changing out parts one at a time. In the end, we found out that we had purchased a faulty Arduino board. With the time we spent figuring out the problem, we would have built a frame where the lights would hang from, to show the Shimmering Light effect as well as how it would look from above. However, this was not completed due to time constraints. We also realize that our servo motor is really loud, and we will be addressing our issues to make the final project perfect.