Project 2: Lampalarm
- Chandler Zastrow
- Oct 27, 2016
- 3 min read
For this project we were assigned the task of creating an AHC (artificial human companion.) This is meant to behave as an object that a user has some input and the object emits a response, creating an interaction and relationship between the user and the machine. When my partner Mike and I began this, we wanted to make something that was very much functional: something that would help someone achieve some type of task. We began talking about every day problems he and I faced, from getting to class on time to not having enough time in the day to get tasks done. It wasn't until we sat and thought for about an hour that we came up with an alarm clock that woke a person up with not just sound, but light.
The human body is naturally tuned to wake up by light. In an article from National Geographic, a set of light-sensitive eye cells, called ipRGCs use light to set the body's circadian rhythm (it's natural cycle of rest and being awake.) We were designed to be woken up by light, so it makes sense why we have such a hard time waking up to just noise alarms on our phones. He and I talked about the numerous times that each of us had either missed classes, not turned in projects on time, and had sleeping-in negatively effect us in some way or another. Sound alarms aren't full-proof, so the inclusion of light seemed to be a step in the right direction for us and the rest of the world to wake up when we want to and get places on time.
Introducing Lampalarm: a bedside lamp that is sensitive to the sound of your alarm and wakes you up with light.
To make this happen, we had to purchase a sparkfun beefcake relay control kit and a sound detector. We then hacked the lamp's electronics to be able to have it's voltage converted from 120v to 5v using a hacked phone charger. Then came constructing the beefcake relay (basically a switch for higher-powered electronics) and then connecting it to the lamp's wiring. This was initially pretty difficult as a result of the lamp having it's wiring being split up three ways, to a main power source as well as into two external electrical outlets for extra devices. We ended up taking each of the different types of output cords and rewiring them into each other, making it so that all of the electricity was going through the one external wire and going right into the voltage converter. Then, we connected the sound sensor and the other components to the arduino, and we got coding.
Each step is displayed below:
Before we made the final code putting together the final sound-thresholds, we utilized the simple blink function provided on the arduino website to initially test the capabilities of the relay.
The video can be seen here:
We then got to producing the final code, which involved having the lamp turn on when a certain threshold of sound was reached (loud enough to hear a cell-phone alarm.)
This along with the fritzing can be seen here:
After all of this, we finally got the lamp to react to a simple phone-alarm.
This can be seen here:
All in all this project went very well. We worked efficiently, had very few problems with the hacking, and learned a lot about electronics and circuitry.
Hooray for Lampalarm!
National Geographic article: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/13/how-light-wakes-up-the-brain/
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