19. Final Project Requirements¶

What does it do?
Who’s done what beforehand?
What did you design?
What materials and components were used?
Where did they come from?
How much did they cost?
What parts and systems were made?
What processes were used?
What questions were answered?
What worked? What didn’t?
How was it evaluated?
What are the implications?

Full Documentation.¶

Code & Interface Design.
Electronics Design & Production.
Computer-Aided Design & Manufacturing.

What does it do?¶

Moonflo is a smart lamp. It is motion activated and syncs its light logic with the moon phases. After being turned on by the movement, it connects to the WiFi, read the time through “time.h”. This time is then translated into the format that “moonphaser.h” library understands. Moonphaser library then tells us the angle and surface lit of the moon.

I have created light combination for each one of each phase of the moon based on this two pieces of data.

After 5 mins of not sensing any motion, the lamp turns off until another motion is detected and it takes place all over again.

A local server is generated by the ESP8266 chip once connected to the Wifi. Once the interface is accessed, the user can notify the ESP to start counting 25 days by clicking the button. After the 25 days count is over the neopixels turn red; notifying the closeness of the next cycle.

Considering that the lamp goes off, which means the memory gets reset, I needed to save that date the button is clicked in a memory that is not erased, the EEPROM.

Luckily, there is a very easy to use library for ESP and EEPROM, the “ESP_EEPROM.h”

What I will design¶

I decided not to have a literal representation of the moon I see the project in two parts:

The Lamp Structure

The lamp is a minimal as a circle. The idea is to make it out of wood. When installed, it should be painted with the colour of the surface on which it is installed.

The idea is to direct with light towards the wall. Neo pixels are smart pixels. Their light tend to be kind of ‘cutre’. I decide to install a transparent sanded acrylic ring to protect the electronics and lights, but also to help diffuse the light of the neopixels.

The Lamp Logic

In here I explain in details the logic behind the code. Part of the beauty of it to connect the light to time and to the phases of the moon in real-time.

Also, to sync it to the phone. I stuck to doing a local server for now, but maybe an app would be more user-friendly. Or maybe, if it wasnt part of the assignment to make interface & networking communication, I would have simply created a button within the lamp.

Who has done what beforehand?¶

MOONKUDU

It is a project that took 4 years between industrial designers and developers. This project is a high-level accurate art piece! It takes into consideration:

the movement of the sun and the moon in rotation
the perfect representation of the sun in accordance of the moon
a 1/20 million replica of the Moon featuring all the craters, elevation and ridges in accurate 3D
PCB: • Keeps real-time record of the actual moon and sun position • 64 KB of memory • 3 modes of operation • High precision motor • Precision motor position feedback system • Steel and aluminium frame construction • Power: 100-240V 50/60 Hz, 5V adaptor supplied

Another beautiful DIY model is this DIY

What material and components will be used? How much do they cost?¶

The Electronics:
ESP8266 - ESP12 - 1.8 EUR
Voltage Regulator - 0.25 EUR
2 1uF capacitors to power the ESP8266 at 3.3 V - 0.02 EUR
Slide Switch to program the ESP12 - 1.09 EUR
A reset switch connected to the REST switch. 0.35 EUR
an FTDI connector (Male Pins)
a micro-USB input for power
a transmission signal processing control chip RCWL-9196 1.69 EUR
a Neopixel strip with a 1000uF capacitor connected to the 5V. 9.35 EUR
The physical Lamp:
A 3mm in thickness 500 mm piece of wood. it was from the lab’s left-overs.
transparent plxiglass 12.29 EUR
Micro-USB to USB cable. 5V charging adaptor 5.41 EUR
Charging Adapter USB - 1.15 EUR
The design & fabrication sofwares:
Arduino IDE
Autofusion
RhinoCAM

Where did they come from?¶

All the material came from the lab.

What parts and systems will be made?¶

I will be: - Developing interface and communication between local server and lamp. - Saving click date in EEPROM. - codingboth input and output modals. -

I will be: - designing the PCB board to fit the circular shape. - milling the body of the lamp. - laser-cutting the plexiglass used as protection and diffuser.

What processes will be used?¶

PCB milling
CNC milling
Laser-cutting
molding & casting in case i decide to mold my thermoplastic into 3D diffusers.
Interface programming
2D & 3D design

Which questions need to be answered?¶

How To get precise time?
How to sync time to moon phase Library using the right format?
How to save the time when the button from the local server is pressed, even after the lamp is off?
How to fix the acrylic cover on the wooden body of the lamp?
How to make sure the lamp is subtle, and non-invasive.

What worked? What didn’t?¶

What worked

Turning on the lamp when motion is deteceted and during 5 mins. Turning it off 5 mins after the last motion detected.
Connecting to WiFi
Receiving the time from NTP. Adjusting it to current time-zone.
Syncing time to moonphase.h library
Translating time into light patterns by coding neopixels.
Connecting the lamp to energy source
Create the minimal effect of the lighting

What didn't work

The finishing is not well-done. Needs to be taken into consideration, this includes the assembling between the plexiglass and the wooden body, a casing for the electronics as well as the motion sensor and the cable.

How was it evaluated?¶

Was I able to retrieve time?
Was I able to understand the relationship between moon phases, and surfacelit+angle?
Was I able to make the local server interface start the count in the ESP?
Was I able to find a way to save a value after the ESP was off?
Was I able to make light the main focus and not the object itself?

Time Management¶

I am using this living document on Trello to organise my time.

Please find the final project documentation here