ECE 110/120 Honors Lab Section : Automatic Room Light Controller and Alarm Clock v2

V1: Automatic Room Light Controller and Alarm Clock

Authors

Tingrui Guan             tguan2       ECE 120

Keshav Harisrikanth  keshavh2  ECE 120

Introduction

Statement of Purpose

In the past semester we worked on tackling the issue of difficulty for sleep deprived colelge students waking up on time in the morning with a better alarm that would use light to wake up students along with managing lightning in the room it was in. This semester we hope to improve on our design with new features and refining of features we implemented previously, along with ironing out some technical difficulties we encountered in the previous iteration. We also hope to implement the mechanical window design of our light controller in a designed small room/chamber where we can manipulate light input and output.

Background Research

V1 Research: There is a project last year called "Self-adjusting Study Light, which uses photoresistor to determine the brightness of the surrounding and sends PWM signal to LEDs based on the signal from light sensing circuit to adjust their brightness. Based on similar principles, our design also uses photoresistor to determine the brightness but for a different purpose.

Additionally, we looked into how light levels can, by affecting brain chemistry, make people feel more awake, alert, and active. This principle is already in use in computer screen adjustments in the form of programs like f.lux, and this idea would allow it to be applied on the scale of an entire room. Through this, we hope to make it easier for sleep deprived college students to wake up.

Furthermore, in making it a good alarm clock, we are also looking into what sounds are best for waking people up, and how, by cycling through a variety of sounds, we can avoid the user becoming too used to the alarm sound to wake up to it. By a variety of sounds, we avoid a degree of tolerance to being woken up by our specific alarm clock.

Design Details

Block Diagram / Flow Chart

System Overview

 The Arduino receives the output from the phone as the condition to turn on both the alarm clock and the light control system. In the light control system, the Arduino receives input from the phototransistor circuits which determines the ambient brightness. The inputs from the light sensor inside the room are used to adjust the brightness and the color of LEDs and the angle of the servo motor as the demo of blind control. Every morning the alarm clock sends a on signal to the Arduino to turn the system on when it reaches the set time, the Arduino then sends a signal to the servo and LED to adjust the light, and activates the alarm. The alarm is on until Arduino receives a signal from the pressure sensor circuit that indicates the user wakes up and stands on the scale. The servo and LED system will still be on after the alarm clock is turned off. To reset the alarm, the user must manually reset the arduino everyday so the arduino would respond to another input from the phone signal.

In continuing this project into a second semester we intend to implement many of these systems in a PCB design, as well as further connect the project to a real world lighting system.

Parts

• Light sensor

• Arduino uno

• Servo Motor

• Alarm speaker

• Pressure sensor

• LED lamp

• Clock for time-keeping

• Transistors

• Linear regulator

• Backup battery

• 12v power supply

• Resistors and wires for the weighing signal

• Switch to control both the servo and LED circuits

• V2 Parts
• LED panel for whole room light control
• Small testing area/chamber
• PCB
• Blind-control capable motor/servo

Possible Challenges

• Making alarm work as intended (delay function issue)

• Motor not working due to power supply
• Circuit integration not working as intended
• Working under PCB constraints
• Managing LED panel
• Varying light output with precision

Weekly Log

Feb.17-Sent the LED links. Bought servo  from ECE Store for controlling the blinds

Feb. 24- Ordered white warmth varying LED strip for testing. Received locker and stored past semester project there. Talked with TA and got resources on properly utilizing LED strips with arduino. Reviewed arduino code from past semester.

Mar. 3-Began soldering newly received LED Buttons. Started figuring out new servo.

Blue Button https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10443 

Mar. 17: Completed Soldering on LED button, inquired on help implementing LED lighting strip.

Mar. 31: Used provided guide to test LED strip with arduino. Drew out potential FSM design for light and alarm systems.

Apr. 7: Tested utilizng LED Strip in tandem with buzzer and servo on 5 v power supply. Started drawing out circuit for conversion to eagle.

Apr. 14: Implemented Adafruid_NeoPixel LED library. Received and implemented capacitor between ground and voltage as LED guide specified

Apr.21: Wrote the code for the light control system and tested it on the circuit. Extend the code to include the buzzer and pressure sensor. Used a button to simulate the alarm signal.

Apr.28: Completed the previous code for the final demo. Tested the alarm signal based on phone aux analog signal instead of the buzzer digital signal with some adjustment of the code. Prepared for the demo.

References

[1]"Self-adjusting Study Light", Jacob Taylor, Thomas McCarthy, Karl Mulnik, 2015. [Online]. Available:https://wiki.illinois.edu/wiki/display/ECE110HLSF15/Self-adjusting+Study+Light?preview=/560271196/583206214/Final_Report_Desk_Lamp.pdf.

[2]"f.lux: sleep research". [Online]. Available:https://justgetflux.com/research.html.

[3]Stephen E. Blackman, "Lamp and alarm clock with gradually increasing light or sounds", U.S. Patent 6236622 B1 issued May 22, 2001. Available:https://www.google.com/patents/US6236622.

[4]Harisrikanth, Keshav, and Tingrui Guan. "Automatic Room Light Controller and Alarm Clock - ECE 110/120 Honors Lab Section - Illinois Wiki." Automatic Room Light Controller and Alarm Clock - ECE 110/120 Honors Lab Section - Illinois Wiki. IllinoisWiki, 12 Dec. 2016. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.