Final Report: Project Documentation

Student Name: Hui-Ling Chang Date: Dec. 17, 2014

EcoLight

1. Abstract Statement

Many indoor spaces not only need constant lighting but also use brightness and darkness for specific

application, and most of them adopt artificial light for customized requirements. EcoLight is designed to

maintain desired lighting by natural light for different exhibitions in buildings, such as museums, and to

maintain the minimum lighting level by artificial light. Through the prototype testing, we can examine the

interaction between exterior light and rotating of blinds. The challenge in the testing is balancing the

interaction between natural light and blinds movement by adjusting the rotating angles within set points of

illuminance in Arduino. Another difficulty is how to connect blinds which are able to rotate with servo motor

fluently, and I refer to the design of solar shading systems from Unicel Architectural to solve this problem.

After examining these processes by fisheye lens, the future work may be to replace the flat blinds with louvers

in 3 dimensions geometry and to find what the effects between different shapes.

2. Prior Work

The RotaBlades, Brandhost Museum in München, and weather-responsive shade are three references, they

maintain good lighting environment by adjusting the angles of blinds for different external lighting conditions.

In my project, I would like build a responsive system on vertical surface to prevent from excessive light and to

adjust indoor illuminance level based on requirement. In addition, artificial light will be provided when indoor

is too dark.

3. Site / Context for Your Project

Museums are places where lighting design is important to the overall experience for audiences, so EcoLight is

designed for exhibition room in modern museums or experimental galleries. This type of exhibition rooms

need varied levels of illuminance or certain zone of lighting. For example, modern artworks are usually

displayed in diverse ways; some of them needs brighter lighting to show the effect of artwork, but some of

them would like to create intangible atmosphere between artifacts and observers by diming lighting. Moreover,

the smaller or detailed artifacts need higher lighting level for viewers.

3. Compelling Concept Diagram

Final Report: Project Documentation

Student Name: Hui-Ling Chang Date: Dec. 17, 2014

Figure 1. Concept of EcoLight’s goal

Figure 2. Concept of control logic

5. Users / Interactivity

There are two ways to control the internal lighting. For general exhibition, the lighting mode is set to automatic

mode which is for lighting the whole spaces within suggested illuminance. For special exhibition, since the artifacts

might need diverse lighting levels in the space, tilting angle of EcoLight is able to be adjusted by setting codes in

Arduino to decrease or increase the lighting level. The LED will light up when the indoor lighting is too dark, or

the lighten timing of LED is also adjustable responded with users’ application.

6. Methods and Materials

Materials:

Arduino Borard

Photo cell

Final Report: Project Documentation

Student Name: Hui-Ling Chang Date: Dec. 17, 2014

LED

Servo motors

Customized blinds

Resistors: 1000 & 100 ohms.

Jumper Wires

Breadboard

9V Battery

Fish lens

Foam Board

Museum Board

T-shaped pins

Method:

1. Use lacer cutter cut foam board.

2. Build shoebox in 6” x 12” in 6” height and the vertical opening is 8” x 4”.

3. Make blinds by museum board, and use T-shaped pin to connect blinds with servo motor.

4. Build connection part for connection of blinds and servo motor.

5. Connect photo sensor as light sensor with Arduino Uno in a shoe box.

6. Design codes for automatically controlling light level indoor.

7. The blinds will rotating blinds based on sensing the internal lighting level and requirement of tilting for

distributing the sunlight. There are six assumed angles: 20˚, 40˚, 50˚, 70˚, 100˚ and 115˚.

8. LED is controlled by minimum lighting level indoor. For example, in my prototype, the minimum level is 300

lux, so the LED will light on when the interior illuminance below that setting.

Figure 3. Fabrication and assembly

Final Report: Project Documentation

Student Name: Hui-Ling Chang Date: Dec. 17, 2014

Figure 4. Electronic part

7. Prototype of Test

The goal of prototype for testing is to change or maintain lighting level based on requirements by rotating the

blinds in different angles. To achieve this goal, the first hardest thing in testing is how the changed angles affect the

indoor illuminace. Because if the angle is changed too much, the illuminance will decrease too much that will make

blinds rotate back and forth. Therefore, considering this reaction, I tested my prototype in terms of relation between

ranges of rotating angles and changing ranges of illuminance in code. First, I tested the prototype by cellphone’s

spotlight to find the proper angles of blinds and set points of illuminance in Arduino code. After I found the ranges,

the next challenge is to apply sunlight in my model. Because the sunlight changes very slow by time, and I am not

able to test the same sunlight again and again. I narrowed the set points of illuminance to make blinds rotate at least

once per 10-15 minutes. Finally, I succeeded in automatic control EcoLight, and maintain minimum lighting by

turning on LED when it is too dark in side. The future work is that build different geometry of blinds by 3D

printer, and see how geometry affects indoor lighting by observing the view through fisheye lens.

Figure 4. Final Prototype

Figure 5. Testing images by cellphone’s spot light from fisheye lens

8. References

IESNA (RP-30-96, 12, 1996)

Elizabeth Gay Hunt, “Study of Museum Lighting and Design” (PhD diss., Texas State University-San Marcos,

2009).

Site Image:

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2012-11-26-IMG8788.jpg

http://www.arup.com/~/media/Images/Projects/B/Brandhorst_Museum/BrandhorstMuseum644x60035HuftonCrow

.ashx?mh=800&mw=1000

Light Sensor Module:

http://www.instructables.com/id/BH1750-Digital-Light-Sensor/step1/Arduino-Code/

Light Meter:

https://learn.adafruit.com/light-meter

PIR motion sensor for lighting

https://learn.adafruit.com/pir-passive-infrared-proximity-motion-sensor/

Final Report: Project Documentation

Student Name: Hui-Ling Chang Date: Dec. 17, 2014

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Arduino-Motion-Sensor-Lighting-Control/

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10636

Control blinds:

http://homeawesomation.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/automated-window-blinds-with-arduino/

http://makezine.com/projects/make-37/mini-blind-minder/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Blinduino-automated-blinds-via-Arduino/#step1

http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-Motorized-Window-Blinds-Controller-For-Les/

http://unicelarchitectural.com/en/louvers/product/overview.html