Light Reminder

I made a system that reminded me to turn off the lights before leaving. I want to make this system because I always forget to turn off the lights before I leave my room, which can lead to wasted power, waste money, and is not environmentally friendly. I believe if there was something to remind me to turn off the lights, I would avoid this situation and it can help me to save power and save money.

• color paper
• aluminum tape
• straw
• metal wire
• Adafruit circuit playground

First step, you need to think about what you gonna make, and that's why the blueprint is really important. Because it gives you the idea of how your design and product will be. You can draw it on your iPad or paper. For this project, we are going to make a display board, and when the door is open, the display board will light up and remind you to switch off the light, and when the door is shut, the light of display board will automatically switch off. For the door statement, you can use the Adafruit circuit playground that connect with aluminum tape to sense the door is close or not.

After you drew your blueprint, now is time to make the prototype. You can have many ways to do your prototype, for me I used the clay for my first prototype and I used the paper one for my second prototype. For the second prototype, I want to make it more real and visualize, so  I used the white card paper as background, and i used the purple card paper as the aluminum tape and orange card paper as the display board. Also i stick the Adafruit Circuit playground and the metal wire on the card paper

After you finished your prototype, you can show your prototype to your family members or friends, and ask them if they have time to do an user interview with you. For my user testing, I choose two-person to do the test, one is my mom and one is my friend. The reason I choose these two people is that my mom lives in a house and my friend lives in an apartment, and they probably might forget to switch off the light sometimes so they might need the product I design since my product is a lightbox that will automatically light up when you leave and tells you to switch off the light.

For the user testing, in the beginning, I start to ask some about their living habit. For example, Have you ever forgotten to switch off the lights in your home/room? What’s the frequency of that? what consequence do you think it might be? if you switch off those lights before you leave, what benefit do you think it will lead to? For my friend, he always forgot to switch off the light before he leave and my mom sometimes forgot. As the consequence, they both said it will waste power and money, my friend also said it is not environmentally friendly. For the benefits part, they said if there have something to remind them to switch off the light, it will help them save money.

For the second part, I showed them my project’s prototype. and ask them some questions about it. For example, what do you think about that? Do you know how to use that? Do you have a better idea or any suggestions to make this design better? After I showed my prototype, my friend knows how it works but my mom doesn't totally get it, so I explained how it works and the idea of this design. Both of them said it can remind them to switch off the lights before they leave home because it is on the door and when the door is opened, the lightbox will light up. But my friend also gives me some suggestions about the wire and its appearance, like how it how to integrate into the design of the room and how to make this design more beautiful.

Overall, I think this user testing gives me more idea of how people think about my design and my prototype, so I can improve my design based on Their suggestions. After this round of user testing, i started to think about the appearance of this whole product and try to make it more beautiful and integrate into the design of the room.

After all the blueprint, two round prototype, user testing and interview, i start to coding, The platform i choose to use is Microsoft’s Makecode, Initially I’m not really familiar with this coding platform, so i made many mistakes and bug. Also at that time i was trying to connect an extra LED light bulb to the system, but unfortunately, it doesn't work. So i went to Cache Makers and found our TA to teach me about the coding part. Finally we figured out how it works, and the Adafruit circuit playground successfully work!

Here is my code for the Adafruit circuit playground, For the Adafruit circuit playground, if it sense the door is opened (the aluminum tape is not together), it will show the light animation with variable colors, and if it sense the door is closed (the aluminum tape is touch together), the light on the Adafruit circuit playground will switch off (set all pixels to black)

For the DIY part, i used the color paper as the appearance of the display board/ main body, also i put some words on that board, including sentence like: “TURN OFF? SAVE POWER!” Also i used the metal wire to connect the adafruit circuit playground and the aluminum tape. To make the wire more beautiful, i inserted the wire into the colored straw, and that can make the whole product more colorful and vibrant.

For your product, you can design a totally different shape or outlook. But remember, since the LED lights of Adafruit circuit playground is not really bright, so I didnt use the paper to cover that.