Sculpture of a Factory in a Barren Wasteland With a Smokestack in Which the Smoke Changes Height Based on Real Time Data From Open Weather Map :]

Hello. Sculpture of a Factory in a Barren Wasteland With a Smokestack in Which the Smoke Changes Height Based on Real Time Data From Open Weather Map (SoaFiaBWWaSiWtSCHBoRTDFtCoOWM). The factory is made of painted cardboard, and it has a smokestack. This factory sits on another piece of cardboard; this one is covered in grains of sand to get that "grainy" look. There is a dead tree made of clay and paint and it sits in front of the factory. In front of all this is a 3-D printed black painted chain-link fence. Additionally there are some red lights which undulate their brightness in a wave. As implied in the title, the smoke in the smokestack goes up and down depending on real time data from the City of Chicago data portal.

How the Smokestack Works

The smoke in the smokestack is attached to a string, which is attached to a motor, which is attached to a motor controller, which is attached to a microcontroller along with a bunch of other wires and stuff. Once every hour, the microcontroller gets the current amount of carbon monoxide in the air from OpenWeatherMap's air pollution API. Then we use some basic algebra to convert the desired height of the smokestack into a desired amount we should rotate the motor. Once we have this amount we send it to the motor controller which does a bunch of maths we don't quite understand which turns the motor which raises or lowers the string which causes the smoke to reach the desired height.

How the Lights Work

The lights are pretty simple. All we do is take the position of the light, and the current time, and add them together, and take the sine of that and work it into the brightness.

A detailed description of this step.