Week 3

During the third week of the project our group had to take the acrylic and ping-pong ball model and make it into a functioning structure that was representative of an actual implementation of our design. After the initial criticism of our re-design it was determined that aside from the smartness gained from the plants being automatically watered when needed, the structure should interact with people in some way. The use of LEDs and motion sensors provided this (along with additional aesthetic appeal and an element of delight). In order to better visualize the design, we chose to implement it in the Duderstadt atrium (image below). 

For our model, the atrium was constructed out of acrylic and chipboard with the plant holding spheres represented by ping-pong balls. Red, blue, and green LEDs were incorporated within the ping-pong balls to provide the lighting effects. The blue lights were programmed to turn on and fade off in sequence to look like water flowing downward, the green lights lit and faded randomly, and the red lights respond to motion. All three LED sets would only come on when it was dark.  As it was difficult to connect the arduinos without the proper i2c, each set of lights and the pump ran on separate arduinos.  Below is an image of the final model as well as an image of  the wiring and arduinos.