DeLight

"# EarthXHack" Project IDea: Turn-Off Light Switch

1. Social impact - Our idea can help positively impact the environment by reducing our dependence on energy and utilizing less nonrenewable fuels for power generation. By having computers manage and assist our lighting usage, we can limit our carbon footprint where we slack off. In 2017, the U.S. residential and commercial sector used about 273 billion kilowatt hours of electricity for lighting (U.S. Energy Information Administration). Indoor lighting for offices, homes, residential neighborhoods, and city spaces all use up a sizeable amount of this electricity, even when nobody is there to effectively utilize it. So why not turn it off?

Benefits of turning off lights:

1a. Energy cost savings. Cornell University estimated that it could save "up to $60,000 per year" by not having lights on when people aren't using them. Now, apply that to the entire city of Dallas! How many office spaces, homes, and outside spaces have their lights on at night, with nobody around, or during the day, with plenty of natural lighting?

1b. Carbon footprint. The amount of energy that a city the size of Dallas uses is astonishingly large. In 2015, Dallas' facilities alone used about 715,000 megawatt hours per year (Dallas News). Since more than half of Dallas' energy sources come from renewable sources (Dallas News), that means Dallas leads the pack in reducing our carbon footprint. But what about the rest? By reducing our reliance energy usage, we can improve the percentage of energy load that is being powered by renewable energy, eventually fazing out fossil fuels completely.

1c. Light pollution. Light pollution is such a large problem that it can be seen from space, and it disturbs life cycles of plants, animals, and ourselves. Turning off lights in places with no people at night can reduce this substantially, promoting the health of the local environment- and allowing amateur astronomers to view the stars more easily.

1. Scalability - This project can easily be scaled because the components are simple and can be mass manufactured for big companies to use in their office buildings. Dallas is one of the fastest growing cities in America, and as a result many big corporations are moving their headquarters to Dallas. Commercial office buildings account for 20% of the United States energy consumption. Also 17% of the energy consumption in these office buildings is from lighting. Cornell University started to encourage students to reduce their light consumption after it calculated in 2010 that the university could save up to $60,000 per year by simply turning off lights that are not in use. This product is not only for corporations and universities, but also useful for the average consumer.

2. We believe this idea is unique because no one else is focusing on building technology to solve this problem. We got the idea from Matthew who is a university student and found that a lot of energy is wasted because his roommate usually forgets to turn off the lights of his dorm room when he goes out or goes to sleep.

3. This solution solves the problem by integrating multiple sensors into a cohesive application that can tell if people are awake or active in our living spaces. Depending on that it turns the light on or off.

4. It works.

5. Its awesome.

Components:

1. Arduino Uno R3
2. Servo Motor
3. HC-05 BT Module
4. HC-SR501 PIR Motion Sensor
5. HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor
6. Photosensor
7. Male jack to USB connector

Built With

• arduino
• c++
• ruby