LED Engraved Alarm Device (L.E.A.D.)

Inspiration

What college student hasn’t overslept? Who wouldn’t want a cool dorm decoration? We designed LEAD to solve both of these issues in one product.

What it does

LEAD is both an alarm clock and a dorm decoration. The alarm clock’s functionality is based on input from a ping sensor output from a buzzer. All you need to do is set the alarm before you go to bed. When you need to wake up, the buzzer will go off. Simply wave your hand in front of the ping sensor to turn the buzzer off. Then using the Bluetooth Adafruit app, you can control the color of the LED strip lighting the plexiglass. The LED strip uses a photoresistor to dim or get brighter depending on the amount of light in the room. This conserves power and maintains the best dorm lighting.

How we built it

Our project is a lightbox made of wood and acrylic. The wooden base has a slit that holds a square of acrylic that has an LED strip attached to the bottom. A personalized design can be engraved on the acrylic using Solidworks and laser etching. We programmed the LED strip using the Arduino to change color using Bluetooth and the Adafruit app. We used a ping sensor to control turning the LED strip on and off as well as control turning off a buzzer that is used as the alarm. Additionally, through the use of a photoresistor, LEAD dims the LED decoration at night and brightens it in the day time, to conserve power and maintain the best dorm lighting. We adapted all of these components into one arduino board and one file of code, to make LEAD small and portable.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges along the way. Most of the challenges came with the coding. The first challenge we faced was getting the LED to dim on every color that we set it to. When we incorporated the LED strip into the breadboard, we had challenges getting it to change color. We also ran into challenges with the laser cutters. When we decided to include two breadboards to fit all of the components, the first box we designed was too small. We had to cut out a larger box. While we cut out both size boxes, we had a lot of trouble with the laser cutter and had to constantly adjust the settings so that it cut through the MDF.

Accomplishments that We're proud of

We are proud that the LED strip dimmed, since that was our biggest challenge. We were very proud of the finished product. LEAD worked almost exactly how we wanted it to.

What we learned

At times dealing with the code and Arduino could be a bit frustrating and hard but we learnt how to persevere and apply all that we learnt during the course of the semester to our project in the best possible way. Working on this project also helped us to learn how to make a project timeline and stick to it which will be an essential skill in any a lot of things we might find ourselves doing in the future. Most importantly we learned how to work together.

What's next for LED Engraved Alarm Device (L.E.A.D.)

Moving forward, we would like to integrate a 5v LED strip so that LEAD can be portable. We currently have a 12v strip which requires more power than the Arduino can supply; therefore, we have to power it in the lab.