Final Project – SophiaC-C

1. Background: This project came about because of the street lamp outside of my window that wakes me up all the time.  I grew up in an area with very little light pollution, and I suspected that this made me more susceptible to the effects than my roommate(who grew up in suburban MA) was.  In the subsequent research I did I ran into fireflies.  They find mates by flashing; in high levels of light pollution, those flashes are washed out.   This is a simple example, but an effective one because it is much more tangible than trying to do an installation discussing the lamp’s effect on my circadian rhythms.  The ‘flies’ inside the box are set to mimic the flash patterns of the Photinus carolinus.
2. Explanation: The box is going to be installed in the IMRC during finals week for people t experience, so I would say that the target audience would probably be art and new media students and faculty who have to be in the building during that time.  I hope that the box will be able to show a tangible reason why light pollution is a problem. Again, the box demonstrates that with increased levels of light pollution, firefly populations will decrease as a result of their signals to potential mates being washed out by excess light.  I was originally going to cover the outside of the box in information about the topic, but after building the box and working with it I think that it would be more impactful as a think piece and will be leaving it simple and black.  I may put links to research in another poster to accompany the box.

Addendum: In wiring the box, I managed to murder my Arduino.  It suddenly got very very hot and then it stopped powering anything.  Below are video footage of the fireflies blinking as well as a picture of the actual wiring. They are taken off of my Instagram story, hence the aspect ratio.

The code for the lights is:

int group1 = (1); //declaration of the first group of flies
int group2 = (2); //declaration of the second group of flies
int group3 = (3); //declaration of the third group of flies
void loop1(); //func declaration
void loop2(); //func declaration
void loop3(); //func declaration

void setup() {
pinMode (group1, OUTPUT); //tells the arduino that the pin is being used as output (an LED) as opposed to something like a button
pinMode (group2, OUTPUT);
pinMode (group3, OUTPUT);

}

void loop() {
loop1(); //calls the various loops over and over again
loop2();
loop3();
}

void loop1(){
for(int i = 0; i<7; i++){
digitalWrite(group1, HIGH);
delay(50);
digitalWrite(group2, HIGH);
delay(140);
digitalWrite(group1, LOW);
delay(70);
digitalWrite(group2, LOW);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(group1, HIGH);
delay(120);
digitalWrite(group1, LOW);
delay(250);
}
delay(1000);
}

void loop2(){
delay(1090);
for(int i = 0; i<8; i++){
digitalWrite(group2, HIGH);
delay(50);
digitalWrite(group3, HIGH);
delay(140);
digitalWrite(group2, LOW);
delay(70);
digitalWrite(group3, LOW);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(group2, HIGH);
delay(120);
digitalWrite(group2, LOW);
delay(250);
}
}

void loop3(){
delay(950);
for(int i = 0; i<6; i++){
digitalWrite(group3, HIGH);
delay(50);
digitalWrite(group1, HIGH);
delay(140);
digitalWrite(group3, LOW);
delay(70);
digitalWrite(group1, LOW);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(group3, HIGH);
delay(120);
digitalWrite(group3, LOW);
delay(250);
}
}

The box will be accompanied by the following poster, which also ends up visualizing the goal of the project.

The below video is an example of what is happening within the box so that the entire class can see it.

1. Credits: Well, I guess the main credit is due to that gosh darn street lamp outside my window.  In all seriousness, Steve was a huge help because he gave me the foam core, and Tate provided the brilliant idea of controlling the light pollution as opposed to simply turning it on and off.
2. Simple Budget This project has cost me a grand total of 8 dollars and about 10 hours of time.  The only thing I had to buy were the LEDs, the box is made from a reclaimed project of Steve’s and the other electronic components were ones that I already owned.