Design Preview Report

Overview:

For my final project, I am creating a piece of artificial moss wall art that has an interactive component. I plan to embed LED strips into vertical CNC milled grooves in a rectangular piece of wood I have. I will program the LED lights using the Arduino microcontroller so that when a person walks up to the installation a sensor triggers an LED sequence that mimics a waterfall behind the moss. In addition to the LED lights creating a waterfall effect I plan to incorporate a speaker to play water sounds to add to the overall experience. I chose this project because it uses a piece of material that I already have and I feel that it has the potential to be cool and beautiful.

Technical Description:

For the use of LED lights, I am going to use four addressable LED strips and program them using the Arduino IDE with the Elegoo Arduino Microcontroller. I plan on purchasing either a wall power adapter or a battery pack for the Arduino since the LED lights will require too much power for it to be powered by a 9V battery. I will use the ultrasonic sensor included in our kits to turn on/off the light and sound sequence. I plan to use my computer speakers to play the sound.

The compelling purpose for my project:

The meaningful experience I am envisioning for the user is mainly the art installation itself but also the interactivity of it as well. I hope for the user to walk away with the wow effect and be impressed with the piece.

Bill of Materials

Two Drawings:

Graphic communication of the interactive system:

I also plan to incorporate some floral aspects into my moss art such as this however I don’t know exactly how I want to do it yet so I haven’t included those materials:

Image Source: https://www.etsy.com/listing/861137024/floral-moss-wall-art-moss-wall-preserved

Timeline:

Week of April 10th: Gather Materials for the Project; Get the electronics programmed.

Week of April 17th: Get the lights physically installed in the installation and start getting the moss glued and laid out

Week of April 24th: Finishing touches to the installation/ getting the documentation finished