Firefly Inc.

Authors : Salsabel Alshaikh, Duncan A. Yuen, Simon Sikora, Ezza Naeem

Have you ever gazed up towards the night sky? Chances are, you’re not seeing as much as you should. For millions of years, the human species has evolved to sleep during the night, and that has become the key characteristic to our natural circadian rhythms. However, modern cities and highly populated areas nowadays threaten those precious circadian rhythms. Through unnecessary lighting and careless structural design, humans and animals are exposed to dangerous amounts of blue light and bright lights, not to mention the devastating impact light pollution has on the economy.

There are many contributions that result in light pollution such as urban expansion, highway development, road lighting, glass buildings and so on. In populated areas such as Chicago, interior and exterior lights from skyscrapers contribute to the alarming rate of light pollution. Interior lights are often kept on during the night to highlight a particular building but by doing so, it results in excessive light that is not needed. These lights can seep through windows of other buildings which can disrupt a human’s biological clock. Besides human beings, the environment is also impacted. During migration season for birds, lights from skyscrapers attract birds causing them to fly to their death in most cases.

If you have read this far, you may be asking, what can you do to help? Well, turning lights off whether that may be interior or exterior would be a good first step. These lights can be of warmer tones and adapt to the environment. However, we need a system that can be easily implemented into all buildings to make an impact and decrease light pollution.

We here at Firefly Industries have come up with a system consisting of adaptive LEDs and easy to use sensors. If you’re interested in creating your own Smart Lighting System, keep on reading!

Electrical Components:

• Arduino/Teensy 4.1
• SQM Sensor
• RGB Sensor
• PIR Sensor
• Micro SD Card
• LED Yellow/Red LED
• RGB LED
• USB Cable
• A ton of wires
• Breadboard

Equipment :

• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors
• Paintbrush
• X-Acto Knife
• Wire cutters
• Ruler
• Paint

Construction :

• 2 foam boards
• Cardboard (tissue box, cereal box, etc)
• Paper Mache
• Construction Paper (black, green, brown)
• Ziploc Bag (windows)
• Wooden Sticks
• Popsicle sticks

• Poke a hole in each corner of the first foam board.
• Paint a road onto the foam board.
• To create grass, take construction paper and hot glue it to the foam board.
• To make the tree, take four pieces of cardboard and hot glue them together to make a rectangular prism. After hot gluing the cardboard, take brown construction paper and hot glue it to the cardboard. After, crumple up a piece of green construction paper and hot glue it to the top of the tree. Take a paintbrush, maker, or pen to create a black circle in the middle of the tree. After creating the tree, hot glue it to the foam board near the edge or wherever you would like.
• To create the grass that is surrounding the tree, take a strip of green construction paper and cut the top to create tips. Then, wrap the grass around the tree and hot glue it so it does not move.
• To make the bench, take brown construction paper and cut a rectangle depending on what size you want for the seat. After, cut two strips from the brown construction paper and fold them. After folding them, hot glue the two folds to seal them shut. These strips will be the legs of the bench. Take the legs and hot glue them to the bottom of the rectangle.
• To create the building, take any type of cardboard. In this case, we used a cereal box to create the buildings. Take an x-acto knife to cut the tab that is located on the side of the box. After doing so, take a pair of scissors and remove the tabs that are located on the top. This will be our bottom of the building. Then cut the tabs to undo the glue on. Afterwards, flip it inside out and lay it flat.
• Take a ruler and a pen to draw a rectangle near the top of the box. Cut it out using the x-acto knife. Flip the box inside out where the logo will be on the inside. Hot glue the tabs back together. Trace the cereal box's bottom onto the base of the foam board. After doing so, hot glue the bottom of the cereal box onto the foam board where the cut was made. Lastly, hot glue black construction paper to the building.
• To create the door, take a small piece of brown construction paper and glue it to the bottom of the building.
• To create the doorknob, take a small piece of a pipe cleaner and glue it to the door.
• Take four wooden sticks and hot glue them into the holes that were created in step 2. The other end of the stick will be hot glued to the second foam board.

• Cut two holes on top of the building and one hole above the door.
• Take wires and connect them to the legs of the LEDs. After doing so, take the LEDs and put them through the holes.
• Take black construction paper and cut a small piece into a rectangle. Fold two sides of the rectangle and cut each corner. After, glue the sides together to create a shield. Cut a small part of one side of the shield so the LED can fit. Glue the shield onto the building near the LED so it covers the LED and the light is directed downward.

Attached are pictures of the set up of the shields and where to place the LEDS. There is a picture included where the LEDs are turned on in the model. These LEDs are connected to the teensy with wires to allow the LEDs to turn on.

• Following the Fritzing diagram, hookup the wires and sensors onto the breadboard. Make sure the wires correspond to the LEDs.

• Before starting, please read and follow the flow chart to understand principles of the code and how it functions.
• Install Visual Studio Code on the computer. Download the code from the zip file. Install and include the Arduino, SD, SPI, Wire, and Adafruit_TCS34725 libraries from the Library Manager if the compiler prompts to.
• If necessary, change the pin numbers to correspond with your circuit. If you used the same pin numbers as the diagram, disregard this step.

1. Upload the code to the teensy
2. Run the program

There are graphs attached representing the data we collected through an indoor trial of our model. Due to our location and safety matters, we were not able to collect data through an outdoor trial but the attachments still provide valuable information.

We placed our electronics near window overnight to collect data. The data shows the colors that are detected throughout the night which include the colors red, green, and blue.

The diorama's lights turn on when in a dark environment, however when it's bright outside the lights will turn off due to the SQM sensor. The colors change according to the RGB sensor to adapt to the light. The PIR sensor will turn off the lights at night if there is no motion detected. The lights brightness will also change according to the SQM sensor and make the brightness higher if there is less light, and lower if there is more light.

Before you begin :

Make sure the code compiles and uploaded correctly onto the Visual Studio Code app. If there happens to be an error message, read the error and make changes depending on what it says. Some issues that can occur are missing semicolons, lack of libraries, or an incorrect port selected for the USB connection.

LEDs won’t turn on?

Make sure the wires are connected to the correct pin numbers on the breadboard that correspond to the teensy. If you change the pin numbers on the code, change your wires to correspond with it.

SD not reading data?

Make sure the card is put in the reader correctly and make sure there is storage available.

This lighting system is an ideal solution for skyscraper lighting across the planet. It helps to decrease light pollution while being beneficial to the human species. However, we know at FireFly Industries that there extra features that will be needed in order to perfect this system. Due to limited materials that were given, we were not able to fully create our ideas and take our lighting system to the next level. Although, with your help, we are able to fully take this project to the next level to provide a cleaner atmosphere as well as decreasing light pollution one step at a time.

Challenges & Accomplishments :

Being in the Astro-Science Workshop has been an opportunity that allowed each of one of us to participate and create a prototype solution that helped expand our minds and learn throughout the process. There were many challenges that had occurred over the 4 week course that were difficult to overcome through Zoom such as issues in coding, the diorama itself, and troubleshooting. However, each team member had a role to insure the success of our project. The Task Tracker spreadsheet was where we designated tasks with descriptions, status, and point persons. The Task Tracker led us in the right direction and ensured that we stay on task.

Future Plans :

To continue this project more in depth, we would implement diffused glass that would direct natural light to spread all over the room. By using diffused glass, it will help to remove unnecessary carbon dioxide that is being produced by artificial lights and will remove excessive heat. Diffused glass allows necessary light to come in but traps it from going out.

Acknowledgements :

Thank you to our amazing instructor, Jesus Garcia, for allowing us to be in the Astro Science Workshop and being willing to teach as well as help us with our projects. Thank you to one of our amazing mentors, Aanika Atluri, who helped each one of us understand the electronics, topics, and would push us to think outside the box. Additionally, thank you to Ken Walczak, Cynthia Tarr, Geza Gyuk, and Chris Bresky for your help. Your insight was much appreciated and valued within our team and we will carry out everything we have learned from you all in the near future. We also want to thank everyone at the Adler Planetarium for hosting the Astro Science Workshop each year allowing teens to have an opportunity to explore all aspects of the STEM field. Finally, thank you to every one of our ASW peers for being amazing, honest, fun, and so much more. These past four weeks of getting to know one another and being able to talk to each other comfortably has been an amazing experience that none of us will ever forget.

Click HERE to access the file repository where all the codes, documents, and diagrams that will be needed to create your own smart lighting system!