Grant Park Instructable by AMN Lighting Corp.

The authors of this instructable are Mayan Kokkalera, Amir Sabljic, and Nathan Chen. This is our process of completing our Diorama of Grant Park which is aimed to minimize light pollution around Buckingham Fountain.

Grant Park’s Buckingham fountain has been the Park’s main attraction due to the cool lighting shows that go on throughout the day. This is cool and all, but it comes with a price. The price is too much light pollution. There are multiple colors of light that should be changed or dimmed so they aren't as harmful to our ecosystem such as blue lights which can hit the atmosphere and scatter throughout it. You may be asking, is there a way to mitigate Grant Park’s Buckingham Fountain on Light Pollution while keeping it a tourist attraction? And yes there is. Overall, our team will approach this by changing light colors, dimming, shielding, and turning off most of the lights around Buckingham Fountain so that the main focus is towards the fountain where there will be fewer harmful lights.

Structures -

Chairs

Trees

Bushes

Lights

Buckingham Fountain

Sidewalk

People

Grass

Electronics -

SQM sensor (TSL235R)

RGB sensor (TCS34725)

Teensy 4.1

6 Single color LED lights (Yellow/amber and White)

2 PIR Sensor (Motion Detector)

Equipment -

Base-Black foam board

Grass-Green construction paper

Walkway-White/gray construction paper

Benches-Cardboard or popsicle sticks

Polls for the lights-Straws or cardboard

Bushes/trees-Green construction paper balls

People-Lego people

Fountain-Legos

Lights-LED’s, Wires, Construction Paper (Shielding), straws

For the first step in building our diorama, we built the area around Buckingham Fountain. The reason we are building this area to resemble Buckingham Fountain is that we want to replicate how it looks compared to the real Buckingham Fountain in Chicago. This is because when we start collecting data, we can get accurate data readings that should resemble the ones in Grant Park.

Some objects we added to make the diorama look close to the area around Buckingham Fountain are benches, bushes, lots of trees, a sidewalk (that is illuminated with lights), and a layer where we can put all of our electronics.

To make the benches we cut a 6cm by 5cm rectangle in blue construction paper and folded it in half for the back part to stand up. After that, we super glued the bottom part of the bench to the “grass” To make the bushes we crumpled a small bit of green construction paper into a ball. To make the trees we used another green construction paper ball and glued it on top of popsicle sticks. For the walkway and Grass, we used green and grey construction paper. The way we made the people and the Buckingham Fountain is by using legos.

For the second step, we start creating the sculpture of the lighting and making sure that the extension for connecting our LED can fit through the poll of the light and shine out at the top. We also used black construction paper for the shielding of each light pole.

For our lights, we used single-colored yellow LED's because an amber/yellow colored light is typically the best-colored light in order to mitigate light pollution. On top of that, we need to have shielding along with our makeshift lights because with shielding the lights aren't pointed at the atmosphere and are instead pointed at the ground which helps decrease light pollution.

Start bringing the sqm, RGB, and motion sensors to the top of the diorama and place the sqm and RGB anywhere on the red areas (refer to the first picture), and motion sensors anywhere on the blue areas/somewhere on the sides of the sidewalk.

These sensors allow us to collect data on our diorama which helps us know if it's "day" or "night" time. This helps the sensors change the brightness of the LED's so that a more suitable amount of light is emitted. For example, if there are people walking on the sidewalk, our motion detectors will go off and cause the LEDs to brighten. When the people pass by the motion detectors on the sidewalk, the lights will start to dim and stay in the dimed position until another person triggers the motion sensor again.

Make sure that the sensors are fully functioning from the code. On top of that, make sure that the sensors don’t record faulty data and are accurate.

Above is the flowchart we created which helped us organize our thoughts throughout the coding and troubleshooting process.

Make sure that all coding and programming are working for the final project.

- Common problems: Data isn’t being read. If this is happening, check that all pins are correctly placed on the breadboard.

Second common problem: Code doesn’t upload. If this happens, check that nothing is causing a short circuit and try pressing the program button on the teensy.

Third common problem: Nothing changes after uploading code. When this happens, if nothing is showing on the console/serial monitor, check if all the pins are correctly placed and that the code was uploaded. Press the program button if necessary.

Take the wires that were previously connected to the sensors and plug them back into them.

Make sure that the diorama and all of the sensors are working while being put into the diorama. Once it all works, gather data from the serial monitor and transfer it onto the SD card.

Video:

(here's the link if embed doesn't show)

Overall, this project was a blast to create because of the collaboration we had to do as a team. We hope that this diorama can help decrease light pollution in Grant Park and maybe other parks around the world because we want to keep our ecosystem healthy. On top of that, if light pollution does start to decrease in parks, maybe everyone can eventually see the Milky Way as the night sky starts to show more stars.

We would like to thank Jesus for setting up this amazing program where we could build on our coding, leadership, and teamwork skills. On top of that, we would like to thank all of the guest speakers who have joined our zoom calls and talked to us more about light pollution giving us better insight into our projects. Finally, we would also like to thank Aanika and all of the ASW members for answering any questions we have!

Thank you for listening to our instructable!
- AMN Lighting Corp.

Here's the zip repository of all the files that necessary:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yTG2TyoOzmP-aT7He...