Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
62 Light Management for Healthier Circadian Rhythms
Elizabeth McKenna
Josh Magid
Richard Yan
Ali Kourani design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
other1.pdf
presentation1.pptx
proposal1.pdf
Team Members: Richard Yan(ry6), Josh Magid(jrmagid2), Elizabeth McKenna(edm3) - all in person

Problem Statement: Covid has forced a lot of people to work from home, and the harshness of their room lights has many adverse effects on the eyes and natural circadian rhythm. Additionally, working from home has driven up electricity bills according to USA TODAY.

Solution Overview: This idea would solve this problem through a set of light sensors and an internal clock. Sensors at each doorway will detect when someone enters and exits a room, specifically at night, in order to turn on the lights when someone enters and turn off the lights when someone exits. Additionally, the internal clock will switch the light being emitted into the room depending on the time of day. After sunset the yellow light will turn on for an evening mode in order to prevent strain on the eye. This internal clock will be helpful in situations where someone goes to the bathroom at 3am and instead of turning all the lights on, a dim light will turn on. Each light will be attached to a dimmer circuit, and will automatically dim the lights in a room depending on the outside brightness and color temperature. This will prevent continuous strain on an individual's eyes from constant bright overhead lights. Our product would help people who are indoors often and want to simulate natural lighting.

Solution Components:

Subsystem #1: We will first build an ambient light sensor through an op-amp circuit. We have done some research and found that a noise free op amp works best to produce a low output current. The ambient light sensor will then be connected to our Arduino Due, which will be able to monitor illuminance and light intensity. This sensor will be placed on a window where it can monitor brightness outside to match your indoor lighting. We will have multiple ambient light sensors to accurately detect true brightness. There will also be an internal clock that will switch LED colors (white to yellow) at night.

Subsystem #2: By using a dimmer circuit, we can control the brightness of our LEDs through the ambient light sensor’s readings in subsystem #1 to match outdoor lighting.

Subsystem #3: We will use a color sensor to determine color temperature. We will then use a bank of intensity controlled LEDs that are of different color ratings in order to be able to simulate the color of outside. We will have multiple color sensors to accurately detect true color temperature.

Subsystem #4: Laser detectors will be used to monitor the location of every person in the house and only keep the minimum necessary number of lights on to save energy. Two lasers will be placed on every doorway in order to detect the movement from one room to another and turn on/off lights when you enter/exit a room.

Subsystem #5: GPS module that will receive the GPS clock and syncs up time with the Arduino. This will change color of LEDs from white to yellow at a certain time at night.

Criteria for Success: For this problem to be successful we will have a light system for a system of rooms. This system will determine when the light outside is not sufficient to brighten a room and turn on the lights when an individual enters. The lights will also be tuned to color match the outside light. The lights will then turn off when that person exits. Using both the light from outside and the time of day the system will appropriately dim the lights. Lastly, the system will determine if the time is past sunset and switch the light to a yellow night time light to reduce the strain on the user’s eyes.

Link to Idea: https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=67220

BusPlan

Aashish Kapur, Connor Lake, Scott Liu

BusPlan

Featured Project

# People

Scott Liu - sliu125

Connor Lake - crlake2

Aashish Kapur - askapur2

# Problem

Buses are scheduled inefficiently. Traditionally buses are scheduled in 10-30 minute intervals with no regard the the actual load of people at any given stop at a given time. This results in some buses being packed, and others empty.

# Solution Overview

Introducing the _BusPlan_: A network of smart detectors that actively survey the amount of people waiting at a bus stop to determine the ideal amount of buses at any given time and location.

To technically achieve this, the device will use a wifi chip to listen for probe requests from nearby wifi-devices (we assume to be closely correlated with the number of people). It will use a radio chip to mesh network with other nearby devices at other bus stops. For power the device will use a solar cell and Li-Ion battery.

With the existing mesh network, we also are considering hosting wifi at each deployed location. This might include media, advertisements, localized wifi (restricted to bus stops), weather forecasts, and much more.

# Solution Components

## Wifi Chip

- esp8266 to wake periodically and listen for wifi probe requests.

## Radio chip

- NRF24L01 chip to connect to nearby devices and send/receive data.

## Microcontroller

- Microcontroller (Atmel atmega328) to control the RF chip and the wifi chip. It also manages the caching and sending of data. After further research we may not need this microcontroller. We will attempt to use just the ens86606 chip and if we cannot successfully use the SPI interface, we will use the atmega as a middleman.

## Power Subsystem

- Solar panel that will convert solar power to electrical power

- Power regulator chip in charge of taking the power from the solar panel and charging a small battery with it

- Small Li-Ion battery to act as a buffer for shady moments and rainy days

## Software and Server

- Backend api to receive and store data in mongodb or mysql database

- Data visualization frontend

- Machine learning predictions (using LSTM model)

# Criteria for Success

- Successfully collect an accurate measurement of number of people at bus stops

- Use data to determine optimized bus deployment schedules.

- Use data to provide useful visualizations.

# Ethics and Safety

It is important to take into consideration the privacy aspect of users when collecting unique device tokens. We will make sure to follow the existing ethics guidelines established by IEEE and ACM.

There are several potential issues that might arise under very specific conditions: High temperature and harsh environment factors may make the Li-Ion batteries explode. Rainy or moist environments may lead to short-circuiting of the device.

We plan to address all these issues upon our project proposal.

# Competitors

https://www.accuware.com/products/locate-wifi-devices/

Accuware currently has a device that helps locate wifi devices. However our devices will be tailored for bus stops and the data will be formatted in a the most productive ways from the perspective of bus companies.