Disassembling the construction lamp into its pieces
Preparing the lamp's new interior
Putting the pieces together
Presenting the results
With the Physical Computing project, we moved away from working completely digitally with the computer towards a fusion of the digital and analogue worlds, using the Arduino board. Due to the superordinate ‘Road’ project my group and I decided on rebuilding and programming a construction site lamp. Using an ultrasonic sensor, LEDs and an Arduino board, our lamp reacts to the proximity of people and objects by flashing at different speeds, as a kind of warning system. I learnt that working in the field of physical computing is very fragile, meaning that a small error can cause nothing to work at all. Unfortunately my group and I experienced this ourselves multiple times as a single soldier point wasn´t conductive. I also learnt how many opportunities there are to realise your own projects (‘scratch your own itch’) once you have developed a general understanding of the processes. With more time and money, I would add an alarm sound and a danger zone to our warning system. When hypothetically repeating the exercise, I would make sure that all solder joints are stable and electrically conductive so that any points of failure are minimised.