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UnPlug
Official Website

Ever worry about saving the environment? No? Did you know that even when your lights and other appliances are turned off they still sap energy just by being plugged in? Now there is a no brainer solution. UnPlug is a light sensitive device that unplugs your utilities when you leave the house.

Background
My initial idea was to utilize biomimicry and have the surge protector push out of the wall with legs. After running into issues with finding proper springs or a linear actuator, I opted for a basic HiTec HS-311 servo motor. There were also issues with with using one Arduino for both the servo and the wave shield, even when the servo was receiving a separate power source, so I opted for a 2nd Arduino.

Audience
As an energy saving device this product is marketable to a large range of users, though the target audience would lean towards a younger, more environmentally conscious user. The addition of music, lending a humorous edge, skews UnPlug towards a trendy green demographic.

User Scenario
The user is ready to leave the house and turns off the main light. But what about the surge protector with 6 things still sucking power? Not to worry. UnPlug recognizes the owner has left from the change in light and proceeds to unplug itself to the triumphal sounds of Sprach Zarathustra (2001, A Space Odyssey). The user will have saved money and the planet.

Implementation
The current iteration is made of 2 Arduinos, a wave shield, a servo motor, a foamcore chassis and 2 recyclable battery supplies.

Short term goals of the project would switch out the input reaction from a photocell to a bluetooth connection, tied in with your cellphone.

Future implementations of the physical device possibly offer a DIY kit, allow the battery supply to be rechargable from the outlet, switch out the foamcore body with thin recycled cardboard, moving from 2 Arduino boards to one, and in the long term, containing the entire body to the size of the outlet.

Conclusion
While going through servo motors, I learned if you use two voltage regulators to provide power, it will double the current to the servo motor. The initial concept included hobgoblins, an escape path and…well, it was a long and involved narrative. Through talking with the residents, I discovered the need for inherent narrative, not something tacked on afterward. The original project would have come across glib. The current iteration has the same possibility, but to a much lesser extent.

Design Changes – I changed the concept a bit, now using the legs horizontally, as the vertical push of the cricket could possibly shove the surge protector in the air and not away from the wall.  The legs now looked similar to a frog.  The mechanisms are the same.   In addition, I decided to add a ramp for the surge protector, so the frog design would have more of a lateral push.

1.  Springs on the Leg – bought a jar opener to provide me with some metal legs and a mousetrap.  It turned out the mousetrap didn’t provide me with enough strength to have the legs pop open.  I went out and bought a rat trap to provide me with a stronger snap.  It was very strong(and fairly dangerous.)  I then tried to add my legs into the spring mechanism, but then had no way of getting the metal center back onto the wooden board.

2. Servo on the Leg – I decided brute force would be nice and borrowed a Mega servo hitec HS-805BB+.  The plan is to attach it to a $16 desk lamp(after removing the heavy lamp head.) and use the hinged body as the legs.  The servo needs it’s own power supply, so after several drafts of supply apparati, I finally used a 12V plug with a voltage regulator.  However, the servo doesn’t seem to be receiving power.  I’m afraid I shorted the servo, but there was no indication to prove as such.

Current Status – At this stage, I am testing the Servo to see if I blew it up.  if so, I’ll need to buy 2 more at $40 a pop: one for the person who lent it to me and one to me to continue to work on the project.  I will buy another rat trap tomorrow.  I will use each side of the trap arms and attach legs to them and then joint those legs to longer legs which will connect directly to the wall.  V1 – If I can create a mechanism to set off the spring and A) not kill anyone and B) snap the legs, then I’ll continue on the course.  Likewise for V2, I should be able to get assistance on the legs tomorrow in regards to the servo, and if I can get the servo to work, I believe I can either attach it to the leg or simply connect it directly to the surge protector and have the hobgoblins kick off directly from the wall or come up with a new Trojan animal.

This is the video for the Physical Computing Lab. The switch changes where the DC motor gets it’s power, letting it run clockwise to counterclockwise. The video shot in slow-mo, so instead of wasting time reshooting it, I wasted time editing it together and adding music.

The events took many, many days to get it to work.  However, the end result was exactly what I wanted.

Part Zero – Starting and then Starting Over

The entire goal was for this to be an alarm clock, so my assumption was that I needed to find Alarm Clock code for the Arduino.  I found code online and then tried to descipher it.  I understood the basic infrastructure, but the code was so far beyond me as far as transforming it, I decided to scrap it and start with a shorter milestones.

Part One – Getting the Servo Motor & LED to work with a switch.

Putting It Together

My initial work was going through the labs from our homework and trying to fit them to my needs.  The first lab had an LED that reacted to a switch.  I needed the Servo to react to the same switch, but reacted with an analog sensor.  First, I tried them both with the flex sensor, then after some finnagling, I got them to react to the same switch.

Part Two – Using a clock

The next hurdle was to get the Servo to move on a timer.  After several failed attempts of using online code, John The Badass Resident showed me how to use the a startTime=millis(); in my void loop, the built-in timer on the Arduino, when you start your code up.  It worked like a charm.  I knew there would be a hurdle when creating the snooze button, but I figured there was a way to work around that.

Part Three – Abandoning The Clock

Well, after trying to get the timer to work with my Servo and LED, I couldn’t get it to restart and John was long gone, so I worked with a friend’s code, Zeven and used a time variable.  That gave me the ability to restart.  For whatever reason, the LED wasn’t lighting up as well, which made no sense at all.

Part Four – The Final Arduino Code

It’s the night before and I’m trying not to stress out.  I again ask for help, apparently getting people into trouble and all sorts of various fun.  I know it’s a coding issue, and I just don’t know enough about coding.  John The Awesome Resident puts me in contact with a certain 2nd Year, who will go by the codename “The Bicyclist.”  The Bicyclist sits down and wipes out all my void loop code.  We go through and add two more variables (timer and stepDelay) and clean up my void setup and, step by step, we go through and piece by piece, make sure the code is speaking to each piece of hardware and then place it on the timer, and then go through and clean it up again.  The trick was really to reset the millis to the current time by nesting it in the long timer.  He showed me firsthand what it was like to code correctly.  It was genius.  Honestly, it’s to a point where I don’t want to go code again, cuz I finally did it correctly, and I wanna just have that be my lasting memory.  This is a terrible idea, obviously, so I’ll be working on the tone library tomorrow.

Part Five – Aesthetics, Aesthetics, Aesthetics

Until this point in the operation, I didn’t have any of my visuals put together.  That was the easy part.  I quickly constructed a house front, a fence and put a construction truck on a nice pice of varnished rich wood that I found laying around.  I printed out several zombie pictures, including one from an artist depicting a scene from Pride, Prejudice & Zombies.  I hid the switch behind the piece.

Part 6 – The Future

The real question is do I continue to pursue this or do I abandon this project?  Is there a market for this?  When the heck would I have time to work on it?  I’ve given it a bit of thought, and I know what the next phases are:

• Phase 2 – Brighten the LED, add Wave shield to play zombie themed music
• Phase 3 – Set to clock.
• Phase 4 – The zombies walking toward the farmhouse would dance to the music when it turns on via servo motors & some clever gearing/pulleys.
• Phase 5 – Add nightlight funciton. Press button and the Servo goes behind the farmhouse, setting off a transluscent moon graphic with blue LED.  Human in farmhouse turns switches out with one that is werewolf, possibly have zombies turn and look like they’re running.

Introducing the Proof

I think of it as low level, but one could argue that it's high level. It listens/reads the information I give it, comprehends it to know I have paid my money, and then in turn lets me through the turnstile. However, the conversation was rather boorish.

The callbox:

I love this thing. It's another low level interactive piece. You press a button and it supposedly dials out to the respective room. However, if you notice above the callbox is a regular doorbell, presumably cuz the callbox has what I call FAIL.

The Landlord

This is the result of my interactive experience with my super. He is incredibly nice, but when I mentioned to him that a brick was holding up my cabinets, he promtply came in, leaned on it, rushed out and got ANOTHER brick with pieces of tile. After shoving the second set of textiles in, he said, "There, shouldn't budge." The information was listened to, thought about, but the response was not at all in cooperation with my meaning.

PASS ONE:
Components:
Four Cables
Arduino
NO code.

I ran a simple through line from Arduino to red cable to green cable to LED to orange cable to yellow cable to ground. I was just excited about getting the LED to light up!

Mistakes: forgot resistor

PASS 2 – Using the Blinkie code.

Added Components:
220Ω Resistor
Arduino code

I added the resistor, after feeling foolish. I will be going back and writing in the code myself (as was suggested by the Resident Help).  I gave the Arduino power, gave it code and…nothing.

Yay resistors! Boo not working!

It refused to light up.  I showed it to a classmate, who had previous Arduino experience. “Why do you have so many cables?” he asked.  We pulled all of the wires out and started over with as little as possible.  This time, it worked.

Mistakes: Not reading instructions, only use what you need.

PASS 3

Added Components:
New Arduino Code – Switch
Two 220Ω Resistors
One 10kΩ Resistor
(Note: I actually used Three 220 resistors, but the issues that arise will unfold in good time.)

For the sake of time, I just copied and pasted the code, at the behest of a friend.  That wasn’t so bright, so I’ll need to go back and do it again, and figure out how it correlates with the hardware.  I decided to go sans switch, in order to simplify the situation and then later I’ll experiment with switch.

The light wasn’t switching very easily.  As it turned out, I used the wrong level resistor, cuz I didn’t read the directions.

But after I continuously rubbed the switch wires together, I  got the 2nd light to turn on and take a picture.

Mistakes: Incorrect resistor.

If anyone would like has any suggestions for how to make this documentation less boring or more effective, please comment! Thanks!