3) Dillon and Dwight - Situation Description

When presenting our initial ideas for the Arduino project, our guest lecturer Tad gave us some great insights. We decided to aim to create an interactive lamp that spins and tilts according to a certain input. We have not nailed down exactly what input we want, but our initial idea is using some sort of sound or motion sensor. We placed ourselves high on the poetic scale and decently high on the useful scale. We are excited to start the process of learning the electronics and building the actual lamp.

The intended lamp will be primarily used as a self-tracking spotlight that will follow users with a crisp bright beam of light. Our assumed use-case would be during events or performances given on stage such as speeches, dances, or any other event placing someone on stage in need of illumination. We intend to use infra-red light to create a signal between the user and the device. The user will either hold or be wearing an object that would emit a high level of IR light and the device will be assembled with a series of IR sensors and programmed to point in the direction that is giving off the most IR light in the room. We realize that the largest source of IR light on the planet is the Sun, however we don't see this as a problem since most of our users wont need a spotlight unless they are indoors or it is dark enough outside that the Sun's emission would not trigger the sensors.