my final project is sustainable sculptures, using recycled materials and arduino to create sculptures, that can be either abstract or representational (probably buildings) the lesson promotes the importance of sustainability, which is especially important in our times and will only become increasingly important in the future due to population increase -> more waste, more trash being circulated and dumped. sustainability and recycling “trash” is also a cheap way to create  and the concept of transformation, in using items otherwise thought of as trash to create visually appealing art. the design process is important in this lesson, as you first have to come up and work with supplies, wondering what they are capable of, there is a process of material research, prototyping, and then going through the process of finding problems and solutions.

here is the end result

IMG_1635-26j8yuh

there is then the added concept of arduino, coding, and lights which changes how you initially may have thought of your design. For example I wanted to have a transient and shifting but still calm feeling to my sculpture so I am including a smooth fading effect rather than blinking.

for the fading, there was no way I could figure it out on my own, With sarahs help we were able to find a code online from a forum that I changed to fit me needs, and also thanks to Sarahs knowledge I avoided the trouble shooting of figuring our that only two outputs work for each USBtiny with fading effect. if students were to want to use the fading effect, I think it would be best to just let them copy and paste the code we found, since neither of us, two college students who have used arduino before, could figure it out.

heres the link – https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=315309.0

during the design process I also realized how much supply I’d actually need! so if/when I do this project in a classroom I would probably just keep all my boxes from packages, and ask around for others, because boy do you need a lot of cardboard!

here is the code I am using

int ledPin1 = 0; // LED connected to digital pin 9
int ledPin2 = 1;

void setup() {
// nothing happens in setup
}

void loop() {
// fade in from min to max in increments of 5 points:
for(int fadeValue = 0 ; fadeValue <= 255; fadeValue +=5) {
// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):
analogWrite(ledPin1, fadeValue);
// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect
delay(30);
}

// fade out from max to min in increments of 5 points:
for(int fadeValue = 255 ; fadeValue >= 0; fadeValue -=5) {
// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):
analogWrite(ledPin1, fadeValue);
// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect
delay(30);
}
for(int fadeValue = 0 ; fadeValue <= 255; fadeValue +=5) {
// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):
analogWrite(ledPin2, fadeValue);
// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect
delay(30);
}

// fade out from max to min in increments of 5 points:
for(int fadeValue = 255 ; fadeValue >= 0; fadeValue -=5) {
// sets the value (range from 0 to 255):
analogWrite(ledPin2, fadeValue);
// wait for 30 milliseconds to see the dimming effect
delay(10);
}
}