Finished Lantern & Evaluations April 20

The two pieces to our lantern.

 Off position.

On position. Pictures taken by Cailey.

Since today was the deadline for this lantern project, that meant evaluations. My personal evaluation on our lantern was that we could have thought of a better way to improve the battery contact with the LED. The reason is because the correct amount of pressure must be applied to the lid for the light to stay on. Our circuit was the simplest out of all the lanterns since it only involved batteries and an LED (no switch). The problem that the other groups had with their lantern was finding a way to have good contact between the batteries and the rest of the circuit. Essie's and Frances's lantern was a small rectangular box made out of acrylic and screws. Their circuit included a switch to turn the white LED on and off, and had a cool light bulb image on the cover. Erin's, Kelsey's, and Hannah's lantern had the most complex circuit but did not work due to a lack of proper battery contact. Their lantern was in the shape of an octagon for a better grip and had three LEDs (red, green, and orange) with a designated on and off switch. A lesson everyone learned from their lantern was to pay attention to the circuit components; this will help you foresee any potential problems in the actual case design.

Our final group project will be designing something that interacts with humans. In class we looked at a cool light up book with touch and pressure sensors. This gave us all great ideas in ways we can make our project interact with humans. My partner Cailey and I decided to make something that will light up a certain color when you are speaking loud and another color when you are speaking low. We will concentrate in making the circuit first before designing the case.