Lumière to Share
Lumière to Share employs two custom lamps that work in sync to monitor and distribute a fixed amount of light between two locations. It is a commentary on consumerism and the inequality that exists in the world’s energy consumption. Additionally, this project aims to bring awareness to the importance of using and sharing resources responsibly; if one consumes excessively, the other will lack.
The lamps are designed to be used in separate locations- whether in different rooms, different cities, or different countries. The light available to the lamps must be shared between both locations. When one of the two lamps exceeds the amount of available light, a sound is triggered to alert both users that the limit has been reached. If one user desires more light, they may continue to press the button to increase the light, thus triggering the sound alert with each press. The user on the other end can choose to either ignore the sound or lower their light, which then allows the user lacking light to turn up their lamp.
Each lamp has a limited amount of available light, 10 units, to share between the users. The lamp has two buttons, one to light up (+), and the other one to light down (-). Every time the plus button is pressed, a unit of light is consumed. Once the limit of available light is reached, the light level will remain the same and a sound will be triggered with each additional “+” button push. If one of the users needs to request for more light, he/she can press the "+" button. When one or both of the users turn the light down so that the number of units in use is less than the limit, the sound will no longer sound and the light will be allowed to increase.
The Lumière to Share Arduino code is available on Github.
