CONCEPTUAL STATEMENT AND REFLECTION FOR LIGHTSHARE

LIGHT SHARE.

4 people share 3 avaiable lights via an automated, web based smart system.
This system regulates and measures the amount of light in each persons room, sending and recieving sensor data via www.pachube.com
A plastic cowling, with an LDR, covers the original switch. A servo inside flips the switch depending on your light usage.
Light Share measures the duration and the intensity of available light in each persons room, adding these values then sending them as a single stream.
The participants have no direct control over thier light. If you have used more light than the others your light will switch off to wait for someone else to get gready!!!...

The basic premise of this project is to spotlight the way we use electricity on a day-to-day basis and to impliment a smart system that distributes this resource more evenly between users, across a network.

For this project we have covered a lot of ground. We worked hard together to achieve our final, working result of LIGHT SHARE. We used multiple methods for troubleshooting and building our code and have pushed what has been done before.

Basically, like the rest of my team, I was involved in all stages of development of this project - conceptualising and generating ideas, concept refinement, coding and recoding, remote and local troubleshooting, building the light boxes, aesthetic design, etc. We functioned as an integrated team, feeding individual developments back into the communal pool. This was truely a group achievement.

While the LIGHT SHARE smart system network was running we group conferenced via skype. It was peculiar seeing my group members at the mercy of the system, having no control over their lights. When my light got switched off it was even more unsettling - I was unnerved by my lack of control and felt loss for the mundane luxury of being able to waste as much light as I want with no thought for how this affects my peers (local and global).
In future I will try to be more fair and responsible with my electricity usage because I've realised I dont want to get to the stage where we are governed so directly by big brother as I was in the LIGHT SHARE network... Given the state of our dwindling global resources and the rate at which we are using them, this is not an unrealistic possibility.