Process

During the course of this project, I lost most of my code because my computer ran out of storage space and so the code wasn’t saved. I do have a new revised code however that is functional. See photos and videos for the arrangement. As a chemistry major with little coding experience, I found the majority of the project to be difficult. One of the hardest parts was trying to get the motion sensor to turn the light on and have the light stay on for a certain period of time, and then time out and turn off. Another challenging part of this was to get the motion sensor to be constantly taking in data and updating the motion to delay the amount of time the light would be on. I was only partially able to solve this problem, in that I was able to have the light turn on and stay on for a set time, but it only detected motion once the delayed light time was over. Overall, I was able to have the motion sensor detect motion, turn a light on and then send an email notification. The notification only worked once and I could not figure out how to get it to work consistently. 

I began by following directions from a hackster project (https://www.hackster.io/reagan-bush-84/motion-activated-light-switch-3eac2e) with assembling the motion sensor. I then used the tutorials and other help from the iot website (http://diotlabs.daraghbyrne.me/7-communicating-events/pir/) to work on getting the sensor to work and writing the code. 

A push button was added to give it a manual on/off switch for the light in case the motion sensor doesn't pick up motion or my friend wants to turn the light off.