Process

• I started this investigation by thinking about how I could integrate the servo motor with proximity and the doorbell while tying in themes I saw in James Pierce’s work. After a bit of research on pieces similar to Pierce’s, I landed on my idea for a doorbell that responds to stimuli in the environment.

• Once I had an idea of what I wanted to build, I created a 3D model in Fusion 360. Before I started fabricating however, I wanted to get familiar with each of the electronic parts I would be using. I started by learning how to wire a button to blink an LED. This surprisingly taught me a lot of neat tricks like using millis() as a timer and using delay to create input lag. After that, I moved on to adding a servo motor, LED strips, and finally, the speaker. Each time I had to learn how to wire a new device, it took several hours for me to get it to work how I wanted it to. I kept running into little mistakes that set me back for hours like wiring the power, ground and digital I/O wires to the wrong side of the LED strip or using components that couldn’t be powered with my Arduino. It worked out for the better though because integrating all of the parts at the end became a lot easier. After I had all of my electronics in order, I laser cut acrylic parts for the case and stuffed my electronics inside.