We were exploring the wide range of possibilities we could work on, almost every night we sat at different locations in the college and discussed what we could possibly work on. We would all come with a snack at 12 AM and just keep looking around as to what problem we could solve, without creating another big problem out of it.

We talked about home appliances, furniture pieces, other consumer electronics, everything we could think of. There were loads of ideas, but we had to almost shoot each one down because it would either be existing or wouldn’t be feasible. It required a lot of brainstorming and research, yet we couldn’t finalize our idea for a long time.

Continuing with our discussion nights, we were sitting in the Boys Common Room, again thinking what we could work on. One of us, suggested the usage of a clock, how it was so important and how it had been a very essential part of our lives. Then it hit, that we could maybe use the wall clock somehow and take it beyond just telling us how much time it is left to submit our deadlines.

Apart from using the clock we also had more ideas, like an interactive aquarium, bicycle security device, etc, but after considering the valuable reviews provided by our mentors and seniors we finalized the current idea.

Our aim was to solve a problem, and we found a problem we could solve, without using an extra dedicated appliances for the problem. In layman terms, we are making an emergency light, which switches on as soon as it senses the absence of current. We have implemented the same in a wall clock and additionally, to make it more aesthetically pleasing, we added more lights to it, basically, adding a feature of decorative lighting that can be controlled using your device.

We got inspired from the concept of ambient lights used in fall-ceilings. We have involved interaction when it comes to the decorative lighting, the consumer can control the colour, as well as intensity from the device. Finally, we decided to implement an emergency light and decorative light in a wall clock, which will be connected to the main supply of electricity and detect the absence of current, and it will have more lights to decorate the room which can be personalized.

We faced a lot of problems while looking for an idea, and even after we finalized one, we had to make a lot of changes. The greatest challenge was to maintain basic look of the clock along with the extra features and not meddle with the existing image of a clock, so we had to keep most of the lighting hidden. Eventually we found out the way to get the maximum light while keeping the lights hidden behind the frame but we couldn’t implement it in the prototype due to too many curved surfaces.

The Arduino boards had some limitations due to which we could only use a some electronic devices along with them, so it was hard to find light emitters which were very powerful. Also, we had to do a lot of other changes in terms of hardware and software as we worked through our prototype.

We managed to achieve most of the functionalities we had planned for in the clock.

But our greatest achievement would be completing the project right before the deadline, the long night hours finally paid off!!