Whether indoors or outdoors, there are times when strong sunlight can disturb your eyes and impede your vision. This happens to everyone, from those who spend their days outside to office workers next to windows. The ways we deal with excessive sunlight currently involve too much manual effort. Putting on or taking off sunglasses every time you walk in and out of shade to maintain visibility gets annoying quickly, and so does walking up to the blinds when the sun gets low enough to shine straight in your face.
To create a design which would function as variable sunlight reduction in a many situations as possible, we designed a wearable hat with sunglasses which automatically raise and lower based on detected light levels. All required electronics would be attached to the hat, including a photoresistor to measure light levels, and an arm to the side where a servo attached to sunglasses would rotate up and down in front of the user's eyes.
An existing solution on the current market is automatic, or “smart” blinds that open or close depending on the time of day. These products typically require smartphone pairing, are expensive, and are difficult to install. Our design is more effective because instead of requiring a schedule or button to run, it uses the actual amount of light entering the room. Our solution, being a wearable, is also portable unlike automatic blinds, making it much more practical and adaptable to more environments.