Light Depending Resistor (LDR).
a LDR does exactly what it says on the tin, it measure the amount of light around it and using the recordings it takes in, it alters the way the LED on the circuit behaves.
so the more light the LDR is sensing the more light the LED emits, the less light that is sensed the lest amount of light it emits and everything in between this allows you to make the LED fade in and out if you slowly cover and uncover the LDR.
at the start I was considering making my lamp a free standing floor light, for this it would of had to be considerably bigger than a desk lamp, but I decided that it would be a bit silly to make it a free standing floor light because the user would not be able to interact with the light which is not what I want because it would make the whole project boring for me and as I want to see how people interact with my product and I want them to learn something from it is key that I make it intractable, so if I make it a smaller size such as 25 x 15 I think this would be a reasonable size for a desk lamp also it makes it small enough to be a desk lamp however large enough for the user to interact with it.
I’ve been doing research into the possible manufacture processes that we could possible use to form the shape of each section of the design and what we would use to make each component.
we’ve all decided to use plastic as the material on out product, we choose this because its easy to clean and its cheap which is perfect for students, seeing as we are using plastic It seems sensible to use extrusion moulding for the little components and then use blow moulding for the main sections of the design, I think these are the best two process we can use, as they are easy to preform on a mass production line, compatible with plastic pellets and is cost efficient, also all these processes are computer automated which means we can save cost on labouring staff, this also reduces human error.
extrusion moulding
blow moulding
Becoming a Designer. 