LUXATHON 2018: How an Electrical Hackathon Brought Out the Best in Me!

From beginners to designers overnight.

“It evokes boundless excitement when you achieve something that you could have never imagined.”

At times, we all feel void inside thinking about the opportunities we missed just because of the timidity deep within that keeps dragging us down. Cracking this insecurity was like conquering the Everest!

I was astonished when the host announced that our team from Govt. Model engineering College had bagged the second prize in Luxathon, a national level Electrical hackathon, conducted by the IEEE student branch of College of Engineering, Karunagapally.

It gives me immense delight to document one of my best experiences in overcoming the ups and downs in life, that too in a congested time frame. The 24-hour Electrical Hackathon, titled Luxathon. Those three days in CEK (28,29,30 September ’18), spent along with my teammates and the Luxathon volunteers will always remain marked as the most memorable days of my college life!

I came to know about the event from Hridya, who was part of the Luxathon publicity team. Being Electrical students, we were curious. Electrical Hackathons were not as common as CS-based ones. Holding on to this interest, we registered for the event as a team of five, including Hridya, Tharik, Mariya Terese, Lakshmi and me.

The date declaration soon followed, and we realized that to attend the event, we would have to skip our internal exams, which was totally welcome😆. (But it has to be mentioned that Hridya had to miss out on her dream basketball tournament scheduled for the same day ☹.)

Considering all the possibilities, we were really confused then and felt lost. However, we decided to give a shot at the Hackathon thinking of all the new experiences it was gonna give us. With zero chances of winning, we took the early morning train on 28th September to Karunagapally.

Ho Ho Ho - Surprises all the way!

“Luxathon: The Light designing Hackathon”

The poster on the college gate read out in bold letters. It was actually thrilling, to think that without any background on the subject, we had actually registered for a light designing hackathon!😂

By the way, Lux is the unit of Illuminance- from which the name ‘Luxathon’ was derived. Umm, you‘re right, we didn’t have any idea about this, either.

However, after the sleepy lectures on illumination, we got some idea on what we were about to do. (As I look back, those lectures were really informative and actually helped us crack the task. But the early morning journey did not help much ;))

The cultural night was an awesome platform for networking, rejoicing and silently preparing ourselves for the Hackathon that was to begin the next day.

Night Preps…

The event was to commence the next day at 10.00 am and we were assigned the task to design and develop an illumination system that compensates the required light using the given equipment in the most efficient way according to standards. And we were restrained from using mobile phones during the hours of the event. Excitement grew as we started learning about lighting and illumination.

The phone network was a huge problem as we retired to our hostels the night before the event, and we had to camp on the terrace all through the night in search of network connectivity. Slowly, confidence began growing as we kept on digging into the topic. We began dividing the task among ourselves and approached each other when we hit a roadblock. This was it. As we broke the ice and began talking business, we were beginning to see the hint of a plan take shape.

Let’s Begin!

Luxathon 2018 commenced on 29th September at 10.00 am as promised. The task was quickly explained. We were provided with the circuit diagram, a few electrical/electronic components with specifications and a cabin made of wood. The challenge was to create an illumination system that produced illuminance of standard lux in the cabin with the help of the given LED lights, to measure the amount of lux produced by the system and to dim of lights using Arduino microcontroller.

The contest requirements were to:

• Find the cabin dimensions
• Simulate the cabin with led bulbs placed on the ceiling using DIAlux software
• Construct an LED driver circuit
• Build an LDR based Luxmeter
• Find the relation between LDR resistance and Illuminance

To begin with, we used DIAlux software to simulate the cabin with the measured dimensions. PROBLEM ALERT! As we were provided with two LED arrays each of 6 V, they had to be arranged in a single row to produce a standard lux (say 500 lux). But the measured dimensions didn’t suit our requirements. So we scaled it down by a factor of 1.25 using the software.

The next task was to construct an LED driver circuit using the components:

• Transformer (230V–12V) -1
• Unijunction Diodes(IN4001)-4
• Capacitor(1000 µF,25 V)-1
• Voltage regulator IC 7812(12V)

It was comparatively easier to assemble and solder the hardware components. But the biggest challenge was to design a Luxmeter using the given Light Dependent Resistor. Luxmeter is a device that measures illuminance using the SI unit of lux. It must have a light sensor to quantify the amount of light falling on it. We were provided with an LDR ( A resistor whose resistance changes with the amount of light falling on it). If we could measure the resistance of the LDR, then we could quantify the amount of lux falling on it by determining the characteristics of that particular LDR.

We measured the resistance of LDR at different light intensities and obtained the corresponding lux values from a standard Luxmeter provided, for 7 minutes. From these readings, the mathematical relation between resistance and lux- which was exponentially decreasing- was determined. We programmed this relationship into Arduino microcontroller to create a simple Luxmeter.

We fixed the LED arrays in a single row at the centre of the cabin ceiling. Using the luxmeter developed, the intensity of light in the cabin could be measured. From the power rating of the given LED, we could find the maximum lux produced by it.

The ultimate task was to automatically adjust the LED brightness according to the light already available in the cabin, i.e, the LED had to produce its maximum lux when the cabin was dark and dimmed when sufficient lux was already available so as to maintain a constant light intensity in the cabin. Our first practical lesson on energy efficient engineering :)

We programmed the Arduino microcontroller according to this requirement and completed the task by the morning of 30th September, at around 6.00 am.

Results…

Out of the ten participating teams, only four teams could complete the task. Our team was declared as second prize winners. It was hard for us to believe that we walked in as beginners, and actually won a prize. It was the accuracy of the Luxmeter that we designed, the effectiveness in adjusting the brightness of LED and the effective and maximum utilization of time that helped us score points over the other teams. From having zero confidence to this was a drastic change within a speck of time. Moreover, it was a healthy competition, and we helped each other while sorting out ways to crack the challenge.

Nothing could have gone the way it went without the immense support, kindness, motivation and the energy from the CEK luxathon volunteers: Hariprasad, Akshay, Arshad, Archa, Asif, Arun and Anandhu. We were strangers before, but became close friends within 24 hours. They were the best IEEE volunteers I have ever met!

“Overcoming my fears and insecurities were the first hurdles I had to overcome. And now, I see a lot more opportunities and I do believe the best is yet to come!”

P.S : Special thanks to Diya Liza Varghese who worked her magic on this piece :)