As I arrived at the University of Pennsylvania I was exposed to a great waste of electricity being done by almost every student. Due to a great amount of pressure and sometimes ignorance Penn students don’t always remember to turn off their lights, whether in their room or at different places in their apartment. This sparked an idea in my head to create a device which “remembers” to turn off the light for you. Moreover, not only the device “remembers” to turn the lights off, it also senses the amount of light in the room and with an adjustable switch it turns itself off if there’s no actual need for the light to be on.
SELP controls the lights in the room. It senses the amount of light and turns the lights off if there’s no need for them to stay on. It does that through two components. One is a controller and the other is a sensor. The former controls the sensitivity of light exposure and physically sets a barrier from the outlet in the wall and the lamp’s outlet cable. It’s also connected physically to the sensor through a thin copper wire. The sensor has a sophisticated electronic chip that senses the amount of light in the room and sends its signals to the controller. When both operational they construct SELP. Turning the regular “ignorant” lamp to an environmental friendly lamp.
I conceived the idea and concept, presented in front of an entire class and was selected to present in the design fair at the end of the semester. I formed a team of five and was in charge of conducting the research as well as the mechanical aspect of the project.
Amir Lazarovich: group leader, conceived the idea, researcher and electronics
Alberto Cohen: researcher
Dan Shmueli: researcher and electronics
Sam Hso: researcher
Jose Satiago: industrial designer
