Dhruva Bharucha
Proposal
Prof. Arnowitz
ENG 352
March 24, 2009
FIREFLY PROPOSAL
The objective of this proposal is to briefly describe and explain the materials used,
what attempt to accomplish by building this, how I came up with this idea and what I am
creating. My partner and I plan to create a Firefly Diorama which is a wonderful little
project that combines creativity and a little bit of electronics to make a little world with
real blinking lights as fireflies. With just a little bit of research, this project took me and
my partner more than a couple of hours within two days. The type I used for this diorama
is a blinking style. If you apply to it the voltage from a battery it will automatically blink
and in a random pattern all the LED's or light emitting diodes (fireflies) will blink. This
will make the scene look realistic. As a platform for this diorama, we used cardboard box
and I had to cut the “cardboard flaps” to make more space for the landscape. Moreover,
the landscape we created was made up of cotton, newspaper, paint, and aluminum foil.
My partner and I made a canal, a hill, grass, and rocks out of these materials. We also
used “navy blue” wallpaper to make it look like a night scene. To make the fireflies look
realistic, again we needed some electronics material. The materials we used were: 4 AA
Batteries, 1 battery holder, 4 LED’s, 24 feet of 2 colored gauge wire, five resistors (one
for each LED) which were 22 ohms, and lastly, a little switch to turn the LED’s or
fireflies on and off (push button) and tape. LED's are rather sensitive to the current that
flows through them and if you connect a battery directly to them you will ruin them.
Thus, we had to attach resistors to each one in order to keep them controlled and
operating. About the wiring for the diorama- it consisted of the battery pack, a
pushbutton, LEDs, resistors and some wires. The wiring required some concentration and
the important thing to note was that the LED is very sensitive to polarity. The tiny long
rod on the LED is the Positive (+) and must be hooked up to the positive of the battery
pack. If you hook this up backwards it will ruin the LED. This is why we used a two
colored wire, one brown and the other white. All the white wires are the positive wires
and the brown wires, the negative. Once we had all the wiring done we just had to install
everything. We poked small holes in the back of the shoebox and inserted the LED's,
mostly by the cotton grass, to portray fireflies in the grass.
My partner and I attempted to accomplish a landscape scene with fireflies
“wandering” around the cotton grass. The most challenging aspect of creating this
diorama was making the hill and wrapping the wires round the led and resistors. The
gauge copper wires are not very malleable and so it was hard to keep them in place on
their positions. Wiring up the whole system also needed deep concentration and care so
as to prevent damage to the LED, resistors and batteries. We had to connect wire after
wire to the whole system for all of the LED’s, resistors, and wires to work successfully
and in one. We also had to use tape to keep the wires stable around the LEDs and around
the resistor. Lastly, to keep everything including wires and battery pack and push button
from “entanglement,” we just had to tape the wires to the cardboard box and the battery
pack to the cardboard box.