Street-wide automatic horizontal sun blinds

ABSTRACT: The Philippines is one of the countries that will have substantial health impacts from global warming in the foreseeable future. The increased heat stress from sun exposure while walking in the street will negatively affect the physically vulnerable, particularly the elderly, workers, and children which will commonly manifest as heat stroke and other forms of sun exposure related diseases. Other outdoor activities during sun-hours will also be limited without a constant form of shade. Therefore, a street-wide device that can detect excess sunlight and would provide shade for passersby is made. The device also has the added benefit of also detecting and providing shelter from the rain, preventing colds. The prototype is centered around the use of a 3-position switch, Arduino UNO, a rain sensor module, a BH1750 lux sensor module, and an LN298N motor driver that controls a 100mm linear microactuator that moves the flaps of the frame to provide shade: The prototype model is scaled down to make the fabrication and testing less financially taxing. The 3-position switch provides the user with 3 modes to control the flaps: manual close, manual open, and automatic, which feeds data from the sensors to decide the position of the flaps. In automatic, when the weather is sunny and the lux sensor reads above a certain threshold, the flaps will close. Similarly, when the weather is rainy and the rain sensor detects droplets in its panel, the flaps will close and will remain closed until the remaining moisture has evaporated. Our testing yielded a 100% action success rate of closing and opening the flaps according to the brightness threshold and whether or not droplets of water is detected

Filipiniana