Touch a material, change the light.
CASA0014 Connected Environments · UCL · Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 → MQTT → Vespera
Early concept sketch: layered material samples, with the leaf and textiles as decorative accents
I am very familiar with moodboards, due to a lot of designing. Initial idea was to make an interactive artwork, with many layers/levels creating depth, but it was clumsy and i wanted to make something with two levels maximum and more importantly, something really useful, or that factor that could be of some direction in the future, thus, while i was working on placing the placeholders, and voila! why don't i just make a real life moodboard and complement colors with it! But, it made more sense if one could actually view materials in a desired lighting while one is out shopping for interior design materials, or just takinga. stroll through furniture. Because every material is distinct to its own way of experiencing under different tones of light.
- Six material tiles float on hidden push buttons.
- When nothing is pressed, Vespera shows the board's palette (two columns per material).
- Pressing a tile shows that material's light scene/ Color of the material.
- After 60 seconds with no press, Vespera returns to the palette.
The MKR1010 builds a 72-LED frame (216 bytes of RGB) and publishes it to student/CASA0014/luminaire/15 on mqtt.cetools.org, only when the frame changes.
| Component | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 | Reads the buttons, publishes to MQTT over Wi-Fi |
| 6 tactile push buttons | One under each interactive material tile |
| Hook-up wire, solder, heat-shrink, hot glue | Soldered button connections |
| White foam board (2 × A4), cardboard, craft sticks | Base, spacers and tile posts |
| Material samples | Cork, warm wood, fluted wood (craft sticks), oak, glass mosaic, fabric + decorative pieces (jute, dried leaves, flowers) |
| USB power bank | Portable power |
| Tile | Material | MKR pin |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cork | D1 |
| 2 | Warm wood | D2 |
| 3 | Fluted wood | D3 |
| 4 | Oak | D4 |
| 5 | Glass mosaic | D5 |
| 6 | Fabric | D0 |
| – | Shared ground (all buttons) | GND |
- Each button: one leg → its pin, the diagonal leg → GND (legs on the same side are joined inside the button).
INPUT_PULLUP, so no resistors are needed.- Pin 6 is avoided: it drives the MKR1010's built-in LED.
- Wires: orange and red hook-up wire, labelled B1–B6 at the breadboard end.
Early wiring diagram, tile names before the final samples. See table above.
| Version | What changed |
|---|---|
| FACE ID idea | vision board is tough to deal with in given time |
| v3 | Paper pond, 5 buttons, moving boat stripes |
| v4 | 6th button, two-tone colours |
| Soldering | Moved from breadboard to soldered buttons |
| v5 | Material mood board, idle palette, 60 s timeout, moving mosaic |
| Final samples | Blue glass dropped, cork added, light scenes remapped to the real materials |
See tests/ and the devlog. All my trials and errors, and bugs, fixes, prototyping mishaps, soldering issues and all the fun stuff about process and the making of this real life moodboard is in there (devlog & tests)
I would really love to see retail spaces acquiring such a concept, very personalised, very spatially enhancing experience! this was really a fun project to work on because of how my thought process went from trying these things to actually making my vision, or the idea that i had in my head, brought alive. Also, i kept improvising, and that was the best part about this.
In the end, I ended up doing something that I'm very, very familiar with and very comfortable with. Although the skeleton of the project, like working with buttons, wiring, soldering, and all of these things, is not really my forte, it was really a very interesting project. I could just oppose something that I could never think of doing with something that I'm really, really super familiar with or happy with. That was a very nice way
- Open
sketches/v5_mood_board/v5_mood_board.inoin the Arduino IDE and select Arduino MKR WiFi 1010. - Install the libraries WiFiNINA and PubSubClient.
- Copy
arduino_secrets.example.htoarduino_secrets.hin the same folder and fill in your Wi-Fi and MQTT details. Never commit it. - Change
lightIdto Vespera number. - Wire the buttons as above and upload.
| Folder | Contents |
|---|---|
| sketches/ | v3, v4 and v5 Arduino sketches |
| tests/ | Test sketches and results |
| docs/diagrams/ | Concept, system and wiring diagrams |
| docs/photos/ | Build and prototype photos |
| docs/devlog.md | Dated development log |
Claude (Anthropic) – Assisted in logic drafting, complex code like glint and debugging, diagrams, documentation structure What AI helped with
- Drafted the sketch framework: button debouncing, non-blocking frame timer, the Boat/oak stripe animation, and the v5 structure (idle palette, 60 s timeout, moving mosaic)
- Generated the system and wiring diagrams in docs/diagrams/
- Suggested the README structure and starting RGB values
What I did
- Concept and pivots (FACE ID → pond → material mood board) and the material selection
- All wiring, soldering and the physical build
- Found the diagonal-leg button fault through testing
- Tested colours on Lumi and the real Vespera and chose the final values
- Wrote the concept, reflection and devlog
- Built prototypes and finally made the final decent looking moodboard controller
- Room-scale ambient lighting that responds to the materials being viewed
- Real colour temperature (2700K–6500K) using tunable-white LEDs, since RGB LEDs can’t produce warm white or grey
- A showroom version: scan or tap any sample to see it under its intended lighting
- Logging which materials visitors press, so designers learn what people are drawn to
MIT