What I want to do

Using an Arduino kit, Julia (JuliaR), Becca (rgovoni) and Jacob (jacobmatz) from Northeastern's Environment, Technology and Society Fall semester class, constructed a thermal flashlight to measure heat variations in an academic office environment.

My attempt and results

Setting the temperature range from 68F to 80F was appropriate to the environment as we were not able to find an object to measure that was cold enough to trigger the previous range of 73F to 85F.

Questions and next steps

Protruding wires from the Arduino and the breadboard need to secured and elevated in a suitable housing. We used a bright green tupperware container, reflections from which distorted the LED readout. A future project needs to be more robust.

Why I'm interested

This project was made with readily available materials but in a short time frame that circumscribed the uses to which it could be put. An instrument of this type could be useful for designing more energy efficient homes by revealing heat leakage and for mapping thermal pollution in the environment.