Daniella Chernoff, a volunteer and a rising senior in Fall 2017 at Hofstra University, has been volunteering for iCREATE since 2015. She was a student staff member who worked on the Augmented Reality (AR) sandbox that was built for the Earth and Space Sciences department last Spring 2016. Her latest iCREATE project is being added to the Greenhouse and is called the “Sound Cloud” – for its literal definition, and not the online audio distribution platform.

Daniella heard about iCREATE through a friend who was working for iCREATE at the time – Ellie Evans, who created and assembled the 3D printed prosthetic hand in the Summer of 2015.

“It seemed like what Ellie was working on was really interesting, so I got in contact with David [Ecker], the director, and started volunteering here. I usually come in about once or twice a week.”

The cloud runs off of an Arduino, a microphone, and some LED’s that are all connected to a running program on the computer. It responds to sound in terms of volume and flickers, changing to the sound environment it is in. As the volume increases, the colors change from blue to green and purple in response. The LED light floods the cloud’s interior and creates a soft overall effect that reflects the mood of the room.

A Geology major, Daniella worked on both of these projects with no prior knowledge or understanding of coding, wiring, or Arduinos. She pulled together open-source software codes and used some of the knowledge she gained from working on the AR sandbox.

Creating the actual cloud structure was simple. She used simple household supplies that were readily around her. She used a clean water gallon container to store the “parts” with the wires, LED’s and Arduino. She cut it in such a way that there would be an “easy-open flap” to access the interior. The rest of the cloud exterior is polyester fill/fluff. Her original idea was to hang it using fishing wire, and she had a mechanism prepared that used two wooden pencils to hold it in place.

“Combining the software was the hard part, but there is a lot of help to do it online. I didn’t have any prior knowledge when working on the sandbox either.”