Spaceship Water Dispenser

I always carry my water bottle around and filling it up with water is super boring, so I decided to add some LEDs to the water dispenser in the IM Lab. Everything is still there, except for the Arduino, so if you want to see it working or make it stay there forever download the code below to an Arduino and fill up your bottle.

 

The idea:

I wanted to have a line of LEDs replicate the idea of water flowing by creating a pattern of LEDs turning on and off. Then I thought of having and LED that would be on whenever the switch was opened.

 

The circuit:

Here’s what a version of the circuit looked like. In reality I ended up using more LEDs but here’s how things were wired up!

The code:

int switchstate = 0;

void setup() {
  pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(6, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(7, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(8, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(9, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(10, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(11, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(12, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(2, INPUT);
}

void loop() {
  switchstate = digitalRead(2);
  if (switchstate == LOW) {
    digitalWrite(3, HIGH); 
    digitalWrite(4, LOW);  
    digitalWrite(5, LOW);
    digitalWrite(6, LOW);
    digitalWrite(7, LOW);
    digitalWrite(8, LOW);
    digitalWrite(9, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(13, LOW); 
  }
 
  else {
    digitalWrite(3, LOW); 
    digitalWrite(4, HIGH);  
    digitalWrite(5, LOW);
    digitalWrite(6, LOW);
    digitalWrite(7, LOW);
    digitalWrite(8, LOW);
    digitalWrite(9, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(13, LOW);  
    delay(250);
    digitalWrite(4, LOW);  
    digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(6, LOW);
    digitalWrite(7, LOW);
    digitalWrite(8, LOW);
    digitalWrite(9, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(13, LOW);  
    delay(250);
    digitalWrite(4, LOW);  
    digitalWrite(5, LOW);
    digitalWrite(6, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(7, LOW);
    digitalWrite(8, LOW);
    digitalWrite(9, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(13, LOW); 
    delay(250);
    digitalWrite(4, LOW);  
    digitalWrite(5, LOW);
    digitalWrite(6, LOW);
    digitalWrite(7, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(8, LOW);
    digitalWrite(9, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(12, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(13, LOW); 
    delay(250);
    digitalWrite(4, LOW);  
    digitalWrite(5, LOW);
    digitalWrite(6, LOW);
    digitalWrite(7, LOW);
    digitalWrite(8, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(9, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(13, HIGH); 
  }
}

How it looked: