Project Description

The fear of darkness is an instinctive response. To counteract this, people light torches and illuminate lamps around them. Light has thus become a metaphor for safety in the human heart. However, one cannot guarantee that light will always be present. At times, even a few steps away from home, darkness can transform into a formidable beast blocking the path forward. Our project was conceived with this in mind. Pandora is dedicated to serving as a guide for pedestrians in the dark, ensuring that the natural world of night is no longer a source of fear.

Our project aims to evoke a "magical sense of guidance"—as though the environment is capable of perceiving the user's presence and responding accordingly. The interactive lighting not only offers navigational assistance but also creates an engaging visual experience, suitable for scenarios such as parks, exhibitions, or public installations that combine functionality with narrative elements. As individuals approach each subject deployed within the landscape, the mushrooms emit a warm yellow glow, illuminating the nearby path. Simultaneously, people can discern nearby moving objects through the light—eliminating the concern of being ambushed in a wilderness setting.

Technical Novelty and Complexity

The Mushroom Lamp System is an intelligent path light control network built on multiple ESP32 and PC servers, with medium and high technical complexity. The ESP32 client interacts with the server through UDP communication, supports many functions such as Wi-Fi automatic registration, button interrupt triggering, ultrasonic ranging, LED light dynamic control (breathing/dark effect and distance feedback), I2C LCD display, etc.; the server uses Python's asyncio to implement the asynchronous UDP protocol, which is responsible for maintaining UID address mapping, processing start point and end point selection, calculating the shortest path and send ing control commands to ESP32 on the path. The system uses a custom protocol to simplify message transmission, and uses logic to build a path lighting effect similar to Mesh, which has good module decoupling and scalability, and is suitable for application scenarios such as path guidance and interactive display.