FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine
Civil Aerospace Medical Institute

Report No: DOT/FAA/AM-15/18

Title and Subtitle: Open-Source Products for a Lighting Experiment Device

Report Date: October 2015

Authors: Gildea KM, Milburn N

Abstract: The availability of increasingly powerful and versatile open-source software and hardware products continues to open new possibilities for the design and development of experimental devices. The declining cost of many proprietary software and hardware solutions has further increased the options available to researchers. The capabilities of open-source software and microcontrollers were used to construct a device for controlled lighting experiments.

The device was designed to ascertain whether individuals with certain color vision deficiencies were able to discriminate between the red and white lights in fielded systems based on luminous intensity. The device provided the ability to control the timing and duration of LED and incandescent light stimuli presentation, present the experimental sequence and verbal instructions automatically, adjust LED and incandescent luminous intensity, and display LED and incandescent lights with various spectral emissions. The lighting device could easily be adapted for experiments involving flashing or timed presentations of colored lights or the components expanded to study areas such as threshold light perception and visual alerting systems.

Key Words: Color Vision, Colored Signal Lights, Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs), Vision Research, Open-Source Products

No. of Pages: 26