Process

Outline your approach to the project? What ideas did you generate and how did you refine or reject them? What did you research and explore? what were the design choices? What challenges were encountered and how did you resolve them?

My approach was to create the two fundamental functions of the device separately then meshed them together.  The first was to get one photon to sense motion.  The second was to get two photons to communicate.

First, the PIR sensor was connected and check to ensure sensing.  Because the example above had basically done this, I used what the toilet dog guy did exactly.  Here I found how annoying the buzzer was and quickly unplugged it.  Then I added a serial communication to the code to add a feedback mechanism for understanding the output of the sensor.  And set the threshold in my if statement for what detected motion was.  I also had to do some searching to figure out how to make the motion sensor less sensitive.  One knob on the PIR is for delay and the other for sensitivity, I found that I had to turn both to get close to the desired sensing, although I never really reached it.  In the future I think I'd like to combined sensors to get a more sensitive read on when my baby's presents is being sensed.  

Second, the communication between the photons was tested in what I will call a separate sandbox.  I wired an LED to each photon and programmed a quick "light show" (series of blinks).  I then published and event when the sequence is done, to get the other photon to begin their "light show".    I doing this I found my second photon (purchased just the other day) blinking red with and overwhelmed memory error (13 blinks between SOS's).  I did some research to try to find people with similar problems, but ended up just trying to understand the error code and tried to code my way around publishing too often.  This brought to life the design choice to incorporate and indicator light that would both provide feedback as I was trouble shooting, as well as providing a meaningful delay in my ecosystem. After do this I was able to achieve the desired result.  

Finally, I integrated the two functions.  This included jumping back an forth from each set of code and working my way through the interaction that would transpire as I planned them to transpire.  And commenting out the buzzer until the very end.  Positioning the the devices was not trivial.  Something that will definitely receive more consideration next time.