The idea of a friend was to make a large iris window shade for the round windows in his house. After drawing up the design in SolidWorks we set about cutting each of the 12 leaves with a laser cutter. Pivots were spots welded on and a car electric window motor connected. After some trial and error with the mechanism, we were able to get it to open and close smoothly. An Arduino micro controller was thrown in to make it light sensitive so that heat could be saved during winter. There are plans to make it controlled using a smartphone possible.