Description 

I made 2 automatic curtains with--

a DC motor,

a rope,

an empty yogurt bottle,

a round piece of paperboard,

a curtain,

the Arduino board, bread board, batteries and resistors.

a force sensor/a photocell

AutoCurtain 

To illustrate stepping on the sensor, here I use a slipper in stead of a rug in this picture

Automatic Curtain 1--

Every time when I want to stand at my French door to look out through it, or when I want to open the door to go to my little patio, I'll have to step on the mat in front of the door.

In this case, I put the force sensor under the mat in front of my door. When I step on the mat, the curtain will be automatically drawn open.

Automatic Curtain 2--

I put my bed beside the window. Everyday in the morning I hope my curtain will open by itself so that the sunlight will wake me up. After I open my eyes on the bed, the first sight will be the beautiful sky!!

In this case, I use the photocell instead of the force sensor. Putting the entire set by my window, the photocell can detect sunlight and control the curtain. 

My Code

/*
 * one pot fades one motor
 * modified version of AnalogInput
 * by DojoDave <http://www.0j0.org>
 * http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogInput 
 * Modified again by dave and again by Aithne Sheng-Ying Pao
 */

int potPin = 0;   // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int motorPin = 9; // select the pin for the Motor
int val = 0;      // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
  val = analogRead(potPin);    // read the value from the sensor, between 0 - 1024
  Serial.println(val);
  analogWrite(motorPin, val/4); // analogWrite can be between 0-255
}

My Video

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=pillypao