Progress-wise, here’s what I’ve got left to do:

• Decide on the actual material to use for the final flower
• Figure out how the muscle wire will connect on either end, and where this will be – it seems now that molding my own silicone petals will not be feasible in my timeframe.
• Design the circuit – I have a photoresistor that would be easy to hook up to a small transistor circuit, but I’m not sure this’ll yield consistent results. Also, there’s a latching problem that I might want to try and solve with a timer.