DIY Bed Underglow With Particle Photon

 

The prime endeavor behind this project is to make motion activated bed lighting that includes ambient light sensors, very relaxing colorful scenes, and Adafruit.io to administer all processes.  This one is a simple projects that can be undertaken by anyone. All you need to create is a Particle platform that has two major objectives – relaxing scenes that can be played while you get to bed and bed underglow activated by motion. 

 

The hardware required for this project includes Particle Photon that can be controlled with an analog RGB LED strip. If you use any other strip like NeoPixels you wouldn’t need this level of sophisticated system. Since, the lights are to be played under the bed, you wouldn’t need to utilize an expanded set up of multiple colors, you just need to look out for the floor as you step down from your bed. So, other inputs required for this project include PIR motion sensor and a photo resistor. As and when, the Photon realizes the beginning of motion, it looks out for photo resistor to see if there is darkness around. You wouldn’t need to turn on the lights if the day is on and sky is bright. Other requirements include 12V, 60W power supply, and power MOSFETs. 

 

The complete process is event driven one. The loop would look if it needs to run a relaxing scene for which no sensors will be required. The motion sensor will be attached with an interrupt that will turn on the lights and begin the timer when it is triggered. Once the timer dies down, the Off function gets called in. For activating the light scenes, an event needs to be published in Particle cloud. This function will establish a flag to indicate the loop that sequence needs to run.  For fun, you can also make a library for RGB coloring. 

 

While building, the first thing that you need to test is the motion sensor. Wire it to the 5V sensor and attach the output with resistor and LED. If the sensor and timer works while you wave your hand around it, its working fine. Next, load up the Photon Tinker app and switch the lights on and off. You will easily discover the threshold value for photoresistor. You can also wire up the RGB LED along with the motion sensors and Tinker up with them as well. For other details, results, code, and schematics check out: https://www.hackster.io/nick-stanley/bed-underglow-958476?ref=part&ref_id=9500&offset=4