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The Iot Moon

·2 mins

This is an old build repurposed because it was not fulfilling its original intent.

Photograph of the finished lamp with the appareance of the moon

So, I found this lithograph of the moon and I thought of building a bed side lamp (a connected one, ofc). So, I printed it and designed a stand for it. The thing is that the print time for the moon was too long, so I decided to do a smaller version as a prove of concept.

Being the small one, it only had room inside for so many LEDs (42 finally). So, it’s not that bright, even with white light at 100%.

Photograph of the LEDs that power the lamp, showing a red color

Also, I forgot to add a physical switch to it. I could lie and say that there’s not enough room for it, as the base is completely filled with the board and cables, but the truth is that I forgot. It’s no really an issue as I can use home assistant to control it, but it’s annoying.

Anyway, I decided to use it as a night light for kids. I’ve changed the code to be independent of home assistant, now it can be controlled with the embedded web server. It has a script for “Good Nights” that will turn on the light at 50% and after 5 minutes it will fade to off during the next 5 minutes, so after 10 minutes it will be completely off.

Screen capture of a browser displaying the moon lamp web server

It also has another script that will start early at the norming and will turn the moon red, letting the kids know that it’s too early to get up. When it is time to get up, the moon will turn green. These two modes use the light at 10% so it needs the rooms completely dark or you won’t see it. There are test modes to check them.

From now on, I’ll upload the source files to GitHub instead. You can find all my files at: esphome-projects

Back in a bit!