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Show HN: My in-network Node app for controlling my kids' nightlights

by ecaron on 12/8/19, 10:52 PM with 23 comments

• by AdamJacobMuller on 12/10/19, 3:10 AM

  Very cool.

  I do something similar with LIFX bulbs. (https://github.com/adamjacobmuller/lifx/)

  I specifically have them configured to follow a f.lux-like curve for brightness and color temperature.

  The only major thing I want to add is some kind of local control/override for the brightness. The curves work great 99% of the time but sometimes you do want BRIGHT even at 11pm. The dash buttons are a cool idea, but I don't like the look of them in a wall. Haven't found a great solution for that yet.

• by feistypharit on 12/10/19, 2:22 AM

  Anyone interested in this sort of thing for their kids, I've found most hue lights to be too bright and I wanted a way more flexible scheduling ability. So I made my own and now sell them.

  https://www.keenglow.com

  It does require any cloud besides ntp and just uses a local web interface. You can define relative events, like 15 minutes before bed is tv time, 5 minutes before is snack time, bed time is 8. If one night the kids are extra cranky and need sleep, simply adjust bed time and the others adjust too.

  I've used em for years with my kids!

• by jacquesm on 12/9/19, 9:04 PM

  My kids get to control their nightlights all by themselves. I trust them to do this responsibly, if they're clever enough to do it so I don't notice then I'll let them get away with it. I don't feel the need to snoop on/control my children digitally.

• by mekane8 on 12/10/19, 3:53 PM

  I made something very similar, but the device I'm controlling is an RGB LED attached to the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi zero.

  https://github.com/mekane/Node-API-for-Raspberry-Pi-GPIO

  I made some bash scripts that call the API to do certain things (like light up green when it's time to get up for school) and I set cron tasks to call these at certain times.

  The Node service also serves a very simple web page that can be used to control the light color and brightness.

• by rancor on 12/9/19, 9:59 PM

  The Hue bridge is capable of this type of scheduling without any other devices. Philips simply hasn't included any useful level of flexibility in their app, so the use of All4Hue or other low-level apps is required.

• by GuiA on 12/9/19, 11:55 PM

  The light turning to blue at 7am to indicate that sleep time is over is a nice touch.

  Working in collectivities with young children, we'd have a sheet of paper with a sun/moon on each side, and every morning at 7 one of us would go in every room and turn the piece of paper around to let them know they could get out of bed and come to the common areas if they were awake.

• by atum47 on 12/10/19, 1:20 PM

  I had this kind of project in mind when I built my rpiapi project. https://github.com/victorqribeiro/rpiapi

  I'm going to work on it a little bit more.

• by z3t4 on 12/9/19, 8:55 PM

  If you want to drop the price of equipment you can go down a level and use 433Mhz. Athough wifi chips have gotten cheaper lately and hopefully the smart home iot gadgets will keep dropping in prise.

• by ajxs on 12/9/19, 11:50 PM

  Am I so out of touch for thinking that I wouldn't want devices with internet connectivity running at all times in my home, especially in children's bedrooms?

• by math0ne on 12/9/19, 9:01 PM

  I"m sure this was created for personal interest / development reasons but I thought I should mention that Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/) will do all of this out of the box.

• by crazypython on 12/9/19, 9:13 PM

  Please use a language like C, D, C++, or Python. They are much more lightweight. It takes hundreds of lines of javascript to be executed to do a single "console.log."