Oh holy sleep!
Our children often decided in the middle of the night that they had slept enough and that it’s time to get up now… hurray!
We came across a clock for little kids. It used different colors to display day and night. I really liked the idea and it actually worked but the clock was just not nice. Setting it up was a nightmare and it used a bright blue light in the night which is far from ideal when you’re actually supposed to sleep.
So I figured that it should be possible to build something better than that…
This was the birth of the schlafmütze!
Interested?
Features
- visually display day and nighttime using colors
- Indicates when it’s ok/safe to wake up the parents and when nighttime starts
- works as a night light
- uses warm colors
- keeps the same level of brightness no matter what time it is (no flashing leds – everything to not wake up anyone)
- points the kids into the right direction when learning to tell the time. Each Led represents one hour
- Easy setup
The first tests with our kids were quite promising. Of course they were already used to the concept since we had this other clock… first feedback was that it’s easier to fall asleep… hurray!
Concept
- The LEDs dimmed yellow.
- The current time is indicated by bright yellow.
- The start of the night is displayed via a dimmed red.
- The LEDs are dimmed red.
- The current time is indicated by a bright red.
- The start of the day is displayed via a dimmed yellow.
Implementation
The first Prototype consists of a 3D printed housing, 12 RGB LEDs and an esp32 board. Pretty simple setup but nice to experiment with.
Interested?
I’m thinking about producing some sort of a mini series.
If you’re interested let me know. If a couple of people give a shout I will consider building a batch of early prototypes.
So please let me know by entering your email address below, or simply send me a mail/leave a comment.
(No worries I won’t use your address for anything other than maybe coming back to you if there are enough people interested. Nothing else. I will surely not spam you with mails since I’m way to lazy for such things…)
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