I've got Philips Hue lights and some other home automation stuff like remote heating control. I like the lights as you can easily change them to suit watching a movie or reading and so on. With the Amazon Dot you can just say "set lights to movie" reading/etc. Yes, you can use a switch and so on but it makes things easy as you don't need to find a remote or switch. Practicality rather than laziness. It has been proving very useful for my mum who is now getting on a bit - she can turn on outside lights before she gets home for added security by just asking Siri to "Turn on outside lights".
We got the remote heating as it replaced the normal timer. As we had different or changing work days it is useful to be able to change the schedule on a day to day basis. Plus if you are on holiday you can turn it off and save energy. Changing to all LED bulbs and the heating control is saving a noticeable amount of energy which will cover the initial cost of the bulbs etc.
The main problem with the Hue lights is the cost. Even other bulb manufacturers bulbs cost a similar amount and LED strips are ridiculous for what you get though it is convenient.
So I was looking at other ways to have LED strip lights. The Hue strip is about £60. You can get remote controlled LED light kits for about £20 but the range of colours you can choose can be limited and though they work I have found they can be iffy quality wise.
So. Arduino is a small processor that can be programmed to do nearly what ever you want (it is similar to the Raspberry Pi). The UNO is about half the size of a mobile phone that can be powered by USB or off a 9v battery. There is also a NANO version which is about the size of a USB memory stick. It had been something I wanted to have a play with for a while but it was knowing what to buy. The board on its own can be programmed but won't do much so you need to get other bits to connect it with the outside world. You can get tons of stuff of eBay but you end up having to source loads of stuff from many places. I noticed on Amazon that they had a flash sale of a kit for £35 (it is now £40) that had most of what I wanted to play with all in one kit. The Arduino will control RGB strip lights (with some programing) so that is my initial aim. After that I would like to get the lights to match the others colours.
The kit I got: Amazon product
After about 30 minutes of playing I was able to do this:
We got the remote heating as it replaced the normal timer. As we had different or changing work days it is useful to be able to change the schedule on a day to day basis. Plus if you are on holiday you can turn it off and save energy. Changing to all LED bulbs and the heating control is saving a noticeable amount of energy which will cover the initial cost of the bulbs etc.
The main problem with the Hue lights is the cost. Even other bulb manufacturers bulbs cost a similar amount and LED strips are ridiculous for what you get though it is convenient.
So I was looking at other ways to have LED strip lights. The Hue strip is about £60. You can get remote controlled LED light kits for about £20 but the range of colours you can choose can be limited and though they work I have found they can be iffy quality wise.
So. Arduino is a small processor that can be programmed to do nearly what ever you want (it is similar to the Raspberry Pi). The UNO is about half the size of a mobile phone that can be powered by USB or off a 9v battery. There is also a NANO version which is about the size of a USB memory stick. It had been something I wanted to have a play with for a while but it was knowing what to buy. The board on its own can be programmed but won't do much so you need to get other bits to connect it with the outside world. You can get tons of stuff of eBay but you end up having to source loads of stuff from many places. I noticed on Amazon that they had a flash sale of a kit for £35 (it is now £40) that had most of what I wanted to play with all in one kit. The Arduino will control RGB strip lights (with some programing) so that is my initial aim. After that I would like to get the lights to match the others colours.
The kit I got: Amazon product
After about 30 minutes of playing I was able to do this:
