Touch Lamp

Date started: April 2021, Freshman year of college

My girlfriend and I attended our freshman year of college in different states, which definitely was not easy on us.

As a way to make the situation a little bit easier, I decided to make touch lamps for us to feel each others presence no matter the distance.

The basic premise is that there are two lamps, one belonging with each person.

When my lamp for instance is touched, a signal is sent across the country to her lamp, and her lamp lights up, letting her know that I am thinking about her from afar, and when she touches her lamp, my lamp would then receive a signal and light up.

The way that I made these was by buying a pre-existing touch lamp, one that lights up itself when touched, and adding wifi capabilities to it.

I was able to add the wifi capabilities with a purchasable chip called a particle photon, which is like an arduino that connects to the wifi.

Below are some pictures of the construction and a video of the lamps working!

An interesting challenge that I faced with this project is that the LED rings in the lamps that I reused, have a shared anode between the three colors. This makes it challenging to control the lights individually, as you have to toggle the 0V ground between them. I was able to accomplish this by using transistors and digital outputs from the board to toggle the connection to ground.

Overall, I am happy with the way that this project turned out, and I use it frequently with my girlfriend!

Update!

Date: December 2021, Sophomore year of college

I got some room light LED strips from one of my brothers, and they were missing the power supply and controller. Being an electrical engineering student, I didn't let this stop me from making my room light up!

I first bought and tore apart and old laptop charger that I got from good will, and was able to power the LED light strips and light up my room by plugging and unplugging their wires into a bread board. Eventually, I got lazy enough where I decided to connect the lights to the wifi capabilities of the touch lamp, so that I would be able to turn off my lights when I was in bed from an app on my phone instead of having to get out of bed to unplug the wires.

I did this by connecting some mechanical relays to the touch lamp to switch the higher voltage needed for the lights, and by writing some extra code to control the lights from my phone. Here is an image of the wiring. The black cable on the left side of the bread board connects to the LED strips on the ceiling.

Here is a little video showing the lights on in my room. I can turn them off and on with an app on my phone which is awesome!

When I get a touch lamp "message" from my girlfriend, I programmed the LED lights to light up when the lamp lights up, so that my whole room changes color. This way, I know that she sent me a message no matter where I am! I think it is pretty cute! Here is a video showing that.

I also programmed in a button for her called "Logan check your phone". When I get really focused, I will sometimes forget to text her back! When she presses the "Logan check your phone" button, my room lights go crazy, and the sound of the relays clicking can definitely get my attention! She uses this button a lot. Check out this video where you can see it working!

All in all, I really like controlling my room lights with my phone. This has prevented me from having to deal with the classic problem of not wanting to get out of bed when you are comfy to turn off the lights!

I would like to make some future improvements like making the lights turn on when my alarm goes off each morning to help get me out of bed. I hop you enjoyed seeing this project!

10/16/2022 - Junior year of college

I wrote some functions that are based off of time! Now, the lights come on every night at 5:00pm, and turn off at 11:00pm. It is kind of nice to come back to the room and the lights are already off!

I also have made an alarm mode that goes off when I wake up in the morning where my lights strobe. It is very annoying, but it gets me out of bed!