Warm Hugs - a Sun Lamp for Seasonal Depression

My mother used to put me to sleep by covering my eyes with her cool hand. It's a memory that fills me with a lot of warmth. While surrounded by the darkness in the winter time, thinking of family and comfort is especially warming to the soul and body. Warm Hugs is informed by that personal memory and sentiment.

Warm Hugs is a sculptural lamp for those who endure seasonal depression during the cold, winter months. It is a natural alarm clock triggered by the sunrise and can also act as a warm lamp during the dark hours.

Supplies

Materials Gathering!

Please acquire these materials at your own leisure! Most of these are Amazon links for convenience. There are always cheaper options for things, but these are the materials I ended up using.

Some improvements you could add to this design include a diffusion material to cover the bare LEDs. This can be done with something like thermoplastic (hand molded) or acrylic (this could be cut to a ring that would cover the LEDs with a laser cutter)!

Circuit Construction + Code

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To build out the interaction between the Weather/Sunrise time and my LEDs I followed the trusty Internet of Things guide by Becky Stern. I completed lessons 1-5 to achieve the final result of this project.

What I wanted to achieve with this lamp is accessing the Internet and a Weather API to get sunrise data to trigger my LEDs. As you will see in the lessons, you will need to do some groundwork by creating an Adafruit IO and IFTTT account. The Adafruit account is to make sure your Feather Huzzah board is accessing the internet and the IFTTT account is what you will need to connect to the Weather Underground API. All of this is covered in the tutorial.

The code I used is attached below but here is a brief walk through of what you will see when you open the file.

Don't forget to connect to your Adafruit IO account and access key as well as your wifi ssid and password.
Record the correct pins that your button (for testing) and LED strips are using so your hardware will connect to the code.
There are some safeguards that will show in your serial monitor to test your connection and debug your process. This again, will all be better explained to you in the tutorial linked above.
The most fun and experimental part of this code is the sunriseAnimation function. This is the place where your creativity can shine. Feel free to experiment with colors and other animations here as if the trigger from IFTTT and Adafruit IO are working, the LED strip can achieve any color or animation you like!

Downloads

WarmHugsCode.ino

Form Construction

Here is another place your creativity can shine. The great thing about making this sculpture out of clay is that its form will be totally unique. This lamps form is based on my memory but if there is a shape or form that would provide you more comfort during cold, winter months, I encourage you to explore that! Really bring those ideas to life! Using airdry clay can have a long drying time about 1 - 3 days depending on the density. My form took about 3 days to completely dry.

For the hardware, I would recommend soldering longer wires so you have some leeway in terms of where you want the lamp to live in your bedroom! Also so you can plug in these wires to your solderless breadboard!

I decided to paint my planter base, the color is up to your discretion! After sticking the LEDs to the base and placing the sculpture in the middle, The construction is complete!

Put It in Action!

Because the sunrise trigger only happens once a day you can keep your button attached to your board to test the connection for the final time!

Plug in your lamp next to your bed and wait for the light to wake you up in the morning! I hope it provides you the same comfort it gives me!