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by bartkappenburg 778 days ago
I’ve built a small scale ‘flat’ that is meant to act as a ‘living’ object that is a bed side companion for sick children that are lying in a hospital.

The idea is that you give a certain floor to family or friends so that they can control the lights (and color). The child can see if parents, grandparents or friends are home or not (based on a schedule or manual action). It gives a sense of reassurance and closeness of the relatives. Also very fun to see a living object next to your bed.

See it here: https://imgur.com/gallery/4ZOYdH5 And here (colors): https://imgur.com/gallery/z0yZJ7d

The hardware is a Atom Lite from M5Stack (see: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-developmen...) and a led stripe with addressable leds.

The software on the atom is micropython and the neopixel module. It connects to a webapp (through wifi) and listens to a JSON endpoint that gives the states of the leds (aka floors).

The webapp is a django app with a main user for the flat and he or she can invite others to control certain floors. All mobile friendly (no native app).

We have 4 live and deployed flats and are in the process of making more for our local hospitals.

The flat (wood) is custom made and pretty labour intensive.

A very fun project and learned a lot about hardware (and the deployment) coming from a saas background.

2 comments

I built almost the same thing! Mine is a Christmas house with a tiny person living inside, you get a realistic fireplace, a TV, and the person goes around the house every so often:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RUqTN-7_gU

This is a very sweet and beautiful thing.