Pi-Powered White Noise Generator and Stay in Bed Light

Those of you who have kids know the deal. They’re adorable, but sometimes you just want a little more sleep. To help accomplish this goal, Cary Ciavolella (AKA “WhiskeyDrinker”) made a time-activated nightlight and white noise generator using a Raspbery Pi Zero W. As he puts it, it’s a really easy project — especially considering that code and instructions are available for your use.

The idea behind the device is that the Pi Zero plays different flavors of white noise, looping MP3 files selected from a web interface via a Speaker pHAT. Importantly, this pHAT is modified with a Pi configuration file to remove the VU meter plugin. This allows Junior to rest peacefully without lights pulsing to the beat of waves, rain, or whatever noise is selected.

The second element to this hack is, in fact, LED lighting that is programmed to change color based on the time of day (or night). This is accomplished by scripts and cron jobs that can be overridden via the system’s web app. As programmed, red lights shine from 7:30pm to 6:15am, indicating it’s time to sleep, yellow shines for an hour until 7:15am, suggesting it’s time for quiet in-room play, and green shines after that, letting the littlest Ciavolella know that… it’s playtimeeeee!

Whether this happens according to schedule remains to be seen, though we wish them all the best!

[h/t: Raspberry Pi]