ESP32 LED eyes help keep the little one in bed
We've seen plenty of custom clocks here at Hackaday, many of which have pushed the traditional definition of a watch to its absolute limit. But for all their crazy designs, most of them have one thing in common: they assume you can actually read a clock and understand the concept of time. But what if you're developing a clock for a toddler who's just come to terms with such heady ideas?
The answer, at least for [Riley Parish] is a set of 3D printed eyes that are lit up with yellow or green LEDs depending on whether or not it's time to get out of bed. More than just light color, the eye design (which is integrated into the back of the front panel) switches between wide open and tightly closed depending on the time of day.
Internally , the device is very simple, with the 5mm LEDs and their associated resistors connected directly to the digital output pins on an ESP32 development board.While the dual-core microcontroller is admittedly overkill enough to flip some LEDs every 12 hours, the firmware at least pulls the current time from NTP – and the powerful MCU offers plenty of room to grow in. A web interface to configure the device or check its current status would only require a few more lines of code.
It just so happens that this isn't the first toddler watch to grace these pages. Unsurprisingly, these previous examples also used a color change to help indicate the passage of time.
We've seen plenty of custom clocks here at Hackaday, many of which have pushed the traditional definition of a watch to its absolute limit. But for all their crazy designs, most of them have one thing in common: they assume you can actually read a clock and understand the concept of time. But what if you're developing a clock for a toddler who's just come to terms with such heady ideas?
The answer, at least for [Riley Parish] is a set of 3D printed eyes that are lit up with yellow or green LEDs depending on whether or not it's time to get out of bed. More than just light color, the eye design (which is integrated into the back of the front panel) switches between wide open and tightly closed depending on the time of day.
Internally , the device is very simple, with the 5mm LEDs and their associated resistors connected directly to the digital output pins on an ESP32 development board.While the dual-core microcontroller is admittedly overkill enough to flip some LEDs every 12 hours, the firmware at least pulls the current time from NTP – and the powerful MCU offers plenty of room to grow in. A web interface to configure the device or check its current status would only require a few more lines of code.
It just so happens that this isn't the first toddler watch to grace these pages. Unsurprisingly, these previous examples also used a color change to help indicate the passage of time.
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