Sunrise Lamp

For this project you'll need:

A QT Py and matching NeoPixel driver

NeoPixel stick or NeoPixel ring

A JST PH 3-pin plug to female socket cable and a USB-C cable

Male header pins and basic wires

You'll also need a wifi connection and Mu Editor

You'll need to be able to use a 3d printer and the soldering irons

You'll need to find lamp you'd like to use for this project. https://www.thingiverse.com/ has tons of free models

The lamp has to have a place for the NeoPixels and microcontrollers, and a place for the USB-C cable to feed out!

You can download the lamp I modified and used here.

After you've found a suitable lamp, print it.

Any part that lights up should be printed with a light colored PLA, such as white or yellow

While the lamp prints, move onto the next steps

Solder male header pins onto the QTPY and female header pins onto the NeoPixel driver.

Solder male header pins onto the NeoPixel stick or ring. On the stick, make sure to solder the pins to the side with DIN.

Attach the QT Py and driver together using the soldered pins.

Plug the JST cable into the NeoPixel driver and connect the black wire to GND, the red wire to 5VDC, and white to DIN/Data In

Go to this adafruit page to learn how to get started using the QT PY

After you've installed Circuit Python, visit adafruit's internet test guide and download the project bundle.

After updating the libraries, run the code.py example code given in the project bundle.

The QT Py won't connect to the internet right now, but we'll deal with that in the next step!

Open the REPL and find the mac address of your board. Copy the mac address with Shift + Ctrl + C.

Paste the mac address somewhere else and remove the commas, quotation marks, and the 0x. If there's a single number, add a zero infront of it. Add dashes between the remaining numbers.

Go to https://mydevices.bucknell.edu/ and log in with your Bucknell username and password. Register a new device.

Add the mac address of your QT PY and register it to bucknell_iot.

In settings.toml, the wifi SSID should be bucknell_iot and the password will be left blank, as the iot network has no password

After registering the device and updating settings.toml, reload the code and run it.

In the REPL, you should see "This is a test of Adafruit WiFi! If you can read this, its working :)"

This means that the board has connected to the wifi!

If the wifi doesn't work, double check that the wifi credentials in settings.toml are correct, then reset the board.

After registering the device and updating settings.toml, reload the code and run it.

In the REPL, you should see "This is a test of Adafruit WiFi! If you can read this, its working :)"

This means that you are good to continue onto the next steps!

If the wifi doesn't work, double check that the wifi credentials in settings.toml are correct, then reset the board.

To fetch the sunrise and sunset times, you'll need an adafruit.io account.

Navigate to https://io.adafruit.com/ and create an account. If you already have an account, log in.

Find the small key icon. It'll show your adafruit IO key. Copy the key and username and paste it into settings.toml. Save settings.toml

For the code to access the necessary data, you'll have to create secrets.py.

secrets.py may already exist! if so, just edit it in Mu

Create a new code file in Mu and copy the code from this adafruit guide.

Replace the data with your own and save the file as secrets.py

Download the project bundle from adafruit. Copy the libraries over and save code.py to the QT Py

In the user config section, change NEO_PIN to board.A3 and NEO_CNT to the amount of neopixels you're using

Adjust the color of the pixels, the wake up time, and animation speed to your liking.

(0, 0, 0) turns the pixels off!

The lamp needs to be reset to replay the sunrise animation. You can do this with code (see below) or by unplugging and replugging the lamp in.

To make the lamp turn off after a period of time, I added code that would reset the board after 1 hour.

At the top of the code import microcontroller. At the very bottom add a time.sleep(seconds) and microcontroller.reset()

If you want a challenge, change the code so that the lamp changes to a different color during the day and then switches colors at night! You could also add a rotary encoder or pushbutton to create different modes!

Insert your NeoPixels and microcontrollers into the lamp.

You may have to tape the neopixels to hold them in place!

You've now completed your sunrise lamp!