Background

Kids don't know how to tell time. So I wanted a way to signal to them visually, and without being involved. That it was not time to get out of bed (if it was really early), and likewise when it was time to go to bed. My son was really into ladybugs, both my boys were into ladybugs at some point. Not sure why. I built this ladybug lamp to change colors based on the time of day and came up with a helpful rhyme to help them remember.

"When the ladybug is red, it's time for bed. When the laydbug is yellow, you can come out of your room and say 'hello', when the ladybug is green it's time to get clean, etc..."

Parts

Design “Ladybug_lamp” hasn’t been synced yet.

Here are the parts. - Adafruit ESP32 feather board with Wifi - Adafruit neopixel ring - USB cable, green. - Power supply - 3D printed ladybug parts.  # Assembly

After printing the parts, the assembly was easy. I mounted the boards and then flashed the firmware. I used the Adafruit IOT system firmware to actually control and set the timers through their web app. It worked pretty well! Although it did not do well on daylight savings.

Things I Learned

1. This worked really well actually. My kids loved it. And then at some point after they were old enough they asked that I take it down. It was pretty bright, although that is adjustable through the Adafruit site. It served as a nightlight as well as a time indicator so that was nice.
2. I printed the first shell with clear "natural" PLA, printing that large dome with supports on my printer turned out to be a nightmare to remove the supports. The second one I did I printed out of flexible tpu and had it SLS printed professionally. That one turned out much nicer and had the added benefit of being squishy.
3. I liked the simplicity of the Adafruit IOT platform and it worked just well enough to support the project on their free tier plan.

Photos

Early color test with different hardware.