Many members of the Raspberry Pi team have small children. As such, many members of the Raspberry Pi team are constantly tired and walking around like zombies — loving, productive zombies humming Baby Shark while scrubbing food stains off their clothing.
Whenever a Raspberry Pi project appears on social media that aids parents do the simple things in life — such as getting sleep or finding time to eat, breathe, shower, etc. — it’s an instant hit around the office.
White noise night light for unrelenting children
This is why, while setting up my desk this morning, I heard an “Oooo, white noise nightlight!” cheer from behind me and turned to find Liz checking out this new project from Instructables maker Cary Ciavolella.
This is a project I made for my 1-year-old for Christmas. Honestly, though, it was a sanity present for me and my wife. It’s a white noise machine that can play multiple different sounds selected through a web interface, and also incorporates lights that change color based on the time (red lights mean be in bed, yellow mean you can play in your room, and green means it’s ok to come out). Since my son is too young to tell time, a color-based night light seemed like a really good idea.
As Cary has kindly provided all the code for the project, it’s a fairly easy build to replicate at home and looks like it’ll do the trick.
The device uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W, Blinkt, and Speaker pHAT from Pimoroni, and a handful of wires. Building it requires some basic soldering skills. If you’re unsure about your soldering skills, our handy video guide is all you need to get started.
How to solder your Raspberry Pi header pins
Learn the basics of how to solder components together, and the safety precautions you need to take.
The white noise files are selectable via a flask webserver hosted on the Raspberry Pi that parents can control via their smart device. Cary’s write-up for the project is so wonderfully detailed that any parent looking to build their own device can easily replace the white noise files with any MP3s of their choice.
Here’s the Instructables tutorial to help you get started on your own.
Remix your own
What’s so wonderful about this project is that it’s a great example of a build that is easily hackable to fit your own requirements. If you don’t have a child, it’s still a great notification device for your day-to-day routine, or a nice tool to remind a relative to take medication based on a colour system. There’s so much you can do using Cary’s build as the bare bones, which is why we think it’s awesome, and you should too.
Website: LINK
