Streamline your morning routine with home automation

Let’s face it — mornings can be tough. Even the earliest risers and the most enthusiastic morning larks sometimes struggle to drag themselves out of bed and attack the day. The good news is that automation can always save things.

By using home automation wisely, you can save time in the morning, cut out tedious tasks, and start the day on the best possible note. In this article, we’ll look at why automation works so well in the morning and share some morning projects from the Arduino community.

Morning is the best time for automation

Home automation has a ton of benefits at all times of the day, but it’s especially useful in the morning. That’s because the first few minutes and hours of the day are usually where we need to save time the most.

Automation helps save precious seconds off your AM routine by helping you rise earlier, save time on important morning tasks, and manage your time better. As a result, you get less stress and more time to focus on enjoying the start of the day.

Now, let’s take a look at some projects from the Arduino community that members built to improve their own mornings.

Morning automation examples from the Arduino community

Alarm clock

Arduino member galoebn had had enough of struggling with slow, difficult mornings. To solve the problem, they made an alarm clock that really worked.

The clock uses a motion sensor, so it notices if you get back into bed after hitting the snooze button. If so, the alarm will go off again, but if you stay out of bed for a certain period of time, the alarm won’t sound anymore.

Best of all, this project is fairly easy to construct at home with just a few components including a clock module, a motion sensor, a buzzer, a small button and an Arduino.

Coffee machine

In the morning, there are few things better than a steaming cup of coffee to get the day started. However, coffee takes time to brew, and there’s no feeling more frustrating than realizing you don’t have enough time to prepare your morning cup of Joe.

Arduino member Thomas sxt was so tired of this feeling that he decided to build his own automatic coffee machine to take care of this part of the morning routine, ensuring a hot cup of coffee was waiting for him every morning.

The machine works via an app, allowing you to choose your coffee size, and can even be controlled by voice.

Curtain control

Throwing your curtains wide open is a great way to start the day. Our bodies are programmed to respond to natural light in the morning, and it helps us wake up naturally and get energised for the day ahead. Of course, climbing out of bed to open the curtains is less fun.

Arduino member JayV decided to solve the problem by designing curtains that automatically open in the morning and close in the evening according to your pre-set instructions. The project also comes with a manual override, just in case you want to take a mid-day nap.

Your curtains need to be the right design to work (JayV’s old curtains had a simple looping rope) but it should work with most models. 

LUMOS: Smart lamp for better sleep

Smart lighting isn’t just about creating a more comfortable home environment, it can also give us great control over our daily routines and even improve our health. 

Unfortunately, in today’s world, we are surrounded by sources of blue light. It bombards us from our TVs, smartphones, and laptops, and this blue light causes our bodies to produce more cortisol which makes it more difficult to fall asleep. More than 20% of the world population is sleep deprived, and this is very likely linked to the fact that many people spend huge portions of their day around unnatural blue light sources.

To tackle this problem in his own home, Arduino community member Jonty came up with the LUMOS smart lamp. The lamp mimics the natural light of the sun as it passes overhead each day, generating bright blue light in the morning and warmer amber light (which has been shown to encourage melatonin production and get us ready for sleep) in the evening.

This lamp even pairs with WiFi and uses machine learning to adjust the light to match your sleep schedule.

Have better mornings (and evenings) with Arduino

Arduino makes it possible to gain greater control over your environment and optimize your daily routine to be as healthy and productive as possible. The ideas shared in this article are just the start — with the right set of components and some basic knowledge there’s almost no limit to what you can do with home automation.

To find out more, visit our homepage or browse the Arduino Project Hub for inspiration!

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