Plant Light

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Idea Name:

Plant Light

Overview:

A basic timer and light combo that'll keep some plants alive in a room that has no windows facing the sun.

Concepts/Skills:

Real-time elapsed time measurement
Power management during idle times (unless I have it be powered by mains)
Could be made advanced enough to make smart decision in case some sun light does come in through window

Description:

I've got a bathroom in my house that has a window that faces north west which means it doesn't get much direct sunlight. There's a potted plant on a shelf and its dying because of lack of light. So I want to make a little device that'll shine some light on the situationn. In its most basic form, it'll just need a real-time circuit to wake up for a couple hours a day. I'll have to figure out power management, probably it will need power from the wall (rather than a battery). If I want to be more sophisticated, I'll add some intelligence to figure out how much light actually came in the window that day and adjust the amount of shining time. The device will be directly facing someone who's standing up using the toilet, so I might put a LCD display on there and have it detect when someone comes in (could be object detection, or PIR, or detect when the light in the room turns on) and then display some funny sayings. If I'm really crazy, I'll add a wireless hookup so I can add funny sayings through a web interface, but now we're getting expensive.