CoronaLamps: DIY IOT Friendship Lamps as Alternative to Expensive Commercial Options

Sitting in my room on facetime with my best friend, thinking about what I should get her for her birthday, I do a quick search and find these “Best Friend Lamps;” Internet connected lights that turn on when the other person touches theirs. I instantly knew we had to have them together, but there was one problem: the cheapest set I could find was $200! This led me on my quest to create cheap and easy to make friendship lamps to let someone you care about know you’re thinking about them, and in the process get featured on the Instructables front page!

Check out the Instructable for more informatiohttps://www.instructables.com/CoronaLamps-Simple-Friendship-Lamps-Anyone-Can-Mak/n and a build guide!

Why CoronaLamps?
In the beginning of the pandemic, I was stuck inside, and didn’t have very many opportunities to interact with my best friend in person. I wanted something physical that you could touch and get a reaction out of whenever you were thinking of the other person, and this was the best way to do that.

The Design Process and Hardware:
The lamp is based around an ESP8266 WiFi compatible microcontroller, Neopixel LEDs, a capacitive touch sensor, and a 3D printed enclosure. The 3D printed enclosure was created in Fusion 360, and purposefully uses a 10% infill on the shell to create a cool hex pattern when the light shines through it.

My Solution to Lower The Cost:
One of the main reasons that commercial options are so expensive is that companies selling them have to rent server space and create a service that allows the two lights to communicate with each other without much setup from the end user. This requires setting up accounts and managing a lot of data, which can get expensive very quickly. To combat this, I decided to use the Adafruit IO service. Adafruit IO is a MQTT broker service for IOT projects and individuals. It allows you to have multiple devices communicate over the internet with no need of fiddling with the LAN network on each side. The basic version is free, and fortunately that’s all that is needed for these lights.

Detailed instructions and information on the project are available on the Instructable linked above, but here are some photos and videos from the design and production of this project!