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Controlling lights are a good place to start learning electronics. It’s simple and they have a visual effect that captures people attention. In addition, It’s Christmas time! So days are shorter and Christmas lights always give a warm sensation.
In this article I will explain how to connect lights into a Raspberry Pi and control them with voice commands.
I already had a Snips developer kit, so I just need to add two more components:
I had to cut the lights cable and insert then into the relay so that it can be turned on and off with the Raspberry Pi. The final assembly can be seen in the following image.
Once the lights and the relay are connected, one can can use a library like
nodejs OnOff to turn on and off the
relay.
The principle is to instanciate a Gpio object and turn it on and off by
writing a value 1 or 0 respectively.
In addition, I used the documentation examples of the library to create a
blinking function to make the relay blink. Here I present you the code of
the module that I used:
// relay.js
const Gpio = require('onoff').Gpio;
let LEDPin = new Gpio(12, 'out'); // declare GPIO12 an output
function blinking (blink_time = 2000) {
startValue = LEDPin.readSync()
// Toggle the state of the LED
const iv = setInterval(_ => LEDPin.writeSync(LEDPin.readSync() ^ 1), 500);
// Stop blinking the LED after blink_time
setTimeout(_ => {
clearInterval(iv); // Stop blinking
if (startValue == 1) {
console.log("Letting up", startValue)
LEDPin.writeSync(1)
} else {
LEDPin.writeSync(0)
}
}, blink_time);
}
function changeState (arg) {
console.log(arg)
LEDPin.writeSync(arg)
}
I wanted to have Christmas lights blinking from time to time and wish Merry Christmas 🎄, so I added a recurrent job that every hour:
Here you can find the function that I used but the complete code can be found here.
// index.js
const relay = require('./relay');
const job = new CronJob({
// At minute 0 past every hour from 9 through 21.”
cronTime: '00 9-21 * * *',
onTick: function () {
relay.blinking(5000);
let currentTime = new Date();
SnipsMopidy.speak(`Feliz navidad, son las ${currentTime.toTimeString().substring(0, 2).replace(/^0+/, '')}`);
},
timeZone: 'Europe/Paris'
});
job.start();
Take a look at the result, the device telling the hour and turning on the lights.
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video.
I wanted to be able to control lights using voice commands.
I achieved this using Snips. I created an intent lightsOn and lightsOff
with some query examples for each one. Then the voice assistant will recognize
when someone tells something like “Turn on the lights”.
After that, I updated my assistant code, so that it can handle the case when each intent is recognized. Take a look at the concerned code:
// ...
} else if (intentName === 'cristianpb:lightsOn') {
relay.changeState(1);
SnipsMopidy.speak(`On`);
} else if (intentName === 'cristianpb:lightsOff') {
relay.changeState(0);
SnipsMopidy.speak(`Off`);
// ...
Once again, the complete code can be found here.
The results is that I can turn on and off the lights by using the voice, as you can see in the following video.
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video.
This is a simple way to control lights using devices like a Raspberry Pi. In addition it’s relatively cheap, I spend less than 6 USD in the lights and the relay. It gives a nice technological addition to Christmas.
For this project I was still able to use Snips, but since they are now part of Sonos, they are going to close their console. Next time I will be probably using snowboy and mycroft.
I'm tired to search for my phone to put/change/stop music. Instead I use snips technology to control music using voice (radio, podcast, files)
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