Overview
The kids light or Anthony RTC,is a small device used to turn on lights at different times to indicate important times to young children.
Theory Of Operation
An Arduino Nano is connected to an I2C RTC module. The RTC provides the current time. The EEProm in the Arduino Nano contains a series of start and end times as well as associated LED colors. Every second each stored time is checked. If the current time is between the start and end time the associated light turns on. The entire EEProm is not used as it is unnecessary, however a #define at the top of the AnthonyRTC sketch indicates how many times we can store. If the device runs out of available time slots it will flash red. There is currently no way to remove or replace an existing time slot. The Arduino Nano caches the start/end times in memory on bootup to reduce I/O operations. If a new time is added it is saved to the EEProm and the cache is refreshed.
Interfacing
The Anthony RTC uses a 16-byte serial interface to communicate with a PC for programming purposes. The included Visual Studio project is designed to provide a basic UI for configuring the device. If a programming action succeeds the LED will flash green, if it fails it will flash red.
Code
If you would like to build this project yourself the code is available on GitHub. The cost of the project is very inexpensive and requires only a DS3231 RTC module, an Arduino Nano and two LEDs.
I built the enclosure by building a box out of cardboard and inlaying Popsicle sticks as structural support. Then I used an empty fruit cup container with wax paper inside to make the light-up portion. Basically I made the enclosure out of garbage but its probably stronger than most plastic toys because of how it was built.
https://github.com/jonathan84clark/AnthonyRTC
I built the enclosure by building a box out of cardboard and inlaying Popsicle sticks as structural support. Then I used an empty fruit cup container with wax paper inside to make the light-up portion. Basically I made the enclosure out of garbage but its probably stronger than most plastic toys because of how it was built.
https://github.com/jonathan84clark/AnthonyRTC
Updated: 1/7/2020