“I’m a big fan of RGB leds and Arduino, and after using them in several other projects, I decided to make a Wakeup Light for the bedroom of my two youngest children. Because my children are awake (waaaay too) early every morning, they are allowed to get up only if the Wakeup Lights are on. I used an RGB led strip, which I sticked behind my children’s bunk bed. The led strip is controlled by an Arduino Mega, which has enough pins and memory to control an LCD shield with buttons and an RTC (real time clock) as well. I 3D printed a nice enclosure for all the hardware and used thin cable trays to safely tuck away all the cables. The LCD shield displays the current time and the alarm time, if set. With the buttons on the LCD shield, I can set the current time, set the alarm, set the color of the led lights (an ‘animated’ rainbow effect or just one static color) and set the LCD’s backlight “always-on” or “auto-off after 10 seconds”. When the alarm goes off, the led strip slowly fades in with my (everyone’s?) daughter’s favorite color: pink!”