Upon arriving at my house for this year I found myself faced with a serious issue: the sofa covers were slightly dirty. After a lengthy adventure in IKEA (a place I’d never before visited and never plan to visit again) I returned home with pristine new sofa covers in hand. But there was a problem. You see, the new sofa covers matched the walls in colour… exactly. Now, some people might have given up, packed up and left, but not me. No.
10 meters of RGB LED strips, a few drops of solder and a number of burns to the kitchen table later and the sofas were transformed. With the sofa down-lighting allowing any of more colours than I could possibly imagine, the room was transformed from a dull white to something… Something completely different.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Jack, why would I ever want remote controllable RGB sofa lighting?”
Well, have you ever sat down and thought to yourself “You know, I wish my feet were just a bit more illuminated, maybe alternating between seven different colours”?
I know I have! And now that’s possible.
With the addition of a Raspberry Pi and some RF control (which I can’t take credit for) our sofas could be controlled over the internet, using bookmarklets. This opened up a whole world of new possibilities such as lighting up the stairs with a warm glow, or communicating with people outside our windows at night using Morse code.
