Innovation: when your antique furniture needs a firmware
I have been working with a good friend at Lakatos Antique on their beautiful antique style secretaries. Not so much on the carpentering bit, but rather on the innovation part: programmable LED lights, IR sensors, touch sensors, inductive charging and alike.
The Klimt Secretaire debuted last September has a 60 pixel, RGBW NeoPixel LED strip, controlled by an ESP8266 micro-controller, using a SHARP IR proximity sensor as the light switch.
The ESP8266 is easy-to-use with the Arduino IDE. Adafruit did a very good job with the NeoPixels, they are very easy to wire and control. The SHARP proximity sensor, on the other hand, was a pain in the ass.
Initially we wanted to turn the lights on/off when the hand of the user is at a certain distance to the sensor. However, the proximity readings were wildly inaccurate, so we ended up using a time based measurement with a 2 seconds threshold, regardless of the distance.
We open-sourced the Klimt firmware, and will be doing the same with future ones as well.
As these controllers are Wi-Fi enabled, the next step could be to make mobile apps to control these features and enable firmware updates over-the-air.
The next piece will have a hidden touch sensor for a light switch, and we are already looking into inductive charging compartments for phones and smart watches.
Learn more are at Lakatos Antique.
