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Create a simple do not disturb light for your home office using an Arduino

Working from home can be a challenging, especially when other family members or house mates are around! Here's a simple project using an Arduino that will be a visual aid to tell others you're on the phone.

Parts list

Qty Product Part number
1 Arduino Uno DIP V3 Arduino Starter Kit K000007 7617355
1 Breadboard Prototyping Board 80 x 60 x 10mm 1029147
1 MIKROE-513, 10 piece Breadboard Jumper Wire Kit 7916463
1 RS PRO, 9.6W Plug In Power Supply 3 to 12 V dc, 700 → 1600mA, Level V Efficiency, 1 Output Switched Mode Power 0148963

Arduino is a great inexpensive platform for learning to code and build simple hardware projects. Along with Raspberry Pi all makers should have an Arduino in their drawer, ready for when a hack can help you solve a problem.

I've been tinkering with Raspberry Pi's for years, but have never really done much with Arduino. Both are very versatile platforms, great for makers and for kids and adults to learn coding and an introduction into electroinics. The choice of these boards generally depends on what you want to build, or in some cases you may use both in the same project.

With most of the world in lockdown due to he Covid 19 pandemic, many of us are working and schooling our kids from home, both of which pose their own challenges. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and get my kids to help me build a "Do Not Disturb Light" for my office door for when i'm on the phone or in a video call.

Using the Arduino Starter Kit as a base for the project, in the spirit of "hacking" my kids helped me find bits from around the house to use in the project. I then got them building the circuit and typing in the code into the Arduino IDE.

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The "Do Not Disturb Light" was inspired from the "Arduino Space Interface" example project. It was a fun project to build and for my project, had some real practical application. The Arduino starter kit is an excellent crash course in getting started with Arduino, it starts with the basics and then steps you through 10 great projects that take you on your learning journey.

So if you're stuck for things to do and want to learn something new, or teach others about software and hardware, the Arduino Starter kit is a great product. Arduino is an open source platform, it has a huge community with 1000's of projects that have been shared that you can build or get inspiration from. It's not only popular with makers, but is also used by proffesional engineers for rapid prototyping or part of circuit design.

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More projects from Arduino's offical site.

DesignSpark Team Geek Dad, Blogger, Gadget Junkie, Technology Evangelist. DesignSpark Team. twitter - @petenwood
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