IKEA hacks are always fun especially when they end up being on the geeky side.
Fortunately, now it is much easier to tap into your techie side, thanks to the smartphone revolution, since there is indeed an app for everything. The Spoka Night Lamp hack takes advantage of smartphone technology, as the idea here is to control the nightlight via an Android equipped smartphone (sorry iPhone users, maybe next time).
The light fixture has been equipped with an ATtiny2313 and an RS232 Bluetooth module, which ensures you get to further procrastinate, since turning on or off a lamp is such an arduous task! However, in all fairness, there is more to this hack than just turning it on/off via a smartphone.
The smartphone also acts like a dimmer and controller, as the hack lets one choose between the different colors and also dims the intensity. Not only this, but the hack also lets one customize the patterns of light to be displayed. The creative sorts can also synchronize their favorite tunes to the light patterns, which further ups the geek ante of the hack. The Spoka hack makes the lamp fun without sacrificing its functionality and even makes it more useful. The hack requires some basic DIY skills and thankfully it won’t burn a hole in the pocket. The SPÖKA light just costs $16.99 and can be purchased from IKEA from here. According to the IKEA website, it shines for around five hours on a fully charged battery and the light diodes have a life of approx. 50,000 hours.
DIY expert trandi (man behind this hack) first replaced the 8 pin IC with an ATtiny45 or 85 and fitted it with a 20pin ATtiny2313, which had a hardware serial. According to him, it was the programming of the Android smartphone that required the most expertise and tinkering around with the Android SDK was quite frustrating. However, once a connection was established, the rest of the hack was easy to achieve. The IKEA Spoka Lamp hack is another way to make use of that smartphone of yours. The hack looks straight out of a sci-fi flick and a fun project to try at home. Check out the video posted below to catch the lamp in all its dazzling glory and let us know if you tried it at home.
