Set the Mood with a Gladys-Activated Romantic Mode

Modern smart home assistants can do a lot of things: turn your lights on, play some music, or even light your gas fireplace. Most people use these capabilities to make every day life just a little bit easier; nobody likes having to get out of bed just to switch the lights off. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t use your home assistant for something a little more fun!

Reddit user “oubord” decided to do just that, by using Gladys to turn on a “romantic mode.” This mode sets some mood lighting and turns on a romantic music playlist. If you’re not familiar with Gladys, it’s a smart assistant like Google Home or Amazon Echo, but it’s completely open source and runs on a Raspberry Pi.

In the interest of full disclosure, it appears that oubord works for the Gladys Project in some capacity. But, the project is still a fun one. The build consists of a Raspberry Pi running the Gladys software, and the romantic mode is triggered by pressing a Xiaomi Wireless Switch Button. When the button is pressed, it adjusts Phillips Hue lights, and begins playing music through a Sonos speaker.

While a project like this could really be done with any smart home or IoT (Internet of Things) system, it’s nice to see open source software like Gladys being used. If you want to build something like this yourself, it’s actually pretty affordable. The Xiaomi button will only set you back about $5, and the rest is just a Raspberry Pi, some WiFi-connected lights, and a connected speaker.