Smartifying LED Shop Lights with Voice Recognition

Good, bright lighting is an absolute must for a workshop and any extra time spent in a dimly lit garage is going to be less pleasant than it should be. But lighting used to be pretty expensive, so many builders would skimp on the lighting. After all, most people only use their garages to store the Christmas decorations and bicycles they never ride. But as a maker, LeMaster Tech needed something better and so he upgraded his garage workshop with efficient LED lighting controlled by voice commands.

Like many others around the world, LeMaster Tech’s garage’s only illumination came from the lights built into the garage door opener. He is on a quest to turn the garage into a respectable shop and that lighting wouldn’t do. After coating the floor in epoxy and the walls in chic black paint, he installed several LED tubes lights on the ceiling. Those are a similar shape to fluorescent tubes, but they emit much more light per watt, don’t require pricey ballasts, and tend to last much longer.

LeMaster Tech could have wired those lights directly to the mains AC power through a regular switch, but instead chose to smartify the setup with voice control. To achieve that, he paired an Arduino Uno R3 development board with a relay board. Each LED tube’s neutral wire goes through a relay on that board, so the Arduino can switch power to each tube individually. Power for the Arduino comes from the relay board and the relay board gets its power from a 12V DC power supply connected to the same mains power as the LED tubes.

The final step was to make the Arduino respond to voice commands. That would be really hard for the Arduino Uno to do on its own, so LeMaster Tech turned to dedicated hardware: the DFRobot Gravity Language Learning Voice Recognition Sensor. That can understand 121 built-in words right out of the box, as well as learn up to 17 custom words chosen by the user.

Now LeMaster Tech can simply say “hey Gary, light ___ [one, two, four, etc.] on” and that LED tube will activate. He can also activate other functions, such as an animated pattern when he says “light cycle” if he’s feeling feisty.