Alarm clocks are harsh. Or so my roommates tell me.
When I lived in California, I found that the sun, which would reliably rise every morning, invariably got me up long before my alarm went off. In New England, sunlight is a limited commodity.
[picture] See you in the morning.
At the moment, I am controlling the LEDs' brightness and color temperature with an off-the-shelf Bluetooth LED controller module. Programming the system to turn on in the morning, and to gradually increase in color temperature (from redish to blueish white) is cumbersome. Still, I am quite pleased with the brightness and arrangement of the 140 LEDs.
I am currently in the process of implementing a custom PWM controller for the two channels of LEDs. I plan to base the system on a ATmega32U4 running an Arduino Uno bootloader, a Nordic Semiconductor nRF9001 Bluetooth LE module, and a yet-to-be chosen RTC module. After that's up and running, I'll write an Android App to make it work.
On the mechanical side, I'd like to replace the PVC pipes that hold the system upright with wooden base. I'll also put it on wheels so that I can slide it out of the way to vacuum. Additionally, a 10mm LED at the end of some Lockline will make a great reading light!