The Pillow Pi is a device that allows users to get a better nights sleep by monitoring room conditions such as brightness and temperature. The core component of the Pillow Pi is the Rasberry Pi computer. The Pillow Pi was developed as an entry for PA Consulting's Raspberry Pi Competition.
A good nights sleep is vital as part of a healthy lifestyle. The PillowPi helps you to get to sleep quickly and comfortably
The PillowPi relies on input from electronic 'breadboards'. Learning how to set these up can better help you to understand how everyday appliances work
Setting up the PillowPi will require some basic programming. This can help you to think about things logically, and could even give you a new hobby
The PillowPi's code is standalone and the electronics require only a few GPIO pins, meaning that it should be easy to intergrate into your existing projects
Written in Python and hosted on GitHub, the PillowPi can be forked or customised by users. Users wanting to share their changes can submit a pull request
The Raspberry Pi runs on linux distributions (excluding Windows 10 for RPi 2). Using these will help you to understand how operating systems work
When you first boot up your Pi you will need to update it. You can do this by entering the following commands into the terminal:
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo apt-get update
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo rpi-update
To use the PillowPi you will need to download the code. To do this you should enter the following commands into the terminal. The commands will download and unzip the code to the current directory.
pi@raspberry:~$ wget http://github.com/sedders123/PillowPi/archive/master.zip
pi@raspberry:~$ unzip master.zip
To allow mp3 playback you will need to install the mpg321 drivers. Just enter the command below into the terminal and you'll be ready to go!
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo apt-get -y install mpg321
If you want to use USB speakers or headphones with the PillowPi you will need to edit a configuration file. To do this you will need to enter the following command into the terminal
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo apt-get -y install mpg321
Then look for the following line
options snd-usb-audio index=-2
To enable USB audio just comment out this line by prefixing it with a # as shown below
# options snd-usb-audio index=-2
Press Ctrl + O and then Enter ↵ to save your changes then Ctrl + X to quit. Restart the Pi and audio should now come out of the speakers
Setting up the web interface means that you can access information on sleeping conditions from any device that connects to the internet
To get started download apache2
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo apt-get install apache2
When the installation has finished enable cgi scripts with the following command
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo a2enmod cgi
Next you will need to edit your site file. Open it with the following command
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
Next you will need to edit your site file. Open it with the following command
pi@raspberry:~$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
Press Ctrl + O and then enter to save your changes then Ctrl + X to quit. Restart the Pi and audio should now come out of the speakers
To build your own PillowPi you will need the full instructions, including an electronic components guide, which can be found on our blog. If you have any issues or problems feel free to contact us with the links found in the contact section
Here is a video of an early version of the PillowPi in action
The PillowPi code was created by James Seden Smith and is 100% FREE under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0))
We hope you find the Pillow Pi useful
Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions.