Blinky

Total: 18 Hrs

07/19/25: 1 Hour, Thought about hardware projects that would actually benefit my everyday life all day and realized as I was in bed, that I wished I could turn off my favourite desk lamp remotely. I then realized I had a voice active USB LED that I dont use. I realized that this must be my project.

7/21/25 3 Hours, Researching how I can do this, what parts will I need, if I can do this with my Pico. Found that I can use a MOSFET transistor (IRF3708) connecting to the negative wire of the lamp.

7/24/25 6 Hours, I spent time drawing up a wiring diagram with my components and rethinking the logic I would use. I originally thought that I can solder directly from my LED to Pico to read if the LED is on, but I tested it with my multimeter I bought for this project and it seems that the LED pins on the USB Voice Module don't have enough of a drop in voltage to register on the Pico, so I'll need to revise my wiring.

7/28/25 8 Hours, Thought about how to get around the problem and realized I could use a more robust system, using a photo resistor instead. The photo resistor will read if the LED is on or off. I updated my diagram for this change and wrote the micro python code that I'll run on my Pico. I also designed a sleeve to hold my photo resistor to the LED on fusion 360. ALso made full circuit assembly in fusion.