Playroom ACTIVATED!!

Well as you know from all the sneak peeks you've seen, this has been a huge project in a tiny space!!

The physical build was about half the work, but the software/electronics side is where I've had just as much fun!!

I'll need to do a mini-video or a web guide on some of these components as it's hard to illustrate quite how much is packed in.

So whilst the video shows a single button for 'Gaming' or 'Steam':

Behind the scenes, what this actually does is:
- turn the TV on
- change to the right HDMI port
- send a wake on LAN to the steam PC (or use a smart plug on the Switch to switch it off an on again as Nintendo are silly with their smart tech!)
- adjusts 8 different sets of lights to the right level, colour and effects
- maps them to react to the sounds of the speakers
- connects all the speakers in a surround group
- and closes the blinds

If you think about the reality if you DIDN'T have this, you basically couldn't be bothered to do this every time you want to play a game, so you end up just sitting with the sun reflecting off the screen, the sound not quite tuned, wandering around the room pressing buttons and cursing about which hdmi port is correct.

And that's obviously just one button! I'm so pleased with this as it also means I can easily extend any features and I NEVER HAVE TO OPEN A DOZEN SILLY APPS....

And then the kids 'behavioural system' is a world in itself - again letting me add controls across the room, reward habits I want to build.

What's great about this is it's naturally not just confined to the tablet, I can display on the screen in the hall, on any PC or device across the house.

I've also started musing about creating variable rewards - eg their 100 points could get them 30 mins on the switch or 1 hour of table tennis with me! I can let them 'buy' other things - again books can be 'subsidised' vs computer games or whatever I think is healthy for them!

Anyway - I just wanted to give you all a bit more behind the scenes detail, if only so when you see me 'clicking a button' in the video, you can see all the thinking that goes behind it!

Hope you enjoy the video!