In honour of #MagPiMonday, let there be light with these incredibly illuminating projects.

Lighting an LED may be a simple beginner project for Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi Pico coders, but that doesn’t make it any less cool. There’s so much you can do with an LED when it’s connected to a computer. Here are just some of the ways a Raspberry Pi project focussed on lights has wowed us.

PiHue

Automated lights

Control Phillips Hue-brand lights with this little Raspberry Pi hack, and take full control of the living room lighting.

magpi.cc/pihue

Sunrise Lamp

SAD no more

Waking up to natural sunlight is apparently a good thing for the body and, towards the end of the year, these kind of sunlamps become very welcome.

magpi.cc/sunlamp

Dinner klaxon

Teenage alert

Want to make sure the kids know to come down for dinner? This traffic light indicator and an alarm, controlled by a phone, will let them know.

magpi.cc/73

Raspberry Pi Beret

Stand clear, vehicle reversing

This fancy-looking beret has some very clever code that lets creator Sean control it from his smartphone, so people know when he’s turning left or right.

magpi.cc/picoberet

NeoPixel LED Mirror

You, simplified

Magic mirror? Nah. A mirror made up of giant pixels so that you get an abstract representation of yourself is where it’s at.

magpi.cc/ledmirror

Eye of Sauron

Spooky, scary

Keep an eye out for hobbits, elves, dwarves, and other fantasy creatures on Halloween with this roving ocular display.

magpi.cc/sauroneye

Temperature-controlled stairlights

Visual indicator

Lorraine Underwood’s smart stairs let you know how hot or cold it is outside before you even get to the front door.

magpi.cc/tempstairs

POV Display

Not a trick

This illusion uses a very similar process to film, showing you images quickly enough that it fools your eyes into thinking there’s movement. In this case, it’s an LED stick spinning really fast.

magpi.cc/povdisplay

Odyssey Lights

Blackpool illuminated

Lorraine is back again, this time trading in the stairs for giant interactive displays at the famous Blackpool Illuminations.

magpi.cc/odyssey

Cosplay vacuum

Ghostbusting with Luigi

Using a 3D-printed vacuum and some tactically inserted NeoPixels, you too can be Luigi this Halloween (or Comic Con).

magpi.cc/poltertutorial

The MagPi #130 out NOW!

You can grab the brand-new issue right now from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, including the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available at our online store which ships around the world. You can also get it via our app on Android or iOS.

You can also subscribe to the print version of The MagPi. Not only do we deliver it globally, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico W!

The free PDF will be available in three weeks time. Visit the issue page for more details.