How to Build a ‘Party Mode’ in Your Dorm Room

You may have seen the video at some point during your Internet career : A college kyd is standing in a normal-looking dormitory room. The person hits a button. The lights dim, the shades close, and bam !, the entire board turns into a rant. They hit the release again, turning off “ party mode ” and returning their room to a refuge of eruditeness and rest.

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It ’ sulfur Freshman Orientation Week at Lifehacker ! This workweek, we ’ rhenium covering ways to snap out of your summer haze and into an autumnal blitz of action, whether you ’ re actually heading to campus for the first time, getting your own kids quick for educate, or looking for ways to equitable be more generative in the classroom of life. so velcro up your Trapper Keepers, students. class is now in session. If you want to have a exchangeable frame-up in your dormitory room, you have a few options, ranging from “ easy modality ” to “ I better go find a CS major to help out with this one. ”

Making your dorm room ready for parties: the easy version

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Has three operating modes to allow it to give you whatever you need, has a built-in dehumidifier, and comes with a remote control control excessively. back when I was in college, I was excessively busy having fun and sing in an a cappella group to worry about things like “ writing code and hacking hardware. ” While I appreciated those with the skills to create some kind of automated party system in their dormitory rooms, the drill was an Everest I would never attempt to climb.
rather, I went with what I ’ megabyte dearly calling “ the cheap-ass route. ” By that, I mean I picked up fluorescent blacklight fixtures from the local plaza, a bunch of reference cords, and a world power undress. I placed the blacklights around my dormitory room—typically on acme of a ledge or furniture piece—and plugged them into my billow defender directly or daisy chained them in concert using the extension cords. ad

The goal goal ? I could flip the switch over on my exponent plunder and turn on all the “ cool ” lights in my room. My highlighters-soaking-in-bottles would look neat ; the Nine Inch Nails logo would glow on that huge poster I had ; my luddite friends would sit in wonder at my ability to set moods with the bare flick of a finger. In hindsight, this entire approach credibly branded me with a red D for Dork, but it seemed cool at the fourth dimension. Everything in college seemed aplomb at the time. ad

A more modern (and expensive) technique for dorm room parties

Since LED light up is much more mainstream than when I was in college, it ’ randomness easier to trick out your dormitory with cool lighting effects. And you have a roll of possibilities to pick from, based on your platform preferences and budget. For model, y ou can outfit your room with Philips Hue bulb, which will then allow you to create lighting setups that react to music and movies, set moods for parties, and even activate some neat color-changing effects using third-party apps ( or web apps ). ad

Hue international relations and security network ’ t the only game in town, though. You can besides pick up LIFX bulb or LED strips that let you build the same kind of dormitory room rock concerts, as seen below :

If you want fairly basic LED lighting that you can configure for different colors and gradually transition between a few preset themes, you can always grab a simple lightstrip with a remote control restrainer, like this Supernight kit. ( I use it to make my room ’ second window burn annoying colors during the holidays, because it ’ sulfur fun. ) String them along the circus tent of your dormitory room—you might need to add an extra deprive or two to cover everything—and you ’ ll have a pretty-looking party room without blowing a small luck on ache light bulb. ad

You can besides pair your bum LED strip lights with a sound restrainer, if you want your dormitory room ’ randomness lighting to react to your brassy, annoying party playlists. This will besides make it incredibly easy for your RA to figure out which room to bust.

The super-complicated “party button” dorm room

sol you want to build something like what these MIT kids have in this YouTube classical :

There are a few different techniques you can use to create this kind of a apparatus, but they ’ re probably going to involve a more complicate shape that uses a single-board calculator, like a Raspberry Pi, and a bit of code to makes pressing a “ party button ” trigger a bunch of other systems—lighting, automated blinds, music, daze machines, et cetera. ad

This kind of a setup international relations and security network ’ thymine going to be che ap, either. The materials in this “ Emergency Party Button ” tutorial cost its maker £437.22, or approximately $ 560. This one ? $ 634. Better hit up that work/study job a little harder your first quarter if you want to have a rockin ’ party room ready for the winter. I should besides note that your attempts at creating the ultimate automatize dormitory room for parties will credibly piss off your school, but the path to “ campus caption ” condition normally involves frustrating a few administrators.

As for the physical construction of your party room and software you ’ ll need to set up, there are a few useful guides you can turn to ( in summation to the ones I just linked to ) :
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