Our dog’s nightlight

Last updated: February 13, 2025

My dog, Bailey, is mostly blind. She’s never been fully diagnosed as “blind,” but she’s run into walls full speed and whined at the foot of a lamp enough times to make us think, her vision’s probably not 20/20.

Her blindness makes finding the water bowl in the middle of the night a bit tricky. The bowl is right beside our bed, so she wakes up Wiff whenever she clacks around looking for it. As soon as she turns on her iPhone flashlight, Bails finds the bowl and starts drinking. It’s all well and cute, except it’d be better if Wiff didn’t have to wake up in the first place.

I decided to make a motion-activated nightlight setup.

I bought the Eve Motion for the motion sensor. It’s small, battery operated, and easily connects to my Apple Home, a requirement for my setup.

I bought a cheap low level plug-in LED and used a smart plug I had laying around.

Then I setup a Home automation so that, when the Eve Motion senses Bailey approaching the water bowl area, it turns on the smart plug, which powers the LED. Once it stops detecting motion, it waits for one minute and then turns off the smart plug. Also, the automation itself only runs from 2 hours after sunset to 30 minutes before sunrise.

One week in and this thing has already saved Wiff several middle-of-the-night wakeups. Money well spent.