[Question/Advice] Adaptive/Intelligent Lighting System - Planning and Parts

[superheromario]

Hi guys,

I think this is the first time I post here and I am not sure if it's the appropriate place to do so, so please guide me out if it isn't. Thank you.

I sort of have some spare time while waiting for my job application, and so I'm thinking of something to fill in my gap time cause I don't play games anymore.

I want to have a lighting control system in my room (which is about 10-12 metres square).

I am thinking of using the Pi 4 as the controlling board, with a number of sensors around my place. At first I thought of some proximity sensors, then I thought of IR, but then I had this problem where I thought that IR could easily be spoiled by other source of heat in the room. So for the time being I am not even sure which sort of sensor I should be using. Would love to hear form your advice.

Next thing I am thinking of using batteries with a simple and small board, for example what comes to my mind is a board from STM32, like the one I used in my school, that can communicate using Bluetooth for example. But I don't know if there's any other better option. Because if not using batteries then I need to route all the wires in my room, which is what I want to avoid.

About the idea, maybe you will ask why not just use an IR device available on the market, which if I look for, I could easily find one for about less than 40 euros. But there's problem with those things, they only detect movement, while in my plan, I want the light to be on even when I am idle. I have sort of an idea about how things work in my mind, though I haven't sketched anything. I want the room to be lit as long as I am awake, working (I will define exactly what that means later), and when I am about to sleep (for example when I lie down), the lights turn off.

About the lights, at first I thought of using simple transistors to control the electricity but there's couple of problems which I am not very confident on, I am not very good at Physics in the past, so I am not sure if it's okay to let AC flow through the transistor. That's for starters, and I am quite scared of letting the wires running and that there's a chance there's electricity leak somewhere (but I'll work that part out). I have a second thought where I might end up using LED's (or LED strips) for this, but I'm wondering if a bunch of LED's could provide the same amoung of illuminations as the light bulbs.

Well that should be all for now and by all means, thank you for reading the messy post. Wish you all a gread day/night ahead.
Love from Vitry.