User Manual

Luscinia — User Manual

Welcome, and thank you for choosing Luscinia.

Luscinia is a gentle night light for children, paired with a free Android app that lets you shape the whole night — from a calm, colourful bedtime, through a dim "night clock" that quietly shows your child how much night is left, to a soft wake-up glow in the morning.

Everything runs locally over Bluetooth. There's no account to make, no Wi-Fi to set up, and nothing about your family ever leaves your phone.

1. What's in front of you

• The light — a 3D-printed figurine on a small base, with a ring of soft LEDs glowing up through it.
• A USB-C port on the base for power.
• The Luscinia app — free on Google Play, used to set colours, brightness and the nightly routine.

You only need the app when you want to change something. Once a routine is set, the light runs it every day on its own — the app can stay in a drawer.

2. What you'll need

• An Android phone or tablet with Bluetooth.
• A USB-C power supply — any standard 5 V phone charger and USB-C cable works. (The light has no battery; it stays plugged in.)

3. Plug it in

1. Connect the USB-C cable to the base and to a 5 V charger.
2. The light comes on. Before it has ever been set, it shows a slow red pulse — that's normal and simply means it doesn't yet know the time of day. Connecting with the app (next steps) sets the clock and clears it.

Pick a spot on a shelf or bedside table, indoors and dry, where the cable reaches a socket.

4. Install the app

1. On Google Play, search for Luscinia (by Bubobit) and install it.
2. Open the app. The first time, Android will ask permission to use Bluetooth — tap Allow. The app needs this to find and talk to your light, and nothing else.

A note for older phones: on Android 11 and earlier, Android itself required a "location" permission before any app was allowed to scan for Bluetooth devices. Luscinia never uses your location — it's declared "never for location" — but on those older phones you may see a location prompt. It's only there so Bluetooth scanning is allowed.

5. Connect to your light

1. Make sure the light is plugged in.
2. In the app, tap Connect.
3. The app scans for a few seconds and lists nearby lights — choose the one named NightLight….
4. The status chip at the top changes from Not connected → Connecting… → Connected (it turns blue when connected).

When you connect, the app automatically syncs the current time to the light, so its routine runs at the right moments. If the light is ever unplugged and loses track of time, just reconnect and it re-syncs.

To disconnect, tap Disconnect. The light keeps running its routine either way — the app connection is only needed for making changes.

6. The three modes

At the top of the home screen is a three-way switch:

7. On mode — a simple manual light

Switch to On when you just want a lamp right now. You get:

• Effect — choose Solid, Breathing, or Rainbow.
  • Solid — a steady colour.
  • Breathing — the light slowly swells and fades (see Section 9).
  • Rainbow — a gentle drift through colours.
• Colour — pick from the quick palette (warm white, cool white, red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, magenta) or tap into the full colour picker for any shade. (Hidden when Rainbow is selected, since Rainbow cycles its own colours.)
• Brightness — a slider from dim to full (0–100%).

8. Routine mode — the heart of Luscinia

This is what makes Luscinia more than a lamp. A routine runs your light automatically through four phases across the evening, night and morning. You set each phase's time, colour, brightness and effect once, and it repeats every day.

The home screen shows the current phase, when it ends, what's next, and a 24-hour timeline so you can see the whole day at a glance.

The four phases, in order:

Bedtime — wind-down

The early-evening "getting ready for sleep" light, from your set start time until Nighttime begins. Choose Rainbow, Solid, or Breathing, plus colour and brightness. A soft rainbow or a calm breathing glow here makes a nice "time to settle" signal.

Nighttime — the "light clock" ⭐

This is Luscinia's signature feature, and it's designed for exactly the question every child asks in the dark: "how much longer until morning?"

During Nighttime, the lit LEDs grow from 1 → 10 across the whole phase. At the start of the night, just one light is on. As the hours pass, more lights switch on, one by one, until by the end of the night all ten are glowing. A child can glance over half-asleep and see roughly how far through the night they are — one light means it's still very much night-time and they should keep sleeping; lots of lights means morning is close.

It's a clock a child can read without numbers.

Tips for Nighttime:

• Keep it dim and use a calm colour (a deep red or amber is restful and won't disturb sleep the way bright blue-white can). The colour and brightness you set apply to all the lit lights.
• You can add the Breathing effect here too, for a softly pulsing night glow.

Morning Fade — the gentle sunrise

At your chosen morning time, the light smoothly transitions from a start colour to an end colour over a set number of minutes (and from the Nighttime brightness up to the Wake brightness). It's a soft, gradual "the day is coming" sunrise rather than a sudden switch.

Tip: set the fade's end colour to match your Wake colour for a seamless hand-off — or pick something different if you like a little colour shift.

Wake — "you can get up now"

After the fade, the Wake light holds a clear, friendly colour (green is a popular "it's okay to get up" signal) at your chosen brightness, for as long as you set, before the light goes dark for the day. Optionally, you can use a separate morning colour that differs from the fade's destination.

Turning a phase off

Each phase has a Run this phase switch. Turn it off and the light simply stays dark during that window — the other phases keep their own times. Handy if, say, you don't want any Bedtime light, only the night clock.

More than one routine

You can keep up to 7 routines — for example a "Weeknights" routine and a different "Weekend" one. Each day of the week runs exactly one routine, so when you assign a day to a routine, it's automatically removed from any other. Routine names are just for you, stored on your phone (they're not sent to the light).

9. Sleep breathing — how it works, and the idea behind it

When you pick the Breathing effect, the light slowly expands and contracts — brightening as you breathe in, dimming as you breathe out — giving your child a single, calm thing to watch and breathe along with. The exhale is deliberately longer than the inhale, which is the part that helps the body relax.

You can set the pace in Advanced → Sleep breathing:

• Child (3:4) — 3 seconds in, 4 seconds out (the default; suits roughly ages 4–12).
• Adult (4:6) — 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out — the slower, calming 6-breaths-per-minute rhythm.

The idea behind it (honest version). Slow, paced breathing before bed is one of the better-studied simple ways to wind down: in research, people who did slow paced breathing before sleep tended to fall asleep faster and wake less, with measurable calming of the nervous system — and an external pacer (something to breathe with, like a slowly filling light) tends to work better than trying to pace yourself. A dim, slowly pulsing light also gives a child a gentle focus point in the dark without the harsh, sleep-disturbing brightness of a typical night light.

Luscinia's breathing light is designed around those ideas. It is not a medical device and isn't a treatment for any condition — think of it as a calm, research-inspired wind-down aid. The strongest evidence is for the slower ~6-breaths-per-minute (Adult) pace; the Child pace is a sensible adaptation to a child's faster, comfier breathing rate.

Further reading: Tsai et al., Psychophysiology (2015); Zaccaro et al., Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2018); presleep slow-breathing pilot, Scientific Reports (2020).

Breathing is available in Bedtime, Nighttime, and On mode.

10. Advanced settings

Open the gear icon to reach:

• Sleep breathing — the Child / Adult pace toggle above (applies everywhere breathing runs).
• Language — Luscinia speaks English, Dutch, French, German, and Spanish, or follow your phone's System default.
• Device clock — the time is synced automatically when you connect; Sync time now pushes it again manually if ever needed.
• Refresh settings — pulls the light's current settings back into the app on this phone (it doesn't change anything on the light).
• Debug → Override device time — for the curious: set a pretend time so you can watch each phase play out in seconds instead of waiting all night.

11. A bedtime setup to start from

Not sure where to begin? Try this and adjust to taste:

12. Troubleshooting

• The app can't find my light. Make sure it's plugged in and lit, that your phone's Bluetooth is on, and that you're within a few metres. Tap Connect to scan again.
• It won't connect / dropped out. Close and reopen the connection (Disconnect → Connect). Re-plugging the light also helps. Keep the phone reasonably close while changing settings.
• The clock seems wrong after I unplugged it. The light loses the time when it loses power. Just connect with the app (it re-syncs automatically), or use Sync time now in Advanced.
• The light is stuck on a slow red pulse. That means it hasn't been given the time yet — connect with the app to set the clock.
• A phase isn't lighting up. Check that the phase's Run this phase switch is on, and that today is assigned to this routine (each day runs exactly one routine).

13. Safety & care

• For indoor, dry use only. Keep away from water.
• Power with a standard 5 V USB-C charger. No batteries to change.
• Designed to be set up by an adult. It's a comforting light, not a medical device or a sleep treatment.
• Wipe gently with a dry or barely-damp cloth. Don't submerge it, and unplug before cleaning.

14. Your privacy, in one line

Luscinia talks to your light over Bluetooth only — no account, no internet, and no data about your family ever leaves your phone. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

Sweet dreams, from Bubobit.