[Limpkin] picked up a beautiful painting of Budda while in Bali because he thought it would react well with different colors of lighting. His overall goal was to create a picture frame with built-in LEDs. The major design specification for the project was to provide an indirect light source that would not shine in the viewers eyes. He got down to business designing a frame using SolidWorks for his modelling. The final design has a separate track from the paining with small dividers for each diode.
After about four hours on the CNC machine it was time to get down to soldering. [Limpkin] had 576 RGB LEDs on hand. He’s not looking to drive them individually, just to have independent control of each color. This makes the soldering a bit easier as there will be just three MOSFETs to drive each color. The final product looks great and can display any mix of colored light. Not bad for 50 hours of soldering.
i always wanted to do this to one of my picture frames. instead of using the usual cardboard or composite back i just cut a sheet of plexi to fit. give it a nice modern look, as if the picture is just floating there. total price for the project $20 to make a frame look like $100. not bad
Title could have been “LED there be light inside picture frames”