There’s something calming about looking up into the night sky and seeing an array of shining stars off in the distance. [Marou] is a big fan of stargazing, but sometimes conditions are not optimal, so he decided to bring the stars inside.
His idea was to build a ceiling lamp that didn’t bask the room with light, but rather one that reproduced the peaceful twinkle of the night sky. He covered a wooden table with dark fabric and drilled a ton of tiny holes into the surface. He fitted the holes in the table with two big bundles of optical fibers since one bundle couldn’t quite cover the entire thing.
To light the cables, he built a pair of 4-LED illuminators, which contain red, blue, green, and white LEDs. Each light source is controlled via an Arduino which takes its direction from [Marou’s] infrared remote.
While the idea isn’t new, the implementation is pretty cool. At first we were expecting a small lamp, but anchoring an entire table to the ceiling as a light panel is definitely something we hadn’t seen before.
If you want to build something similar in your own living room, [Marou’s] Arduino code is free for the taking.
All fiberoptics are wireless.. They are however not fiberless…
Wireless as in wirelessly controlled using IR:
“Each light source is controlled via an Arduino which takes its direction from [Marou’s] infrared remote.”
this beats my idea of making a prijector….congrats!
I believe I saw a commercial product for the same thing, however it involves drilling little holes in your ceiling…
This is a good way to not have to worry about too much permanent damage :)
Finally! :-)
The number of times I have seen projects on HaD and thought “Damn, I was thinking of doing that”. Finally I see something that not only have I done already, but might even have inspired this project. :-)
[ http://hackaday.com/2011/01/07/creating-art-from-an-old-christmas-tree/ ]
I like the idea of the colours and uC control. Is there a video of it floating around anywhere? Or more pictures?
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fiber-optic+Ceiling+Light&gl=US
Lots of people tried it, and there are ready-made packages with LED light and fiber bundle it seems.
In ceilings certainly, but I hadn’t seen anyone build stars into a picture frame before.
Yes, the video is online since yesterday on youtube: http://youtu.be/18O-rQUWHHw