[Philippe Chrétien’s] project makes it to our front page just based on its completeness. When you hear about a multicolored lamp which changes based on an RFID tag you might not get too excited. When you look at the refined electronics and the quality of the wooden enclosure it’s another story entirely.
As we’ve said many times before, coming up with the idea for a project is the hardest part… especially when you just want to start hacking. With his kids in mind [Philippe] figured this would be something fun for them to play around with, opening the door to discussing the electronics concepts behind it.
He prototyped on a breadboard using three N-type MOSFETs to drive the colors of an RGB LED strip. The proven circuit was laid out and etched at home to arrive at the clean-looking Arduino shield shown off above. The entire thing gets a custom enclosure cut using layered plywood, a paper template, and a bandsaw.
Need a use for this once the novelty has worn off? Why not mod it to use as a motion activated night light? Alas the actual project link for that one is dead, but you get the idea.
Nicely done, but wouldn’t it be cheaper, easier, simpler and more versitile if you used a colour sensor? It appears to be matching to the colour of the tags anyway, and you could then just use a few discs of acrylic instead. Also, you could put anything over the colour sensor, and have it match it.
Yep… it would be if it was only a matter of matching colors but I have also added some features like sound and stroboscope effect that can be triggered by different sequences of disks.
Red-Green-Black = Strobe
White-White-White turns sounds on
Black-Black-Black turns sound off
… you get the point. :)
I could actually use both … so the kids could put their stuffed animals on the lamp to set the color.
Thanks for your comment
Phil
Here’s a functioning link to the older motion detecting project
http://krazatchu.ca/2012/05/13/mday-low-power-motion-sensor-arduino-night-light/
“As we’ve said many times before, coming up with the idea for a project is the hardest part” – I totally disagree. The idea is the easy bit, actually making it work and finishing it after the initial energy has worn off is the hard part.
I agree with you Matthew! The idea is the easy part … Making it work is an extra 25% work … Finishing the project so it can be used, displayed and shared is the hard part!