An Artsy And Functional LED Filament Lamp

Some projects end up being more objet d’art than objet d’utile, and we’re fine with that — hacks can be beautiful too. Some hacks manage both, though, like this study in silicon and gallium under glass that serves as a bright and beautiful desk lamp.

There’s no accounting for taste, of course, but we really like the way [commanderkull]’s LED filament lamp turned out, and it’s obvious that a fair amount of work went into it. Five COB filament strips were suspended from a lacy frame made of wire, which also supports the custom boost converter needed to raise the 12-volt input to the 60 volts needed by the filaments. The boost converter is based on the venerable 555 timer chip, which sits in the middle of the frame suspended by its splayed-out legs and support components. The wooden base sports a few big electrolytics and some hand-wound toroidal inductors, as well as the pot for adjusting the lamp’s brightness. The whole thing sits under a glass bell jar, which catches the light from the filaments and plays with it in a most appealing way.

There’s just something about that dead bug building technique that we love. We’ve seen it before — this potentially dangerous single-tube Nixie clock comes to mind — but we’d love to see it done more.

[via r/electronics]

14 thoughts on “An Artsy And Functional LED Filament Lamp

      1. It’s okay, just today I went to the ATM machine to pull out some cash because I found a dead switch on my LAN network (I almost forgot my PIN number!). Bust after installing it I found out it was just a loose VGA adaptor on my computer. Yeah I know what you are thinking who still uses VGA adaptors, well with the cost of RAM memory these days it’s tough to upgrade. I was hearing on NPR radio that the prices will still be too high for people to upgrade their CPU units through this year. In any case I’m going to go back to eating my KFC chicken.

          1. It’s like the drunk old man who couldn’t see: He forgot where he put his beer and picked up the wrong IPA!

            P.s. I was thinking there is only 8 acronyms… but then realized it was a last-letter-repetition trap people fall in usually. Some more:
            GPS System
            NAS Storage
            USB Bus
            OCD Disorder.
            etc…

        1. Hah, that’s magnificent. I didn’t get it for a second but I finally caught up.

          And I still got Dual Inline Package wrong. Whoooops. Last night involved a bit much drinking in lieu of sleeping, and there I place all the blame.

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