Animated Pixel Lamp Is A Must For Any Chiptuner’s Bedroom

Lamps are quite often simple things, designed to light an area and perhaps add a touch of style to a room. Of course, it’s 2019 now, and we don’t need to settle for just that. We can have wildly colored animated lamps if we want to! (French Youtube link, embedded below.)

The lamp in question is the work of [Heliox], who knows her way around an LED or two (hundred). In this build, a string of WS2812 addressable RGB LEDs are hooked up to an Arduino Mega brain. The LEDs are fitted into a round lamp body, with a rectangular diffuser for each one. This creates an attractive pixellated effect and gives the animations a charming 8-bit quality. A thin outer shell is 3D printed in white plastic to further diffuse the light. The top of the lamp rotates an internal potentiometer to control mode selection. There’s also a brightness knob on the bottom if things get a touch too intense.

It’s a tidy build that uses 3D printing and addressable LEDs to quickly and easily create a lamp with a fun retro aesthetic. We could imagine this making a great piece for a hip sitcom apartment. We fully expect to see similar lamps on sale in the next couple of years. Video after the break.

5 thoughts on “Animated Pixel Lamp Is A Must For Any Chiptuner’s Bedroom

  1. Nice project. The video is spoken in French, while pleasant to listen to, I cannot understand much.
    I turned on the auto-translation closed-captions and that helped a bit but also translated some parts quite incorrectly.

    What about printing a little notch and tab on the circular pieces so that they lock in and line up perfectly?

    Can anyone think of an easier way of connecting the LED strips together than soldering 6 wires onto each one?

    1. Technically, its really 3 wires between each pair. I’ve used IDE ribbon cable from the junk drawer in the past, worked pretty good. Just slice 3 wires off at a time and solder them between the pairs.

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