One wouldn’t expect there to be much to cause envy in the world of desk lamps, after all whether it’s a classic Anglepoise or a dollar store LED affair if it does its job of casting the requisite quantity of light where it’s needed, most of us are happy. But then we saw [Ronny Ziss]’s LED arc desk lamp, and suddenly all other lamps simply aren’t good enough any more. If it’s not a wall-to-wall arc of LEDs spanning the length of the desk, it quite simply no longer cuts the mustard. We’ve entered the world of lamp envy, folks, and it’s a poorly-illuminated place to be.
As you can see in the video below the break both the hardware and the software of this lamp are impressive in their own right, the structure being an aluminium extrusion carrying an addressable white LED strip fitted into an arc between two custom plywood blocks on the walls either side of the desk. The software is controlled through a rotary encoder, and allows command of the position, width, and brightness of the illuminated portion, as well as having a hidden Pong game. Sadly he doesn’t reveal the software or the microcontroller in question, however the task is not an onerous one and it’s likely most Hackaday readers could put it together using their board or processor of choice.
In years of lamp projects on Hackaday, we can’t find another quite like this one. Conventional lamp projects can still be stylish though.
“you don’t want a criminal lawyer… you want a criminal lawyer” :)
Nice even lighting across the whole desk YES!!!
The only problem would be the laptop screen that points up blinding you.
I love the asthetics – nice job!
Over-engineered? Not yet!
I’m missing CRI info (I would aim for >90 at least) and also include color temperature adjustments (human centered lighting)…
Please, PLEASE do NOT set videos as “Made for Kids” on YouTube, like this one is. It disables comments and the ability to save it to a playlist. That said, awesome project!
Unfortunately, the For Kids tag is forcibly applied to videos with kids IN them.
But only if there are four kids. Someone will fix that typo in the tagging algorithms eventually
Nice and looks cool… But it looks like something you would have to work around if you had shelves for example behind it on the wall, or just leaning over to pick up something near the back of the table. I would rather still have overhead main lighting, under shelf lighting tucked out of the way, and a movable desk lamp to direct more light on something I may be working on. BTW, I’ve recently replaced all of my old shop lights with LED versions. Much better illumination.
Perhaps it should be folding in that case, have the folding sections register to each other with magnets maybe, or even just go full removable sections.
Though I don’t think its any more in the way to the shelves behind a desk than the desk lamp(s) its replacing or the standard desk paraphernalia myself, and even light over the desk is pretty damn slick. I would have probably given it 10 degrees or so of rotation at the wall myself – just enough that those annoyingly shiny laptop/tablet screens or any mirrored components you are working on won’t catch you out (I’d also have a mode to add spots so you can steer more than one block of LEDs around putting the light exactly where you want it. And to be true to the over engineered description capacitive touch on the bar itself so you can run your finger along the bar to control the lighting)
Maybe have on a track. Button to move it up and out of the way. Once person sets down, button to bring back down to the just right position…. An added challenge to move horizontally as well :) .
…now add a morse stock ticker or something like that…
…modern Gomez style… \o/
The lowest point of the arc should be above one’s head outside of the person’s field of vision.
>Sadly he doesn’t reveal the software or the microcontroller in question
The microcontroller should never be of concern here as this is a light fixture hack. One can easily find address LED across OS and framework on the popular microcontrollers.
People (myself included) that like to do their own code on more obscured platforms wouldn’t care either.
nicely shines into your eyes, over engineered, but under designed
In years of lamp projects on Hackaday, we can’t find another quite like this one.
https://hackaday.com/2018/04/05/workbench-light-arch-on-the-cheap/
Yup, I had a similar thought: https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=arch+lamp&type=things&sort=relevant
What’s about an arc lamp arc?
Nice work. Blocking the full-opening of the window though, however i guess you just would remove the arc for the time of big draugh.