Increasing The Brightness Of A Philips LivingColors Lamp

June 12, 2015 by Rick Osgood 6 Comments

[Martin] recently purchased a Philips LivingColors lamp. It’s a commercial product that basically acts as mood lighting with the ability to change to many different colors. [Martin] was disappointed with the brightness of his off-the-shelf lamp. Rather than spend a few hundred dollars to purchase more lamps, he decided to modify the one he already had.

[Martin] started by removing the front cover of his lamp. He found that there were four bright LEDs inside. Two red, one green, and one blue. [Martin] soldered one wire to the driver of each LED. These wires then connected to four different N-channel MOSFET transistors on a piece of protoboard.

After hooking up his RIGOL oscilloscope, [Martin] was able to see that each LED was driven with a pulse width modulated signal. All he had to do was connect a simple non-addressable RGB LED strip and a power source to his new driver board. Now the lamp can control the LED strip along with the internal LEDs. This greatly extends the brightness of the lamp with minimal modifications to the commercial product. Be sure to check out the video below for a complete walk through. Continue reading “Increasing The Brightness Of A Philips LivingColors Lamp” →

Adding A Backlight To A Cheap Multimeter

June 11, 2015 by Rick Osgood 15 Comments

We don’t all need super high quality electronic testing gear. Sometimes second-hand or inexpensive equipment is accurate enough to get the job done. Though it can be a bit annoying to miss out on some of those “luxury” features. [Ekriirke] had this problem with his cheap multimeter. He wished the LCD screen had a backlight for easier visibility, so rather than upgrade to a more expensive unit he just added one himself.

After opening up the multimeter [Ekriirke] found that it ran on a single 12V battery. He realized that the simplest thing to do would be to wire up four white LEDs in series. The four LEDs were arranged within the case off to each side of the LCD, one in each corner. The leads were bent at 90 degree angles and soldered together “dead bug” style. Thin strips of copper foil tape were attached to the PCB in such a way that the anode and cathode from the LEDs would make contact when the case was closed back up.

The tape wraps around to the other side of the PCB where there was more room for the next piece of the circuit. A capacitor, resistor, and transistor are used in conjunction with a momentary switch. This circuit allows [Ekriirke] to turn on the light for about ten seconds by pressing the button one time. The circuit also runs through the meter’s dial switch, preventing the LEDs from being turned on while the meter itself is turned off.

[via Reddit]

DNA Lamp Adds Some Science To Your Room

June 10, 2015 by James Hobson 17 Comments

Lava lamps had their time, but that time is over. Perhaps a spinning, glowing, DNA helix style lamp will take their place?

Inspired by the ever mesmerizing DNA helix, a member of the eLab hackerspace decided to try making it into a lamp. It’s almost entirely 3D printed, with the helix made out of glow in the dark filament. A series of UV LEDs fade in and out as a small geared motor from a microwave turntable spin the helix round and around.

[João Duarte] designed the assembly using TinkerCAD and has shared all the files on the Instructable in case you want to make one yourself. It is a lot of printing though, so you might want to recruit your own hackerspace’s 3D printer to do some of the work. He ended up using his own Prusa i3 as well as the LulzBot TAZ4 from the space to speed things up.

Continue reading “DNA Lamp Adds Some Science To Your Room” →

LED Sign Brightens Up The Beach After Dark

June 6, 2015 by Rick Osgood 3 Comments

[Warrior_Rocker’s] family bought a fancy new sign for their beach house. The sign has the word “BEACH” spelled vertically. It originally came with blue LEDs to light up each letter. The problem was that the LEDs had a narrow beam that would blind people on the other side of the room. Also, there was no way to change the color of the LEDs, which would increase the fun factor. That’s why [Warrior] decided to upgrade the sign with multi-colored LEDs.

After removing the cardboard backing of the sign, [Warrior] removed the original LEDs by gently tapping on a stick with a hammer. He decided to use WS2811 LED pixels to replace the original LEDs. These pixel modules support multiple colors and are individually addressable. This would allow for a wide variety of colors and animations. The pixels came covered in a weatherproof resin material. [Warrior] baked the resin with a heat gun until it became brittle. He was then able to remove it entirely using some pliers and a utility knife. Finally, the pixels were held in place with some hot glue.

Rather then build a remote control from scratch, [Warrior] found a compatible RF remote under ten dollars. The LED controller was removed from its housing and soldered to the string of LEDs. It was then hot glued to a piece of cardboard and placed into the sign’s original battery compartment. Check out the video below for a demonstration. Continue reading “LED Sign Brightens Up The Beach After Dark” →

ShakeIt – An Interactive Light Game

June 3, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 7 Comments

Learning becomes interesting when you make it fun, interactive and entertaining. [Arkadi] built ShakeIt – an interactive game for the Mini MakerFaire in Jerusalem to demonstrate to kids and grownups how light colors are mixed. It is a follow up to his earlier project – Smart juggling balls which we featured earlier.

The juggling balls consist of a 6 dof sensor (MPU 6050), a micro controller, transmitter (NRF24L01+), some addressable RGB LED’s and a LiPo battery. An external magnet activates a reed switch inside the balls and triggers them in to action. The ShakeIt light fixture consists of an Arduino Nano clone, NRF24L01+ with SMA Antenna, buck converter, 74 addressable RGB LED’s, and a bluetooth module. The bluetooth module connects to a smartphone app.

[Arkadi] starts out by handing three juggling balls, each with a predefined color (Red, Green, Blue). When the ball is shaken, the light inside the ball becomes stronger. The ShakeIt light fixture is used as a mixer. It communicates with the balls and receives the value of how strong the light inside each of the smart balls is, mixing them up, and generating the mixed color.

The fun starts when the interactive game mode is enabled. Instead of just mixing the light, the Light fixture generates patterns based on how strong the balls are shaken. At first the light fixture shows all three colors filling up the central ball. The three contenders then fight out to get their color to fill up the sphere completely until only one color remains and the winner is declared.

The kids might be learning some color theory here, but it seems the adults are having a “ball” playing the crazy game. If you’d like to build your own shoulder dislocating ShakeIt game, head over to [Arkadi]’s github repository for the ShakeIt and the Juggling Balls. Check the video below to see the adults having fun.

Continue reading “ShakeIt – An Interactive Light Game” →

Absolute Overkill IKEA Lampan Lamp Hack

May 24, 2015 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

Sometimes too much overkill isn’t enough. [Jesus Echavarria] hacked an IKEA Lampan light for his daughter to add color LEDs, a timer, Bluetooth control over the hue, and a local override knob. The result: a $5 lamp with at least $50 of added awesomeness. Let’s have a look at the latter.

The whole lamp system is based around a PIC microcontroller and WS2811 LEDs for the color light show. Since the lamp was already built to run a 40W lightbulb, and [Jesus] wanted to retain that functionality, he added an SSR to the build. Yeah, it’s rated for 5,000W, but it’s what he had on hand.

Next comes the low-voltage power supply. [Jesus] needed 5V for the PIC, and used the guts from a cheap USB charger as a quick and dirty 5V converter — a nice hack. To power the HC-05 Bluetooth module, which requires 3.3V, he wired up a low-dropout voltage regulator to the 5V line. A level-converter IC (74LVC07) gets the logic voltage levels straight between the two.

A fuse for the high-voltage power line, screw-terminal connectors all around, and a potentiometer for manual override round out the hardware build.

On the software side, [Jesus] set up the knob to turn on and off the built-in lamp as well as control the colors of the LED ring. That’s a nice touch for when his daughter wants to change the lamp’s color, but doesn’t want to go find her cellphone. But when she does, the SPP Pro app sets the colors by sending pre-programmed serial commands over Bluetooth to the PIC in the lamp.

All in all, a nice build, well-documented, and with enough rough edges that none of you out there can say it’s not a hack. Nice job [Jesus]! We can’t wait to see what he does next… robot lamp anyone?

Build A 100W LED Flashlight

May 21, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 58 Comments

In case you’re not aware, you can hop on your favorite online Chinese electronics retailer and buy a hundred Watt LED module for less than $10 USD. That’s an enormous amount of retina-burning fun, but how do you turn it into a flashlight? DIY Perks shows you how.

The main issue when dealing with these large LED modules is heat. Even though there’s many times more efficient than incandescent bulbs per Watt, that’s still an incredible amount of heat that needs to be removed. There’s a piece of equipment you might have sitting around that does just that: the lowly CPU cooler.

If the CPU heatsink and fan are big enough, the LED module can be attached right to the bottom. With a DC to DC boost converter modified so the entire flashlight can be powered from a LiPo cell, this unit is completely portable, ready to take camping, or even for some very interesting videography.

Continue reading “Build A 100W LED Flashlight” →