lamp

128 Articles

Articulated Computer Lamp Lights Up Your Life

May 17, 2015 by 17 Comments

[Samimy] raided his parts bin to build this articulated lamp (YouTube link) for his computer workstation. Two pieces of aluminum angle form the main body of the lamp. Several brackets are used to form two hinges which allow the lamp to be positioned above [Samimy’s] monitor. The light in this case comes from a pair of 4 watt LED bulbs.

[Samimy] used double nuts on the moving parts to make sure nothing comes loose. The outer nuts are acorns, which ensure no one will get cut on an exposed bit of threaded rod. [Samimy] wired the two bulbs up in a proper parallel mains circuit. The switch is a simple toggle mounted in a piece of Plexiglass on the end of the lamp.

One thing we would like to see on this build is a ground wire. With all that exposed aluminum and steel, one loose connection or worn bit of insulation could make the entire lamp body live.

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Use A Lamp To See Into The Future

April 29, 2015 by 8 Comments

We’ve heard of magic lamps before, but this one is actually real. [Alex] has created a wall-mounted lamp that can tell you what the future will be like; at least as far as the weather is concerned. It is appropriately named “Project Aladdin” and allows you to tell a great deal about the weather at a glance as you walk out of the door.

The lamp consists of twelve LED strips arranged vertically. The bottom strip represents the current hour, and each strip above represents another hour in the future. The color of each strip indicates the temperature, and various animations of the LEDs within each strip indicate wind speed and precipitation.

The system uses a weather forecasting backend built-in Java, which is available on the project’s page. The LEDs are controlled by an application that is written in C, and the entire set of LEDs are enclosed in a translucent housing which gives it a very professional appearance. Be sure to check out the demo video after the break. Be sure to check out some other takes on weather lamps which use regular desk lamps instead of intricate scratch-made LED lamps.

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AlarmLamp

Prefix Your Phone Alarm With A Desk Lamp

February 7, 2015 by 11 Comments

If you are like [Gbola], then you have a hard time waking up during the winter months. Something about the fact that it’s still dark outside just makes it that much more difficult to get out of bed. [Gbola] decided to build his own solution to this problem, by gradually waking himself up with an electric light. He was able to do this using all off-the-shelf components and a bit of playing around with the Tasker Android application.

[Gbola] started out with a standard desk lamp. He replaced the light bulb with a larger bulb that simulates the color temperature of natural daylight. He then switched the lamp on and plugged it into a WeMo power switch module. A WeMo is a commercial product that attempts to make home automation accessible for consumers. This particular module allows [Gbola] to control the power to his desk lamp using his smart phone.

[Gbola] mentions that the official WeMo Android application is slow and includes no integration with Tasker. He instead decided to use the third-party WeMoWay application, which does include Tasker support. Tasker is a separate Android application that allows you to configure your device to perform a set task or series of tasks based on a context. For example you might turn your phone to silent mode when your GPS signal shows you are at work. WeMoWay allows [Gbola] to interact with his WeMo device based on any parameter he configures.

On top of all of that, [Gbola] also had to install three Tasker plugins. These were AutoAlarm, Taskkill, and WiFi Connect. He then got to work with Tasker. He configured a custom task to identify when the next alarm was configured on the phone. It then sets two custom variables, one for 20 minutes before the alarm (turn on the lamp) and one for 10 minutes after (turn it off).

[Gbola] then built a second task to actually control the lamp. This task first disconnects and reconnects to the WiFi network. [Gbola] found that the WeMoWay application is buggy and this “WiFi reset” helps to make it more reliable. It then kills the WeMoWay app and restarts it. Finally, it executes the command to toggle the state of the lamp. The project page has detailed instructions in case anyone wants to duplicate this. It seems like a relatively painless way to build your own solution for less than the cost of a specialized alarm clock lamp.

SuperBowlLamp

Super Bowl Football Lamp Keeps You Informed

February 4, 2015 by 7 Comments

[David] loves to watch football. After his preferred team lost the playoffs, he wanted another reason to watch the big game last Sunday. He ended up building himself a football-shaped lamp that changes color based on who scored last.

[David] started with a Spark Core and a Spark Button. The Spark is the primary microcontroller and includes WiFi. The Spark Button is essentially a shield for the Spark that includes an accelerometer, some LEDs, and a few push buttons. The other part of this build was the housing. [David] used a toy football he got for free as swag from a parade.

As for the code, [David] started by first learning how to control the LEDs on the Spark Button. Then he wrote his own touchdown function to illuminate the football a specific color. Since the Spark uses the REST API, [David] is able to trigger this function by simply visiting the URL of his Spark. This makes it very simple to trigger the event.

The final part of this build was made easy thanks to IfThisThenThat (IFTTT). This is a web service that allows you to monitor and interact with various online web services. It can monitor one service, and then interact with another based on events that happen in the first service. In this case, [David] is using a “channel” added to IFTTT by ESPN. This channel can trigger when certain events happen for whatever team you specify. For this project [David] is monitoring touchdowns.

After combining all of these various services, [David] had a working light that would change colors based on which team scored. He did notice that IFTTT has anywhere between a 1 and 15 minute delay, and he hopes to improve upon this design by hooking directly to an API and skipping the extra service altogether.

Bisected Engine Makes Cute Lamp – Still Cranks

December 31, 2014 by 22 Comments

As a beginner’s step towards the famous Top Gear V8 coffee table, [English Tea] converted a small single cylinder engine into a desk lamp that uses the mechanical actuation of the piston to turn on and off. No able-bodied engines were harmed in the making of this hack as this one was already a corpse — perfect for [Mr. Tea] to prop up and display in his home.

Regrettably lacking a lightsaber, he settled for 30 minutes on a hacksaw to split the cylinder followed by some sandblasting to clean all the rust, paint, and gunk off all the internals. Once it was clean he repainted it himself. Between paint and clearcoats, he figured he added 20 layers onto the metal.

Next he created some wood sections and wet-formed leather over them which he later dyed black. Caring less about a new Walmart lamp than the motor, he vivisected it for its electrical components and wired it up.

Without a crank on the shaft it looks a bit awkward to twist the lamp on or off, but, only enough pressure is needed to poke a latching momentary pushbutton and it seems to work just fine. For any readers looking to make their own, dead compressors and gas power tools are fairly common and nearly free at the junkyard. Engine-based projects can be intimidating to start if you need a working engine again at the end. Becoming familiar with them on a project like this where you are mostly only using the engine as a building material is an easy way to get your foot in the door.

See the video after the break of the piston bumping the light on and off.

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WiFi Lamp Challenge – 5 Hour Speedrun

December 24, 2014 by 9 Comments

“We want to get this done quick, not right.”

[CNLohr]’s favorite desk lamp broke, so he gave himself a challenge: convert the lamp to LED and control it via WiFi within 5 hours, from scratch. He video recorded and narrated the whole process and did a nice job of explaining the tricky parts and failures along the way, fast forwarding us through the slow parts.

Some bits and pieces were simple and obvious: gut the old bulb, wire some LEDs, add a few power resistors, toss in a power supply from “like a monitor or something, don’t care” for the LEDs, add in what looks like an LM2596 adjustable power supply for the logic, some kind of ATMega, that new ESP8266 (Wi07C), splice on a power cord, etc. Standard stuff.

To our readers who’s hacks tend to start with soldering irons and screwdrivers, the video shows harder parts of designing an electronics project: creating the PCB in software (he used KiCad), lithographically transferring the circuit to a PCB, bismuth solderpasting & populating the board, and writing and documenting his code on Github. Perhaps most reassuringly, he also showed the consequences of every greedy shortcut and the process of troubleshooting around them.

If you have ever tried to follow a recipe from a cooking show and noticed how easy it all seems when everything is measured and prepped beforehand – and then what a disaster it is when you try it – the same is revealed here. Overall, it is a very thorough demonstration of what it actually takes to design a project – not just perfect circuits and perfect steps to follow.

In the end he got it done in the nick of time an hour late because he cannot add. Close enough.

Thanks [gokkor] for the tip.

Desk lamp

Sleek Desk Lamp Changes Colors Based On Sun Position

December 13, 2014 by 9 Comments

[Connor] was working on a project for his college manufacturing class when he came up with the idea for this sleek desk lamp. As a college student, he’s not fond of having his papers glowing brightly in front of him at night. This lamp takes care of the problem by adjusting the color temperature based on the position of the sun. It also contains a capacitive touch sensor to adjust the brightness without the need for buttons with moving parts.

The base is made from two sheets of aluminum and a bar of aluminum. These were cut and milled to the final shape. [Connor] found a nice DC barrel jack from Jameco that fits nicely with this design. The head of the lamp was made from another piece of aluminum bar stock. All of the aluminum pieces are held together with brass screws.

A slot was milled out of the bottom of the head-piece to make room for an LED strip and a piece of 1/8″ acrylic. This piece of acrylic acts as a light diffuser.  Another piece of acrylic was cut and added to the bottom of the base of the lamp. This makes for a nice glowing outline around the bottom that gives it an almost futuristic look.

The capacitive touch sensor is a pretty simple circuit. [Connor] used the Arduino capacitive touch sensor library to make his life a bit easier. The electronic circuit really only requires a single resistor between two Arduino pins. One of the pins is also attached to the aluminum body of the lamp. Now simply touching the lamp body allows [Connor] to adjust the brightness of the lamp.

[Connor] ended up using an Electric Imp to track the sun. The Imp uses the wunderground API to connect to the weather site and track the sun’s location. In the earlier parts of the day, the LED colors are cooler and have more blues. In the evening when the sun is setting or has already set, the lights turn more red and warm. This is easier on the eyes when you are hunched over your desk studying for your next exam. The end result is not only functional, but also looks like something you might find at that fancy gadget store in your local shopping mall.