| LaLamp | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Participants | Melan |
| Skills | Soldering, Programming |
| Status | Active as fuck |
| Niche | Artsy stuff |
| Purpose | Tool |
| Tool | No |
| Location | |
| Cost | |
| Tool category | |
LaLamp.jpg {{#if:No | [[Tool Owner::{{{ProjectParticipants}}} | }} {{#if:No | [[Tool Cost::{{{Cost}}} | }}
What
My drawer used to be located near the 3D printers, which was a pretty dark corner making it harder to look in my drawer. My first attempt to circumvent this was to place a led light on top of the drawer, but that was more cumbersome. However, user:buzz came with the genius idea of just putting lights in the drawer it self. So I decide to make this idea an reality.
My first idea was to make it battery operated, I managed to make an Arduino Pro Micro go into sleep mode using only a few Milli-amps, power usage was even more reduced after I had a mosfet take away power to the entire led strip (they are addressable leds, meaning they all have a tiny MCU in them that still draws power).
However, eventually I decided against the idea of making it battery powered because the ledstrip at max brightness would pull about 1.8A, which I wasn't really comfortable with using batteries for. In the end I settled for a Arduino nano clone.
(La = Drawer, lamp = light)
However, in July 2023 I decided to update the controller with a esp8266 running esphome! This allows remote uploading the code as well as extra sound effects when opening and closing the drawer!
Power
The whole thing is running of a 5V 2A wall-wart, when the lights are off the whole she-bang draws about 40mV.
Mechanics
The mechanics of detecting if the drawer is open or closed is pretty damn simple, it uses a reed switch at the back of the drawer and a magnet against the back of the closet (Thanks for the idea user:Zarya!). There's a small hole drilled at the side of the closet to allow for power to be routed and so that the cable doesn't get cached up by the drawer it self. To see how long the wiring last remains to be seen.
Firmware
The firmware is pretty simple as well, once it detects the drawer has been opened it will first play an animation and then just go to full white. There's a button on the MCU that allows to switch between modes. I still want to change some of the modes, and make the opening animation slower. Luckily the MCU and it's USB port is easily accessible. The drawer is now running on a esp8266 and thus the firmware can be remotely updated. Not many can say they need to update their drawers firmware!
Parts
Arduino Nano (clone)- 30 ws812b leds
- esp8266
3D printed case for the Arduino: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3576631
Todo
Put updated code on Github- Look into adding a small layer of diffusion over the led strips