Color Lamp Pictures

Friday, November 9, 2007 by darco
Posted in , ,

I got the finished printed circuit boards for the mystery device in the mail the other day. After putting all of the parts on the board, this is what I now have:

ColorLamp/IMG_0235

ColorLamp/DSC03100 ColorLamp/DSC03093 ColorLamp/DSC03089

ColorLamp/DSC03090 ColorLamp/DSC03095 ColorLamp/DSC03092

Keep in mind that this is just a prototype. The next version will be cooler.

Some features:

  • Infrared remote control
  • Serial port for computer control
  • Ability to press the top of the lamp to turn it on/off or change modes (not in prototype)
  • The color can be independently controlled at each corner
  • Smooth, beautiful color transitions

One cool thing I did with the prototype was set it up to display a visual representation of the load average on my computer. I wrote a simple program on my mac which would translate the load average into a color, and then send a command over a serial port to change the color of the lamp. This is really fun---whenever I start a compile, the lamp slowly transitions from blue to green, to yellow, to orange, and then to red. When the compile is done, it fades back to blue. Completely pointless, but very fun.

Here are some more pictures:

ColorLamp/IMG_0239

ColorLamp/IMG_0236

This is what the NEW circuit board layout is going to be:

ColorLamp


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4 Comments for “Color Lamp Pictures”

  1. Will Perone Says:

    That's awesome; they look like glowing balloons. Do the lights flash in a pattern or are the controlled by something?

  2. fireflysoup* Says:

    ooooohhhhh!!

    That's totally awesome, Rob!!

    Upload a video :) especially when you complete the next one, so we can see the color transitions.

    uber cool.

    • Jess
  3. margie* Says:

    Very nice. I would totally put one in my house. :D

  4. JBuma Says:

    I wanted to do X-Mas lights with my SX chips but alas, I am too busy: Great job! I feel that the next level of this is to create a motion detector that will connect the different pcbs to each other to signal them to turn on and off.

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