Testing the R.L for the first time! For now, it only displays a single color. Additionally, I played with the spacing of lit LED for the maximum effect. Since the Arduino can only output 5V from it's pin, only every third LED can be lit.
The previous year, I found this large block of some kind crystal outside of the Mathnasium I worked at. I took it to school, and ended up doing an optics experiment with it so that I could find out what material it was made out of. It looked like glass, but could be chipped, dented, and dropped without significant damage. I knew that this would make for an interesting light project later, so decided to hold onto it.
This ended up being a great choice! Armed with an Arduino and LED strip, I set out to make a nice desk lamp to light up my new workspace.
The first thing I worked to implement was the random color cycle. This was a fairly simple process of looking at the color space and deciding which regions of R,G, and B were acceptable, then programming a simple loop that randomly selected a color and wrote that color onto every third LED.
I also had the LEDs light up sequentially to prevent a strobe light effect. The video here shows about 15x the normal speed of the lamp and 2x the normal brightness.
Just cycling random colors quickly for a pretty stunning effect!
The next step was to make the lamp actually useful.
After moving back home and attending online classes, I had started to lead a pretty sedentary lifestyle. I also found that since I wasn't out and about on MIT's campus with my water bottle and the water fountains, I wasn't making nearly enough trips to refill my water bottle (which totally makes sense, because the kitchen was soooo far away). To rectify this problem, I implemented a reminder feature into the lamp
Ignore my 'UM', I was just shocked that it worked.
Once per hour, it starts cycling either bright red or bright blue between every random color as a reminder to go fill up my water bottle or do some pushups. Now, since I knew that I would ignore this if I didn't have to take some action, I also added a button, that if held for more than one cycle, resets the hour countdown.
What are my next steps?
I'm hoping that once I can get access to a shop again, I can look into shaping or polishing this crystal. The contours are interesting as they are, but the scratches and chips are rather unappealing.
I am also hoping to 3D print an enclosure that can house the controller and wires beneath the crystal. I tried to make one out of some foam core and some acrylic pieces, but it was unable to support the weight (the block is very dense).
Say Cheese!