My daughter asked for a night lamp. As any 4-year old, her favorite things are rainbows and unicorns. Therefore a night lamp in the shape of an rainbow was the obvious choice. Said and done, here it is!
I share it here in hopes that someone else wants to try make to one! :)
If you find some parts of my description is unclear or have a suggestion for an improvement just ask/tell me and i would try to help.
The light is based on WS2812b Led-strips and ESP32-C3 Super mini. It can be turned on/off over Wifi (via MQTT) and adjusts its brightness according to ambient lighting. When turned on it will show an animation where the rainbow grows from the left cloud to the right. There are also animations for connecting to Wifi.
Printing:
I printed it with a mix of PETG and PLA depending on the colors I had on hand. I would recommend the following colors:
Clouds - White
Rainbow (front and back) - Transparent
Dividers - Grey or any darker neutral color to block light between colors
White would also work fine for the rainbow front/back but would look a bit more dull in daylight with the leds turned off.
The clouds needs to be printed with supports. The back side may need support for a tiny hook on the back side. The rests prints well without supports.
I would recommend gluing the divider-part and the “rainbow_front” togheter to making the whole assembly more sturdy. Also the "rainbow_front" contain some bridges between the rings for stability during assembly at the ends that will be cut away before adding the led strips.
Code and schematics:
The code uploaded to the ESP together with schematics and required parts can be found here:
https://github.com/ChristofferRa/rainbow_light
Electronics:
I purposefully made the compartments for the electronics quite small to get a good ratio between the size of the clouds and the rainbow itself, hence it's really tight. So take care how you solder together the parts. I attached some pictures how I soldered it to make it fit.
Also it's a good idea to make the power connections for the LED-strips in the right cloud. Connecting power through the first strip in the right left cloud which house the electronics and then dividing power to the remaining strips inside the other cloud. This gives more free space for the electronics. Take extra notice of the direction of the data-line between the led-strips which needs to be connected in series, see the schematics.
Some improvements/suggestions for anyone else wanting to make one:
I went with 144 led/m strips to get as uniform color as possible. The leds are pretty bright however so even on lower brightness levels they are still quite bright in a dark room. I think 60 or 90 leds/m would be a better choice. I would also consider sanding or some other means of getting some extra diffusion on the outer- and inner-most rings.
The author marked this model as their own original creation.