Hi all,
I thought it would be nice to make a little work in progress post of my latest project.
Since I am expecting my second child at the beginning of May, I wanted to make a lamp for the two kids.
They will be sharing a room for now, since we only have 2 bedrooms in our house, I could make a nice piece for them to look at, which is fun and functional at the same time.
The base will be a painting, which my girlfriend is going to paint.
Since my daughter loves Nijntje (Miffy, for those not from the Netherlands), we chose the picture below:
Now, for the electronics, I will use an ATmega328p, since I require quite some i/o's, with Arduino bootloader.
To this I will connect three TLC5940 chips, which will drive 12 RGB LED's (36 pins needed).
The LED's will be grouped in 4 groups of three LED's.
Each group will have the anode connected to a transistor to supply the current needed.
To control the LED's I'm using a 5 way switch and 2 potentiometers.
The first three modes are just red, green and blue light, with variable brightness controlled by a potmeter.
Mode 4 is the night setting, which will give a soft colored light with low brightness and mode 5 will be the playmode.
I'm creating different patterns, playing with brightness, colors, fading in and out, flashing, etc.
The different patterns are chosen by the second pot.
Right now I am testing the setup with three RGB LED's I already had, three TLC chips (one LED connected to each), the switch and the two pots, all placed on a breadboard, connected to an Arduino Uno.
I am waiting for some parts to come in from China (the price difference for the RGB led's was so big that buying 15 RGB LED's here would cost more than buying 50 in China, so I made an exception for once and ordered through Ebay) and I need to get wood and plexiglass for the enclosure.
The enclosure will be made of a frame, 12mm thick wood covered with plexiglass and diffused foil on the sides, the center will be the painting.
The painting is made on 4mm MDF, the back of the whole project is the same.
The electronics will be placed underneath the painting, the switch, pots and ofcourse a powerjack (and reset button) broken out on the bottom.
I will place some pictures and maybe a movie of the test setup somewhere this week.