This one’s concept I saw a long time ago on Instructables.com but it happened to end up being the main project for one of my courses at SFU. I thought that was pretty awesome, do a project I wanted to try and also get marks for it too. During university I had very little time to work on personal projects so it was great to be able to allocate school work hours into something I wanted to do anyways.

The twist is that the course was Microcontroller and Embedded Systems, meaning we were not permitted to use the Arduino used in the step-by-step project tutorial online. We had to learn the architecture of another mcu and use that instead. However the university resources were pretty outdated and they wanted us to use a HCS12 Dragon (educational) board programmed via Freescale Codewarrior. Since I believe I’ll never use this architecture in the future, I wanted to learn something useful instead. I have already been working with Texas Instruments boards for a bit, their Launchpad development boards are stupidly cheap (so much I think they lose money on it). The MSP430 DSPs are equivalent to an arduino and I think are equally capable if not more (imo the biggest difference to me is the community and library support). However in recent years, TI started a new line of products called the Stellaris Launchpads. These are designed as introductory products to their high performance Stellaris products and Stellarisware libraries. I’ve used this before on a Intelligent Display Module Stellaris dev kit (RDK-IDM) for my Capstone.

The Stellaris Launchpad (EK-LM4F120) carries a mcu (LM4F120H5QR ) with absolutely amazing specs for a dev kit that only costs $13. When I bought it they were just introducing it and had a promotion and I got 2 of them for $5 each.

A quick overview of it’s specs:

So I’m using this mcu to control my LED Matrix Cube, it has just enough I/O pins to do it too. My goal is to utilize the DSP parts of it to run a spectrum analyzer on an audio feed and play an animated equalizer on the cube.

After meeting the minimum requirements for the course I have not touched this in a while. During the course I hit a lot of bugs in the firmware that I was not able to resolve and I suspect I will need to rebuild the firmware from scratch in order to continue the project.

The project goal is purely aesthetic and the cube will not really serve any purpose, which is why this is a back burner project. I do hope to eventually get back to this so I can learn more about mcu architecture and embedded programming. I did at least put in the effort to create a CAD model of a nice case and had that made from laser cut acrylic. As you can see in the photo, it has a nice gloss black base (missing some square brackets that are used to keep the lid closed and act as feet). Additionally I had cut a clear acrylic box that goes around the LEDs to protect it.

In my room I have a lot of blank wall space which I like to use like a reflective surface for lighting as previously mentioned. Additionally, my bed has no headboard, but has a 4″ ledge the length of the wall about a foot above it, perfect for mounting my lamp. However I don’t want to mount directly to it since it has a nice finished surface, so I’ll need a base to my lamp that will sit on it.

This is my target design. The idea was to create 3D printed hinges and connectors and whatever raw materials I could easily pick up at home depot. In this case I planned to pick up a 2×4, some sort of pipe and metal bars. The design of the reflector (not a shade) was the more complex aspect of this. I wanted the reflector to be capable of multiple orientations for different lighting dynamics. In the top left you can see in one mode it reflects upwards, directing the light toward the wall and ceiling for ambient lighting. In the next the reflector is straight and covers a larger area downwards. Below that the reflector is curved to focus light right below it.

To achieve these modes I designed a custom hinge (mid bottom). In the stationary half it connects to the pipe holding it up through which wires are fed for a clean wireless appearance. The LED strip itself is adhered to an aluminum bar slotted into bottom of the rotational part of the hinge.  At the top of the rotational part, there is a slot that splits into two directions. This is for the base of the reflector so that it can be changed to reflect forwards or backwards. At the very top of the rotational part there will be a hole to add a small telescoping pipe. This will attach to the top of the reflector so that the curvature can be adjusted.

The electronics enclosure will be set in the middle of the base with wires being fed under or behind it in channels. Since the the ATmega is part of the arduino development board, it’s easier to run everything with pin connectors than create a custom pcb. This also allows for different orientations of circuits so that the LCD can be perpendicular to the board and secondary boards for buttons, clock electronics can be mounted to the walls. The arduino will be at the bottom with a power splitting circuit to split off a 5v feed to run the microcontroller from the 12V supply.

The diagonal split between the top and bottom of the electronics box is to maximize access to the electronics while minimizing the number of pieces. There is a lip on the front edge so that the pieces will hinge and rotate around that edge. This is to minimize the length of the wires attaching the button array and LCD to the bottom half of the electronics and allowing access without having to disconnect them.

In the last several years I have been heavily influenced by Japanese architecture and interior design. With compact, simple, clean designs Japanese homes can be comfortable while being extremely efficient with space. Homes can be converted into beautiful spaces that not only are physically comforting, but visually relaxing and allowing the residents to more easily achieve a peace of mind or zen state.

One of my favorite elements in design is lighting. It has a very important effect on spaces and how they are perceived. It’s also something dynamic that changes with the time of day, weather and mood. I believe it’s very common to use mood lighting, but in American culture I think this is used often to describe just an adjustable light to a dimmer setting. However, lights can set moods in many different situations. Different combinations of flashing colored lights could either set a fun dance party, or fear and caution in emergency settings. Even the different wavelengths hitting your eye from your computer monitor can make subtle changes. Hours of staring at a white screen can cause strain in your eyes, headaches and possibly a higher stress level. While viewing a darker screen like my blog is a bit easier on the eyes. Programs such as f.lux tint your computer screen to softer colors after the sun has set for exactly these reasons.

So my goal with this is to create a light that sets a mood upon waking up, or really to use the light to make it easier to wake up. Here in Vancouver, Canada we’re only getting about 9 hours of sunlight this time of year. It’s dark when we wake up and it’s dark before we leave work. It can be pretty depressing, especially considering we get so much rain it’s cloudy all the time and we almost never see the sun. For this reason I want to make a lamp that is easy on the eyes and has an alarm function that will turn it on when I have to wake up.

This particular function exists in another Japanese innovation. A certain capsule hotel in Kyoto called Nine Hours, which opened up only a few years ago, uses much more technology than it’s 70’s and 80’s predecessors. One of these innovations is ambient lighting in the entire ceiling of the capsule that can be triggered by an alarm to simulate sunrise.

To replicate this I outlined a few requirements:

• LED based ambient lighting
  • With adjustable brightness
  • And an adjustable shade
• Alarm Clock functions
  • LCD Display showing time
  • Adjustable time
  • Adjustable alarm
• Music control
  • Interface with the computer to control Winamp
  • Typical music player commands play/pause/next/back/vol up/vol down
  • Additional control to switch playlists

The music control is another addition that I wanted since I go to sleep with music. With the controls of the alarm next to the bed it seemed convenient to be able to control music from it as well. One bonus from this would be that I would be able to set certain music to play on the alarm function as well.

To meet these requirements I will be using the following resources:

• 3D printed parts to build the lamp
• Arduino ATMega to control the lamp, LCD display and computer interface
• Electronics for timekeeping and interfacing; buttons, knobs etc.
• Power supply to run it all
• 3D printed case to house all the electronics
• scripts on the computer to interface microcontroller communication and the music player software