Custom desk lighting Part 0

by dweller - 2020-02-03

Taming the RGB strip

So I spent my weekend finally finishing the hardware part of my LED strip desk light thing. It all started with a note on my Nextcloud instance:

Although most of it is about software, the idea can be described by first 3 points.

From there I experimented on a breadboard, and left it at that for a long time, until recently. I took out an old ATX PSU and did some tests. Measured dimensions, and read about my MCU of choice (ESP8266).

So after all that i ordered some parts, and then sat down and drew a schematic:

When the parts arrived I drilled and assembled the case to figure out how much space I have to play with.

And got to work on soldering it all.

And in the end I stuffed it all inside and soldered some more. And yes, I know I put wires on top of Wi-Fi antenna, Thug life, get over it.

After a bit of whoopsie with the logic levels, it was done.

So now only two things left:

1. Code the firmware
2. Mount it.

I am still not sure if I want to over-complicate it with MQTT and OpenHAB, might just do a REST thing over HTTPS.

I’ll do the software and mounting write up next.