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13. Applications and implications

My final project is a led-lamp with plywood laser cut shade and it has has some sensors for interactive use.

I am planning to have capasitive slide button that will adjust the brightness of the light.

This lamp can be used in living room or bed room for decoration and lightning.

What does it do?

LED lamp has nice laser-cut shade made of plywood and capacitive slide button on plywood for dimming the light.

Who’s done what beforehand?

Matt Keeter has done capacitive buttons on plywood Fab Boombox. This inspired me to hide the buttons behind the plywood and having only the smooth plywood surface shown outside.

Akash Badshah has done capacitive slide button for voice control. This inspired me to have multiple copper pads for the brightness control.

I am using my week11 and week12 boards for the sensor and led strip control.

What did you design?

I have designed the shape for laser-cut lamp shade with Inkscape.

I have designed the lamp structure with Fusion 360.

I have designed PCBs for touch sensors week11 and led control week12.

What materials and components were used?

Plywood (3-4 mm thickness), 0,4 m2
LED stripe 1 m
Capacitive slide button (sensors): made of vinyl cut copper pads (8 pcs) 30 cm2
Touch sensor board (see week11)
- detailed component list is in BOM (chapter: How much did they cost?)
Led strip control board (see week12)
- detailed component list is in BOM (chapter: How much did they cost?)
Power supply 12V
ABS for inner lamp shade

Where did they come from?

Most of the components came from Fab Inventory. Led strip was bought from local store SPElektroniikka.

How much did they cost?

BOM of Led control board:

BOM of sensor board:

Plywood 0.4 m2: 10 Eur

Led strip 1 m: 4 Eur

Power supply 12V: 10 Eur

3D printing material (PLA): 1 Eur

What parts and systems were made?

Lamp structure is made with laser-cutting.
Lamp inner shade is made with 3D printing.
Touch sensor board and led control board are made by milling and soldering.

What processes were used?

  • Laser-cutting, 2D desing and 3D design for the shade.
  • 3D printing and 3D design for the inner dimming shade. Translucent sylinder is one layer 3D-printed.
  • Electronics design, milling and soldering for the microcontroller.
  • Embedded programming of the capacitive slide button.

What questions were answered?

How to program the eight sensors to get smooth dimming? The logic of the sensor function needs to be decided. I am having eight sensor pads. What will happen when touching one of them? Will it depend on the order the pads are touched? Most probably I will have sensor pad1 for the least bright light and sensor pad8 for the brightest light. And pads 2-7 something in between.

How was it evaluated?

The main switch turns the led lights on, with medium brightness level. When touching the plywood where the sensors are (behind the plywood) you are able to brighten and dim the lights.

The lamp will be ready to be used at home.

What are the implications?

Your project should incorporate
- 2D and 3D design -> lamp shade
- additive and subtractive fabrication processes -> 3D printing for lamp structure and laser-cutting for the shade
- electronics design and production -> microcontroller
- microcontroller interfacing and programming -> capacitive button and controlling the button
- system integration and packaging

2D and 3D Modeling

Here is the 2D design of the lamp shade, this will be laser-cut of plywood:

This is a 3D sketch to see how the lamp will look like: