3D modeling and printing a case for a LED lamp

I’ll keep the post in English in case someone outside Germany wants to read..

So about a month ago Thomas gifted me an ESP8266. This post also is a big thank you ;). After some playing around with it I really got into this whole microcontroller thing. Bought some more, some components, got my soldering iron… and made something.

Inside this thing is the ESP and a ring with 12 WS2812b LEDs. Writing the software was not too bad and I finally got it stable. Now I can control it over a web interface or API because it is in my network :D.

But of course the thing needed a case.. this is what you see in the image below.

Modelling for 3D printing is a bit of trail and error the way I do it. But I think the result became really nice. I worked a lot with the solidify modifier and booleans. When you got the hang of it it gets really intuitive. I imported several versions of it into Simplify 3D until I got the thickness right.

Some things to always keep in mind:
– Try to keep the walls always at least two lines thick.
– The transparent top part must always be completely filled as infill distorts the light.

I printed the parts on my Anycubic I3 Mega without any issues… except I broke the inner center of the cap. It was too thin but that doesn’t matter too much as it presses on the part beneath it anyways. Also the transparent fillament I got there is a bit brittle.

Of course this is version one and a work in progress. The software also is far from finished as it should get more parameters and settings.

The rest of the post is going off track and is mainly about software, sorry

You can clearly tell I am a software developer at heart.

Here is what it can do for now with parameters for primary color, secondary color, speed and scale:
– Spin two colors (soft) (Black/off is also a color 😉 )
– Spin two colors (hard)
– Spin one led (no scale adjustment)
– Spinning rainbow (no color adjustment)
– Static rainbow
– Cycle rainbow colors
– Static color
– Percentage display (via API)
Also combinations cause it to:
– Pulse between colors
– Ramp up/down between colors
– Rainbow gradients

It has its own web server on board which provides a web interface with preset modes and colors. It can be fully controlled via API… full RGB colors, brightness, speeds..
With the right software I got it to display my PC load as percentages in different colors.

So yeah… this was me getting into microcontrollers full force. Guess I’ll bring this thing to the next Meetup 😉

~ Michael

About Michael Grau

Software Developer for 3D on the web.
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