Toon Beerten
Introduction
In this page we will introduce a great project designed by Toon Beerten. His project named "DIY Led Mood Lamp" can become a very interesting add-on for your room that's absolutely sure it will impress everyone. As you can see on the photos, we talk about a color fading lamp, that looks amazing!
The purpose of this page is to try to give some hints building it successful. This high power led mood light is based on PIC16F628 and the ability of this mcu to produce PWM pulses. Varying pulse width we can produce millions of color combinations using only the three basic colors. So only one RGB (Red-Green-Blue) led is capable producing a rainbow of fading colors.
With the help of four switches we can handle all functions of the lamp. We can choose fading or jumping between colors, we can select a rainbow style or a random color changing behavior, we can choose slow or fast changing of colors and we can pause on a desired color.
Finally we will make some power dissipation measurements to help us select an appropriate power supply unit.
Housing for best color diffuse
You can use your imagination to find a housing that will be able to diffuse colors uniformly. Color difussion is necessary to achieve best results. In original design the author used the 45cm IKEA Mylonit lamp. That's a great housing for your lamp. Instead you can use the smaller 31cm IKEA Mylonit lamp with the same amazing results. That's the lamp we used in our construction.
In our research we found other lamps (ex. sphere shape) that are ideal for housing your big led.
High Power LED
The led used is a high power 3W RGB LED. It can be found on ebay at LEDSEE-electronics. You can also check ebay for other high power RGB leds. It will do the jod the same way. Details of this brilliant led shown below.
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3W high power RGB LED |
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Schematic
The schematic used is shown in the next image. It's as simple as it shows. Take care on the correct transistor mount and correct polarity of power source.
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| BC337 Pin out |
Parts List
Here is a list of the components i used for making the led mood lamp.
- 3 x NPN transistors capable of driving 500 mA, for example the BC337
- one PIC 16F628(A) and a programmer
- a small perforated circuit board
- 7 x 10K resistors (1/4W)
- 1/2 watt resistors (2x 22 Ohm, 4x 10 Ohm) and a DIP switch
- a power supply (5 volts, 500 mA)
- Ikea Mylonit lamp or other housing
- silicon paste from your local DIY shop (if you want to use a heatsink)
- one z-power 3 watt rgb led
- a little heatsink and some cooling paste (if you want to use a heatsink)
Circuit board
On the next image you can see the circuit arranged on a perforated board.
Programming The PIC 16F628 Microprocessor
Just use your programmer and upload the .hex file on your PIC.
For successful results you should pay attention on the fuse bits. You should enter the correct fuses as noted on the following table.
| Fuses | |
| IntRC I/O | Enabled |
| PWRT | Enabled |
| BODEN | Enabled |
| MCLR | Disabled |
| Rest of fuses | Disabled |
DIP Switches functions
- SW1 - makes you choose between G->GB->B->BR->R->RG-->>G effect and random color change effect
- SW2 - makes you choose between fading and jumping from one color to another
- SW3 - makes you choose between slow or fast
- SW4 - pauses at the current color displayed
Mounting
A good way to mount the circuit board is to use a hot glue gun to "mold" the circuit underneath the lamp housing. There is plenty of space there for your board. At the next photos you can see the circuit board mounted on the small 31cm IKEA Mylonit Lamp.
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| The glue is still hot. Temperature of glue didn't damage the PIC or other parts. |
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| The glue is now cold and you can easily access the dip switches. Lamp is working! |
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A view from top of the lamp. |
Update - 10/2009
Steve Rougier made improvements on the original code and schematic adding additional operation modes. For detailed info and for updated source code check on this zip file.
