Light Palate--Selective Lighting for Your Next Feast
Introduction: Light Palate--Selective Lighting for Your Next Feast
The permutations that fine food has gone through in the last 20 years has been quite amazing. Every nuance has been tweaked and romanced over. Growing up in the midwest where food was taken in merely to prevent bodily collapse until that one day when we went to McDonalds for the first time and I inhaled a burger that was so beyond the usual taste limits that my whole world changed. Things could taste really good! Older with kids I found the burgers nearly intolerable--they had descended to the lower edge of the taste spectrum over the years supplanted by deep dish pizza, barbecue and fresh salmon on a cedar plank.
In this instructable I wanted to up the game slightly by extending our taste spectrum with a light spectrum tweak. You can think of it as a Phillips light for food. I built a hanging light outfitted with Neopixels that are controlled by a light sensor that is primed by the food that we place underneath it. In this way the color of the presented food is augmented by a color boost along with the usual wavelengths additional LED's are recruited to bring up its color subtleties. The Microcontroller presents the color spectrum that was analyzed and using an algorithm balances out the best frequency. You can also subtly adjust this level with a manual override. The system also works for flowers, objects of art and anything else you might want to appear more tempting.
Step 1: Gather Your Materials
The hanging lamp is made out of 52 mm aluminum speed-rail which can be found in any large city with a metal supplier. This is not a requirement and it can also be fabricated out of PVC or any other tube material but of course it would suffer from ugliness.
1. Aluminum Speed Rail--52mm X 26 Inches $20
2. TTGO T-Display ESP32 CP2104 WiFi bluetooth Module 1.14 Inch LCD Development Board $11
3. Adafruit AS7262 6-Channel Visible Light / Color Sensor Breakout $19
4. Adafruit NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip - White 60 LED - WHITE $24 about 3 m
5. 1/16 in. x 50 ft. Galvanized Vinyl Coated Steel Wire Rope $10
6. Aluminum Alloy Coupling Shaft Coupler Motor Coupler Connector - 7# $5
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Power Supply--ALITOVE 5V 8A 40W AC to DC Adapter Power Supply Converter Transformer 5.5x2.1mm $18
Step 2: 3D Print Your Parts
Only a couple of parts need to be 3D printed for the lightPalate. The two end plates--one that contains the Microcontroller and the other a blank disc. One baffle to cover the parts connections on the microcontroller end and the cable attachments inside the housing. They keep the power cables that the unit hangs from making connection with the aluminum housing and shorting it out. They also have built in channels to allow for better cable wrangling. The other part is the insulator that hold the head of the touch control screw from contacting the aluminum housing. The parts are all printed without support out of standard PLA and then painted with Aluminum spray paint to match the housing.
Step 3: Build Your Housing
This type of aluminum is very soft and can be easily cut with a metal blade saber saw in a freehand fashion. A straight outline is done of the horizontal cutout. The ends gentle curves are usually outlined with a flexible french curve template to make them smooth. The smoothing of the final curves was done with a dremmel drum sander and a bench sander. Final smoothing was done with a random orbit sander. The housing was then sandblasted with fine grit to give an overall smooth finish both inside and out. Holes were drilled in the top to accommodate the support wires. Additional holes were drilled to fit the opening for the AS7262 6-Channel Visible Color Sensor and the touch control screw-head. These were done with a step-drill. Final painting was done with Valspar top coat flat finish to the outside of the housing and the inside was painted with a flat white spray paint to reflect light.
Step 4: Add Neopixels
The Neopixels are stripped of their silicon covers to allow them to be directly mounted to the inside of the lightPalate housing. Approximately 3 meters of neopixels was used in the project but you can increase this to bolster the lighting intensity as much as you want. The NeoPixel strands are glued directly to the painted inner liner with E7000 glue. You don't really have to worry about the strands shorting out with contact with metal except at the ends where the wires are attached. These areas are problematic and should be covered heavily with liquid electrical tape insulator fluid--a great product. 996