Over Engineered TriGlow
Introduction: Over Engineered TriGlow
You guys know Nanoleaf right?
So I made this Nanoleaf like device that doesn't have RGB LEDs inside, instead, it has white Light and is controlled by a touch switch.
It's a fancy lighting setup that can illuminate your room and it looks pretty sick because of its shape.
Also, it's not related to Illuminati at all, or the phoenix lights incident or pyramids.
I made few modifications to the touch switch which made it more sensitive so this light can be turned ON or OFF in mid-air.
Just bring your hand closer to the center part of the triangle and that will trigger the Light Sequence, by the way, this method of turning this light on-off by punches, I call this LightFu.
* on the first tap, it will start flashing
* on the second tap, it will glow at full capacity
* on the third tap, LED will glow at 50% capacity
* the fourth tap will turn off the light.
I first designed this light setup in Fusion360, then by using the fusion PCB Layout, I prepared its PCB in my OrCAD software, then I got PCBs for this project from PCBWAY.
I assembled the PCB and then the whole light which took almost two days of hellish work but yeah, that was pretty much it.
Also, this whole setup is powered by the might Attiny13 MCU. This project is pretty long and I'm gonna explain the whole build process of this light so sit back and try to enjoy the ride.
Supplies
These are all the materials I used in this project
* Custom PCBs x 4 (which were provided by PCBWAY)
* Attiny13A SOIC8
* 8205S Mosfet IC
* LEDs JK3030 Cree LEDs 0.5W x 90pc
* 1.5 Ohms 2W Resistors
* IN5399 Diode
* 3D Printed Enclosure Base x 4
* LID- Diffuser x 3
* LID- Cover x 1
* Spacers x 3
* M3 Bolts x 3
* M3 Nuts x 3
* Truss Head screws M3 x 12
* TTP223 TouchPad Module
* Header Pins
* Arduino Nano (for Flashing the Attiny13)
Step 1: Getting Started, the Basic Idea
The basic idea here was to model a triangular-shaped light that can be Replicate easily with a 3D Printer, a custom PCB, and few components.
White Light can be replaced with a similar RGB LED-based PCB so that is another feature of this setup, it's versatile and can be changed or arrange in all kinds of shapes as we can arrange triangles in different shapes.
Step 2: CAD DESIGN
First I prepared a Triangular Shaped Box or an enclosure that has a lid on it.
This Lid will be printed from transparent PLA and the body itself will be made from Black PLA. Inside this Triangular body, I have added this circuit is slightly smaller than the inner walls of the body.
To Make a single collective light from this triangular shape, I just copied this whole body three times and then arrange it in such a way that each Triangular body will be on each side of the central body.
To connect all three bodies with the central part, I added few custom 3D Printed spacers that will be used as spacers between two bodies when they are connected with nuts and bolts.
In a nutshell, we only need one design which is the Triangular Body (Base + LID), and we can create a bunch of other triangular shapes by connecting them together with bushes nuts, and bolts.
Step 3: PCB Design
After preparing the body of the whole structure, I used the measurements from the cad drawing of PCB and prepared a basic outline for the PCB in my PCB Designing suite.
but before making the PCB, we first have to make a schematic that will contain all the important stuff in it.
Step 4: SCHEMATIC and Function With Parts Details
The attached Schematic is a simple one to understand, there's a total of 30 LEDs connected in parallel, they are all driven by this Mosfet as a switch setup which is then connected with the attiny MCU.
okay wait, here's an interesting question, why didn't I used an Arduino board in this project, why attiny?
the answer here is the cost and overkills-ness of the Arduino board. (Attiny13 costs around 0.5$ and Arduino Board (clone) costs around 5$)
In this project I only used one digital pin and one analog pin so why would I choose a device that has 13 Digital pins and 5 analog pins that would not get utilized at all. 982