I got a couple of great translucent lamps from the car boot sale for £2 that would diffuse RGB LED’s – or a strip of them – really nicely, so I’m going to make a couple of mood lamps.

The first one is going to be basic and just use the 44 key IR remote and LED controller that came with my 5050 LED strip kit. These are just analogue strips not posh WS2182B digital addressable ones.

So I’m going to solder a male 2.1×5.5mm DC jack onto the end of one of these female sockets with pigtail leads, that will go between the controller that will sit in the “shade” part of the lamp, through the “pole” of the lamp and connect to one of these power switches that will then got to my 12v supply mains adaptor. So I’ll be able to just turn the whole thing on and off without using the wall switch or remote.

The second lamp is going to be a lot more advanced, and will probably involve my new Spark Core. I’ll use the same switch/pigtail cables with a circuit that will split out the 12v line for the LED strip and power the Spark Core via 5v or 3.3v (using a LM7805, LM1117T or LM2596 regulator) I’m not sure yet. If I have to drop the 12v down to 3.3v for the Spark Core, I may purchase a meter of WS2182’s as they run from 5v, which would be a lot less of a drop if I used a 5v PSU and would give me more options for programming the light show!

I’ll implement a colour cycling system in the same vein as my Tiny LED Strip Driver project but I also aim to involve the internet somehow – probably make the lamp blink when I get a tweet or email, and also maybe make an Android app to set the colour using a HSV wheel. Of course I’ll also be able to modify the code as and when I like using the OTA firmware upload system without worrying about taking the lamp apart to get to the USB connector.

I’ve got to look more into capacitive touch systems, as the basic one from the arduino library doesn’t work by touching the lamp material, which is pretty thin plastic. You can actually get sensors like these that claim to work through walls and desks etc; and don’t need software.