Luminch One

User-Contributed Project

User-Contributed Project

This project guide is not managed by MAKE staff.

Build an interactive lamp that you can control by waving your hand.

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Luminch One is an interactive lamp controlled by the movements of your hand. Wave your hand over it to turn it on or off, or move your hand up or down above it to change its brightness. Inside the lamp, an Arduino hooked to an infrared distance sensor tracks your hand and sets the state and the brightness of the LED lamp.

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Add Note Edit Step 1 — Get the tools and materials  ¶ 

  • You can get most of the electronic parts required for this project from Sparkfun. Click the items from the parts list to go to the product page of each part.

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Add Note Edit Step 2 — Solder the connectors  ¶ 

  • Cut a 2-pin piece from the right-angle header strip and solder it to the LED board.

  • Cut a 3-pin piece from the right-angle header strip and solder it to the infrared sensor cable following the color order in the picture. You can add heat-shrink tubing to the wires before soldering them.

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Add Note Edit Step 3 — Assemble the circuit  ¶ 

  • Assemble the circuit on the protoboard following the picture and the schematic. Pay attention to the polarity of the electrolytic capacitors and the transistor.

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Add Note Edit Step 4 — Program the Arduino  ¶ 

  • Connect the Arduino to your computer using the USB cable.

  • Download the source code for the project.

  • Start the Arduino IDE and open the luminch_one.ino file.

  • Configure the board type and serial port for your Arduino in the IDE.

  • Upload the code to the Arduino.

  • Test if it works!

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Add Note Edit Step 5 — Cut the balsa sheet  ¶ 

  • Cut three pieces of balsa wood of the following sizes: 77 mm x 77 mm, 70 mm x 70 mm, and 45 mm x 65 mm.

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Add Note Edit Step 6 — Glue the base  ¶ 

  • Glue the 70x70 mm balsa square on the center of the 77x77 mm balsa square using the white glue.

  • Let it dry for two or three hours under a heavy object like a large book.

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Add Note Edit Step 7 — Glue the Arduino  ¶ 

  • Glue the Arduino on the center of the wood base using the hot-glue gun. Make sure the board of the Arduino does not stick out of the small square of the base. Only the USB connector of the Arduino must stick out of the small square.

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Add Note Edit Step 8 — Stack the circuits  ¶ 

  • Glue the protoboard and the infrared sensor to the 45x65 mm balsa piece.

  • Put the 45x65 mm balsa piece on the top of the Arduino and fold the cables on the sides.

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Add Note Edit Step 9 — Cut and score the lampshade  ¶ 

  • Print the luminch_one_lampshade.pdf file from the project files on the A4 tracing paper sheet.

  • Fix the A4 tracing paper sheet to the cutting mat using the masking tape.

  • Cut the solid lines of the pattern using the hobby knife.

  • Score the dashed lines with the point of the file tool of the Swiss Army knife or with another paper scoring tool.

  • Remove the sheet from the cutting mat.

  • Score the dot-dashed lines on the back side of the sheet with the point of the file tool of the Swiss Army knife or with another paper scoring tool.

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Add Note Edit Step 10 — Fold and glue the lampshade  ¶ 

  • Fold the sheet following the dashed and dot-dashed lines. Dashed lines are valleys and dot-dashed lines are mountains.

  • Glue the flap to shape the lampshade as a square prism.

  • Cut a square hole for the USB connector of the Arduino.

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Add Note Edit Step 11 — Assemble the lamp  ¶ 

  • Put the lampshade on the wood base.

  • Connect one end of the USB cable to the Arduino.

  • Connect the other end of the USB cable to the USB wall charger.

  • Plug the USB wall charger into a power outlet.

  • Enjoy! :)

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Add Note Edit Step 12 — Further improvements  ¶ 

  • Replace the Arduino with an ATtiny45 or ATtiny85 to reduce the size of the circuits.

  • Attach a heat sink to the LED and replace its resistor by a smaller one (6.8 to 10 ohms) to increase the LED power.

  • Replace the hot-glue with screws to ease disassembly at the unit's end-of-life.

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Add Note Edit Step 13 — End-of-life disassembly  ¶ 

  • Remove the circuits and the hot-glue from the balsa wood pieces.

  • Cut the lampshade and the balsa wood in small pieces and compost them in your garden.

  • Disassembly the circuits by removing the cables and the components from the protoboard.

  • Reuse the Arduino and the electronic components in another fun project!

For more information, check out the Arduino category page.

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Comments Add Note Comments are onturn off

Guide Add Note

Interesting project.

Hard time finding the resistors and the NPN transistor, any sources that will ship to europe?

aardvarkembassy, · Reply

You can use octopart to search or also you can replace it with any NPN transistor that can handle a current of 500ma, just check the pinout of the replacement in its datasheet as not all the transistor have the pins in the same order.

Francisco Castro,

For all of you who want to design your own customized lampshade for the project, checkout the Pop-Up Card Designer software that I used to design the Luminch One lampshade.

Francisco Castro, · Reply

You speak of End-of-Life, how long do you expect this lamp to last?

Joel, · Reply

The LED in this lamp is rated to maintain 70% of its brightness after 50.000 hours. I had not checked the datasheets of all the components, but I suppose the LED is the one that wears faster of all them.

Anyway, as you have all the plans on how it is built, if some part fails just replace that part and it will remain alive.

Most probable cause of end-of-life will be that you get bored of it or want to use the Arduino for another project, that is why I included the end-of-life disassembly step.

I think we already have enough garbage on the planet and that is very important when designing new objects to think about how its parts can be reused at end-of-life and what impact on the environment will have throwing the non-reusable parts. For more info about EOL design search for Design for Disassembly.

Francisco Castro,

I'm having a hard time finding the 18ohm 1W resistor. I'm not an engineer and physics was 25 years ago. Could I use 2 10ohm 1W resistors in series instead or (1) 20ohm resistor? I accidently ordered an 18kohm 1W resistor but I'm pretty sure I can't use that. Thanks in advance.

Robert Kadish, · Reply

Yes, you can use two 10ohm 1W or 1/2W in series, or also you can use four 68 ohms 1/4W in parallel.

Francisco Castro,

Great project! I'm using it as a learning exercise for controlling high-output LEDs using transistors, and I have a couple questions:

*) How did you determine the value for the 220 ohm resistor connected to the transistor base?

*) What's the purpose of the 100uF capacitor across the LED-resistor-transistor subcircuit - and how did you determine the value?

*) How did you arrive at the 18 ohm value for the LED current-limiting resistor? I did a few calculations and came up with a value rounded up to 6.8 ohms. Is the 18 ohm value just to limit the current even further?

I found the BC337 transistor at digikey.com - part # BC337GOS-ND. The 18 ohm 1W resistor is digikey part # 18W-1-ND.

Thank you!

Chris Weiland, · Reply

1) You need to take in account the gain of the transistor you are using and the current you want to switch with it. If you have a high gain version of the BC337 like the BC337-40 you can use a higher value resistor and it will work OK.

2) The 100uF capacitors are for stabilizing the power source because the PWM of the LED introduces noise in the 5VDC and the distance sensor do the same because it consumes big pulses of current for driving its internal IR LED. I have not calculated it, I just tried with some capacitors I had around :)

3) I used a 18ohm resistor to limit the current to what I think the LED can withstand without and extra heat sink. If you add a heat sink you can use a smaller resistor to the send more current to the LED, but never more than 500ma that is the current limit for the BC337 and also for the Arduino 5V I think.

Francisco Castro,

Great guide. I've just finished mine and am very happy with it. I had zero background in electronics but this inspired me to start tinkering with Arduino!

Brandon Clarke, · Reply

Thank you so much!!

Can I replace the smd with a full-color one?

Naomi, · Reply

I am trying to make the lamp but i would like to use 12V strip led's rather than the ones in the example, i'm aware that this poses a problem as the arduino runs off 5v, can you tell me what i would need to change in the circuit set up to make this compatible?

Luke, · Reply