Welcome to my project, The Love Lamp! This lamp has so much significant meaning to me because it is a project I dedicated entirely to the one I love most. The Love Lamp is a Touch-Sensor lamp that changes up to 6 different colors. I decided to make it out of acrylic and the little box from plywood for a nice aesthetic look but most importantly, it will show the person your gifting to the special love you have for them. I made a matching little "vase" to hold a paper flower bouquet that I made for my boyfriend as well. Working on this lamp from scratch brought it even more meaning to my project.
My inspiration behind this project came from Chris' own hackathon project when he was in college. Ever since I made my mushroom lamp in CRT 101, my boyfriend absolutely loved it, and I love gifting him things that I have took the time to make myself, so when I saw Chris' lamp I wanted to do something similar.
I started hello worlding my project as you can see in the first couple of pictures above by cutting out and measuring my box and acrylic heart with the words "I love you" etched on it. I made sure the box was big enough to hold the Arduino and all the wiring, but not too big to where it would look awkward. I applied the same thing to the heart (box is 4 in width, 2 in length, and 3 in height and the heart is 5 in overall). I also started hello worlding with my code. I bought an Arduino to be able to mess with some code and make sure it works and also took some neo pixels and soldered jumper wires onto the neo pixel. Truthfully, soldering those wires was the most frustrating and complicated thing through out this whole project! Overall that was all of my hello worlding.
The day of the hackathon the materials I used were acrylic, plywood, wood glue, hot glue, Arduino, and neo pixels. The tools I used were my laptop to use Inkscape and maker case to make the box, the laser cutter to cut my plywood and acrylic to size, and if I had time, I would start on making a paper flower bouquet, but the most important part was finishing the lamp.
As you can see in the pictures, I put the Arduino inside the box and taped the neo pixels on the bottom of the top part of the box. I laser cutted a small slit on the top so the neo pixels would shine through and light up the piece of acrylic, and a small square to be able to connect the Arduino to a power source. Plug it in, touch the little wire by the heart and it will turn on! Its a cute little way to show your love for your other half.
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