LED iphone/itouch Lamp

From Dome to Modern Box Lamp

When given this assignment, I was interested in creating an ambient lamp that was aesthetically more than a simple ikea lamp. That week in Design for this Century we were looking into the life and works of Buckminster Fuller/Victoria Vesna and I was inspired by his Pentagon dome and later that week I saw a ring in a magazine (as you can see below)...

I thought, it must be it, I should use this structure and possibly cut copper using the schools laser cutter and create this gorgeous dome. Unfortunately, we can not cut copper.

So I went back to the drawing board and after some online browsing and being inspired by a lot of neon phrases written in florecent bulbs, I wanted to get something in a similar feel. Something inspiration. Something that I could maybe write secret messages to someone and they wont know what it says till they turn the light on. So I sketched my prototype and went looking for the parts.

Meanwhile, I wanted to continue my code and get my Arduino working properly.

We got the switch and the sensor assignments to help us prototype with this project but I wanted more of a convenient way to turn this lamp on and off. Maybe in a way that would play on the idea that I didn't want it to be visible until its on. So I researched how I would go about making this lamp accessible by iphone/itouch app and found an app called Touch OSC to help me with make that happen.

I also found great code help from some forum and rigged my Arduino with three LEDs, Red, Green and Blue. I later received my RGB multi color leds but realized that I would not be able to any more than one and figured it would cover enough of the space inside to make the impact that I wanted. So in the end I kept with my original code of fading the multi colors on and off.

If I were to continue I would want to make it so the there would be multiple different buttons on the app that would make the lights fade between colors and change speed etc.

Here are some more images of the work in progress and the final piece in video form.