A Moon Lamp That Shines Whatever Color Suits Your Mood
This 3D-printed, remote-controlled moon glows with LED lighting and battery power.
The moon normally reflects that sun’s light for viewing, but Amit Jain’s glowing replica instead emits its own luminescence with a string of LEDs stuffed inside. Jain’s build is based on the excellent 3D-printed moon found here, but takes it a few steps further with its internal RGB lighting, along with a battery to make it portable and a nice stand on which it can be displayed.
Power input is via a barrel connector, while an an on/of switch lets you turn it off when light is no longer needed. Moon components include a TP4056 Li-ion battery charger, a battery from an old phone, and an MT3608 step-up converter that enables it to supply 12V to the RGB LED control unit.
The stand is a clever arrangement of 2.5” lengths of wood. These are linked together with dowels, forming a sort of tripod for both the moon and the surface on which it sits.
The effect is quite nice in the video below, shining a wide range of colors, rather than the whitish-gray that we've come to expect from this celestial body. One could possibly enhance the design with a microcontroller and RTC unit for celestial tracking, or perhaps a WiFi interface that allows it to react to external conditions!