Create Stunning Ambient Lighting with This Simple Arduino LED Project
You can build your own adjustable, color-changing raindrop light with an Arduino Nano and a handful of basic electronic components.
As an electronics hobbyist picks up more skills, he or she will move on to build more complex projects. However, some things never get old. One of those things is blinking LEDs. It’s true enough that a simple LED flasher may lose its charm before long, but there are always bigger and better things — such as Zafer Yildiz’s color-changing DIY speed-adjustable raindrop light. It’s simple to build, but it will entertain you for hours.
To get started, Yildiz created a homemade circuit board. You could just as easily order one professionally manufactured, or even use a breadboard if you don’t have the equipment to make your own at home. The remainder of the circuit consists of 10 220-ohm resistors, three 47-ohm resistors, thirteen BC547 transistors, two 500K potentiometers, and 10 RGB LEDs.
Once assembled, an Arduino Nano was flashed with custom firmware and mounted on a pin header attached to the circuit board. The last step was to connect the board to a 5V power supply, which sets the LEDs to flashing in sequence.
The effect can be controlled with the two potentiometers. One of them adjusts the speed at which each individual LED cycles between colors. The other potentiometer controls the rate at which the sequence of flashing LEDs progresses.
By tuning the knobs, it is possible to get some very cool effects from this device. This would look great sitting in the corner of an office, or hidden behind a TV or speaker. To find out how you can build your own copy of this circuit, check out the video below.
R&D, creativity, and building the next big thing you never knew you wanted are my specialties.