Enhance Your Gaming or Movie Viewing Experience with Reactive Pixel Lamps

Edward Chamberlain's 8-bit-style lamps react to onscreen action!

Jeremy Cook
4 years agoLights

Interactive ambient lighting, where a display's sides light up to further enhance immersion, is an interesting technology. Edward Chamberlain, however, decided to take this concept to another level with his reactive “Pixel Lamps.” Each lamp is fashioned in a cube to evoke the feeling of an 8-bit game environment, with a 3D-printed base and a diffuser taken off of a cube-style nightlight.

A Wemos D1 mini ESP8266 module is implemented in each for WiFi communication and lighting control. Light is provided by a “traditional” (i.e. non-programmable) RGB LED, with the appropriate resistors and transistors to allow the Wemos board to adjust the lighting. For simple duplication, Chamberlain opted to design custom PCBs for the device, along with automated pick and place for easy assembly and expansion if more are necessary.

His Pixel Lamps use the Philips Hue framework and a DIY Hue server is set up to run on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for overall control of the system. Since everything operates over WiFi, these cubes can be arranged about a room without direct wiring to the server, needing only access to a USB power supply.

The lamps, according to Chamberlain, turned out much better than expected. Given their programmable WiFi design, these iridescent cubes could have many other uses as well!

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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