Introduction

After making my pyramid mood light with 12 high power leds, i decided to make a bigger and better version, without the emphasis on the low budget.. After all, the pyramid mood lamp was more of a proof of concept with its shortcomings. I wanted the new mood lamp to be more powerful, so it could also be used in daylight conditions. I did this by using a z-power 3 watt RGB power led. This one led is far more powerful than the 12 ones combined i used before. The colors also mix better because of the wider opening angle and because the rgb chips lay very close together. But you better see it for yourself:

     

     

     

Offcourse a video says more than pictures, so here you can see the different operation modes.

And i found the perfect housing! Behold: the Mylonit table lamp from Ikea.

They come in two sizes: 31 and 45 cm high. Offcourse i bought the biggest version. Funny thing is Ikea already offers this lamp in different colours. But they all can only light up in one color, the lamp i made can take all colors of the rainbow.

Parts You Need

Here is a list of the components i used for making the led mood lamp.

• 3 NPN transistors capable of driving 500 mA, for example the BC337
• one PIC 16F628(A) and a programmer
• a small perforated circuit board
• some 1 watt resistors (5, 10 and 15 Ohm) and a DIP switch
• a power supply (5 volts, 1000 mA)
• Ikea Mylonit lamp
• silicon paste from your local DIY shop
• one z-power 3 watt rgb led
• a little heatsink and some cooling paste

Because i now use the 3 watt z-power led, i couldn’t use batteries anymore. That’s why i bought a small power supply.

General Layout

Here you see the z-power led mounted on a heatsink i took from an old video card. I drilled two holes and two screws hold the star shaped led in place. To conduct the heat better i used some left over cooling paste that came with my cpu. A smaller heatsink would suffice as well, but i had this heatsink gathering dust in my closet, so…

     

The Circuit Board

Once everything was working like i wanted i soldered it all onto a small circuit board.

I cut off one corner to get a better fit in the area under the lamp. This is the schematic i used:

All i needed to do now was pasting it all together to the lamp and soldering the 4 wires from the led to the circuit board.

     

Programming The PIC 16F628 Microprocessor

Conclusion

I am really satisfied with this lamp. This was what i was aiming for when i first got the idea of building my own mood lamp. I think this version definitely deserves the title ‘mood lamp’  because it can light up a whole room with its colors. On the left you can see the lamp still shines strong with other lights on and on the right you can see the effect when all other lights are out. In the back you can see the pyramid lamp i made earlier.