NOTE: For maximum fun, activate the Cloud to butt plugin for Chrome before reading this post.
A few days ago I saw a reddit post where someone made an LED cloud lamp and thought I'd try this too.
Materials
- Hot glue gun (and lots of those sticks.. I used about 5)
- 2 Paper lamps
- Cotton wool or some pillow stuffing
- LED strips
Step 1: Glue the cotton on the lamp
Just apply some glue on the paper and push the cotton on it. It's as simple as it sounds but annoying as hell since it takes a good while
Step 2: Cut the paper lamps so they can be combined
This is just done to make a nicer cloud shape since clouds aren't usually as round as these lamp things
They are held together with zip ties btw.
The hole will also allow the LED strip to glow in both parts of the cloud.
Step 3: Apply more cotton and test the LEDs
Looking good, let's finisth the cotton gluing.
Step 4: Stuff the LEDs in the cloud
Since the paper lamps have holes in the top and bottom it's easy to reach in there and stick the LED strips on the inside wall. But I didn't trust them self-adhesive LED strips so I locked a few in place with zip ties.
The power supply for the LEDs is hanging in the middle for maximum heat diserpation. Remember those lamps used to harbor 60W lightbulbs so they can handle much more heat than the LEDs and PSU can produce.
Also the LEDs came with a remote control and I just put the IR reader through the bottom so I can control the light from my bed.
In action:
Step 5: Hang it somewhere
It's not quite finished yet because I need to hang the far side of the cloud but couldn't attach it yet to the ceiling. But I think the cloud looks awesome because it's so big. The fact that that little string sticks out of the cloud is just a minor aesthetic problem.
The only thing left to do is putting a Raspberry Pi in there and tell everyone that I have a cloud computer.
Thanks reddit for the idea, awesome one-day project!
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