How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#1

Post by rgonzalez » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 2:43 PM UTC

How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend
blog.kytelabs.com

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#2

Post by GotAnyMegadeth » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 4:01 PM UTC

I'm definitely going to do something like this

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#3

Post by hmottestad » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 4:04 PM UTC

It's very pretty they put everything into the shell of the bulb. My smart bulb is a regular led lamp that I've run the power through a nice transistor and arduino sitting next to the lamp on my desk. However I have a nice webapp and even a brightness sensor to adapt to light in the room.

Some videos of my lamp: http://fluffyelephant.com/2012/09/two-videos-about-my-led-la...

And a write-up: http://fluffyelephant.com/2012/05/lamp-update/

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#4

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

This is a very cool project. How does it do on lumens per watt?

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#5

Post by davidb_ » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

Stuffing the iphone power supply into the lightbulb is interesting. I'm sure if you took the time you could make/find a smaller switching power supply to stuff in there, but using a well-designed, readily available power supply in this kind of project is resourceful. I wouldn't have thought of it.

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#6

Post by makomk » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

Is the Arduino really necessary here? From the description, it appears to be basically equivalent to 3 wires between the Bluetooth module running the actual control code and the transistors switching the LEDs. (Honestly, Arduinos seem to be a bit overused in general...)

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#7

Post by Falling3 » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 6:05 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #6

Is the Arduino really necessary here? From the description, it appears to be basically equivalent to 3 wires between the Bluetooth module running the actual control code and the transistors switching the LEDs. (Honestly, Arduinos seem to be a bit overused in general...)

From the article:

"Right now, the Arduino isn’t reading serial data from the BLE module, it’s pretty much working as a pass-through for whatever the BLE module says. It reads the value of three of the BLE’s GPIO’s to control each color of the LEDs. In the future, it should read serial commands from the UART and have a big list of awesome things that it’ll do. Naturally."

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#8

Post by stephengillie » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 6:53 PM UTC

Neat shortcut -- instead of building your own main-to-5v power converter, you found the best one made by someone else and just used it.

Edit: I just realized you're basically some code away from reinventing LIFX. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light...

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#9

Post by rgonzalez » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 7:21 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #8

Neat shortcut -- instead of building your own main-to-5v power converter, you found the best one made by someone else and just used it. Edit: I just realized you're basically some code away from reinventing LIFX. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light...

Thanks!... Yeah, much more practical for a prototype.

Who says we are some code away? Stay tuned for the iPhone App blog post :)

Re: How to build a Smart Lightbulb in a Weekend

#10

Post by jgonzalez » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 7:33 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #4

This is a very cool project. How does it do on lumens per watt?

We're not sure how to calculate it but we did some crappy math and it got us around 6.2 lumens per watt. Again, we're not sure if this is correct. You can use the following datasheet if you'd like to calculate it yourself. http://www.adafruit.com/datasheets/FLR-100WAS-RGB.pdf

Overall, it's decently bright but not as bright as a normal light bulb.