A little ring lamp with 330mm or 200mm diameter. You need a printer with around 220x220mm build plate to be able There is a V1 of this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4817409 (Stargate) There is a V3 of this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4904677 (Halo) Here is a link were you can see the new version in action. The mode running is "Race". Ring Lamp V2 Race mode

Key Features:

When designing this I had some key features in mind: ° simple and clean print ° avoid the led strips glue tape on the back at all cost. ° add a simple compartment for the electronics. ° wire management ° easy to print. ° no flimsy pegs to mount, which fail printing or break away later on.

Requirements:

1x 5V power supply 1x Power Connector 1x Switch 1x LED strip. (60 pixel/m or more) WARNING! You need a LED strip without a rubber dome. Just the plain flexible PCB with the LEDs and resistors soldered on. I used a 60 pixel/mm strip and ended up using 118 LEDs (58/60) in total for the big version and 70 LEDs (34/36) for the smaller version. You can reduce the number of LEDs for the outer rings by two LEDs as they mostly get covered by the socket anyway.

Printing:

You need to print a the socket, the lid and four ring pieces. One of the ring segments has an opening for the wiring. The other file marked with 3x need to be printed three times. Make sure you pick the matching files for the radius. The socket for the 100mm (R100) ring will not fit the 165mm (R165) radius sized ring and vice versa. Another important thing: Use a raft. Yes, rafts take a while to print and eat a lot of plastic as well, but so do the ring segments and one single fail or a warped and thereby unusable ring segment wastes even more plastic. Especially when having issues with temperatures in the print bed corners, a raft saves filament and not the opposite. So adding one hour per ring segment isn't that bad compared to a total fail after 3 hours of printing. Better get it done right the first time, instead of failing several times first. Bonus effect: The ring will look more or less the same on both sides, which is great.

Preparation:

Before starting the assembly, you need to ensure the LED strip rails are free and easy to use. Remove the supports and use your thumb nail to check the guide. A very small screw driver will do, too. Just make sure you don't damage the rails. I found the best way to finally check the rails is to use a single LED strip piece. Trust me. Cutting one LED for this part is worth it. You can use it later on for other projects or reattach it. Move the LED though all slots on all ring parts to find potential road hazards. If the LED gets harder to push inspect the ring section, clean it and try it again. If you get hard on the little strip part you usually can remove the road blockage, too. Next step is inspecting the LED strips to use. They where made from smaller strips and got soldered together. Make sure these soldered connections between the strips are as flat as possible. Sometimes those are huge and have a blob. On the 5V or GND connection we must not have that or we collide with the rings rail. If you find a suspicious section, use your soldering iron to remove obsolete soldering tin. Don't worry. They will not come apart so easy. Just not heat up more than one connection points at a time and let it cool before heating the next one. Now it is a good idea to test the LED strip if possible. There is a test mode in firmware that you can enable to activate additional testing options. In main.h you find "ENABLE_TESTMODE" turn it on. Since your strip is usually not cut at this state you need to change the number of LEDs per strip to the total number you want to test. So changing the first LED strips LED count to 300 in "configuration.h" should do the job. Just remember to change it back or the effects will be broken later on as they assume a longer strip. For testing log into the web interface and turn the test mode inside global section on. A test mode selection will be now visible in misc section. Changing it will effect the strip immediately. You should be able to select red, blue, green and white and confirm that every LED is responding correctly. If not you have to cut the broken LED and resolder the joint.

Assembly:

Lay out the ring sections in print orientation. The sides will look a little different due to the print process. E.g. place the side print bed side down. Make sure the segment with the opening is facing towards you. You can solder wires to the end of the LED strips right now. It is important you solder the data lines to the side where the arrow goes into the strip. For 5V and GND this is not important. This soldering step can be done later, too. Now feed the entire LED strip through the inner ring slots starting at the opening. Leave a little LED wide space at the ring joints and move the strip through the next. As result you should have a loosely connected ring on the table. Repeat the same with the outer ring section. Make sure the little arrows on the second LED strip are in the opposite direction of the first strip. When you are done the first strips arrows should go left from the starting point and the second strip arrows should go right. If not done earlier this is your last chance to solder the wires to the strips ends. Make sure they are long enough. Especially the bottom one needs to be longer as LEDs facing towards the socket are not useful. Just use long wires and cut them later. Feed the wires though the opening to the outside. So if the inner strip has the wires connected to the left, the right one needs them (at least the data line) on the right. That way the effects will mix perfectly. Using a little glue the segments are quick attached together. When printing the ring segment using ABS you can use acetone as glue to weld the sections together, which makes assembly much easier. Ensure the strips in the bottom left segment are oriented properly as it will be hard to move them later on. Slide and move all strips in place to see if the end points are symmetrically. Once done you need to separate the sections again. Just ensure the bottom left stay in place to keep the symmetry. Apply glue to the first gap and slide the second ring section into position. Make sure only to slide the strips in the second element as the one in the first section was already positioned. It can be a little fiddly to move both strips parallel. Don't worry. These LED strips are quiet robust and unless you rip off an LED itself nothing will break. Take your time and let the glued section harden before moving over to the next section. If you rush it just gets messy. Repeat the gluing step. It is the best to glue the last and second last ring section at once. Make sure the wires are in position, put glue on both ends and press the rings together. Optional you can leave the bottom section without glue. In that case you need to ensure the gab is closed when gluing the socket onto the ring. When the ring is done and cured you can do a test run to see if the LED strip survived, but it is not required. If there is no visible damage, then you did not break it. Feed the wires into the socket and glue it on. Align it as you like. It is not required to 100% have the ring opening above the socket opening. Slide in the switch (if you printed the version with the opening for it) into the socket and glue the power connector in place. The power switch connectors pins need to be flattened, to make it fit into the socket. You can solder both components after mounting them, but I found it easier to add the wires and some heat shrink tubing before that. You are now nearly done. Connect the ESP32 and done. This is just basic stuff. Connect all 5V to 5V, all GND to GND and the inner ring light data line to pin G23 of the ESP. The outer rings LED strip data line needs to be connected to pin G22. You can use any kind of software to drive the ring lamps LED strip. Even use an Arduino and some example code. There is an archive containing the source code included. Please check the read me file for further details. I made a video to show the build process more or less in detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Ccoee1Y5A Language is German, so be warned. :D The video is also for the revision 1 of the ring, but beside minor changes the assembly is mainly the same.

Current Features:

° web interface ° OTA update support ° flash fs settings support ° LED color and temperature correction ° 12 effects (static, rainbow, fire place, RGB fader, ...) ° optional sound support (hour/30 min gong) (requires DFPlayer sound module) ° timed power mode: The ring lamp turns on and off at a specific hours. ° timed dimming mode: The ring lamp changes brightness at specific hours. ° timed sound mode: The ring lamp changes volume at specific times. ° Full fledged Alexa support. ° Optional button support for quick on/off/audio switch.

Customize:

To customize the ring you need at least FreeCAD 0.19.1 or up. The model is fully parametric and you should be able to modify stuff like the size of the opening for the switch by just tweaking the spreadsheet. Of course this also works for all other dimensions.

Parts:

I changed the default design to use a standard toggle switch which can be found on coffee makers. For the power inlet I used a power jack adapter. You find them on internet routers, USB hubs, scanners and other low power devices. I usually salvage these parts before throwing old hardware away, so I have a bunch of them. The power connector is not optimal, but looks nice, when glued into the base. As said the model is customizable, so you can use what ever you have at hand. If you want to use something different, just change the width and height values inside the spreadsheet. Finally the LED strip. I used this one: BTF Lighting WS2812B Any WS2812B strip should do. Just make sure there is no rubber dome above it. Those water resistant versions are not working.

Updates:

11.06.2021: ° RingLamp-Quarter_R165_Dual_3x_.obj was wrong. Thanks to BlackOmega368 for reporting this. ° Added additional sockets without the switch pocket. ° Released Firmware V1.29 12.06.2021 ° RingLamp-Quarter_R100_Dual_1x_.obj needed a bigger cable guide opening.

Final Words:

If there are any questions feel free to write a comment. Please post a make, so people can see my model really works and I get positive feedback in the same process, too. Currently the software is missing. I will release an update shortly. You can use the software version from V1, but it of course will only drive the inner LED strip. In the future the same firmware will be suitable for both version.

Tag: LED light