Paper lamp + touch on/off mechanism with Arduino

:::about:::

We are going to be making lamp shade made out of paper and thread.
For it, we are going to create our own touch lamp mechanism using an Arduino board and some conductive thread. 

:::ingredients:::

1. velum paper or any semi translucent + black paper +white thread + ribbon
2. 4 or more 360 o white LEDs
3. Conductive thread ( you can buy it at sparkfun)
4. Arduino board + USB cable
5. 28 gauge wire
6. 1-10 M Ohm resistor (link to resistor Wiki)
7. straight male header
8. breadboard
9. Solder iron or wire wrapper + wire wrap
10. X-acto knife + blades


:::process:::

The process of making the paper lamp is divided in two parts:

1. Building + testing the circuit
2. Designing + Building lamp shade

Step 1: Building the circuit

At first we are going to build our  capacitance sensing circuit on a breadboard with one LED and a stripped wire for our sensor. Eventually we will add the rest of the LEDs, replace the stripped wire for conductive thread and solder or wire wrap all the parts of circuits.

::: build capacitance sensing circuit:::

1. Connect two wires on the breadboard with a 10 M ohm resistor
2. Connect one of this wire to digital pin 8 in the Arduino board
3. Connect the other wire  to digital pin 9 in the Arduino board
4. To the same wire that is going to input 9 connect a piece of wire that it is stripped at one of its the ends. This wire is our sensor, and it will eventually be replaced,  in our chandelier,  for conductive thread
5. Connect the short leg(anode)  of an LED to GND in the Arduino board and the long leg (anode) to digital input 13

Comments

[dnicky2288]

Nice! I love this! You can do so much more if you take the idea further!!!