Introduction: Skyline RGB LED Lamp

By Michael McRoberts
About: Hi, my name is Mike and I am from London, England. I really like to make things and in particular like to do creative things with Arduinos and electronics. Other hobbies include astrophotography and sailing. C…

This is the first version of my Skyline Lamp. The circuit and the code that runs the microprocessor were all developed using the Arduino environment and then once I was happy everything worked as I wanted it I made my own circuit board using an Atmel ATMega168 microprocessor running my code to control the dual RGB LED's. The test version used 4 LED's but I managed to find a supplier of nice bright RGB LED's so this final version uses just two.

The code is set to randomly choose two RGB Colours (256 values per colour channel) and then slowly morph from the last set of colours to the new set with a 10 seconds delay inbetween the transitions.

Version 2 of this will include a TLC5940 chip to enable a much smoother transition. The PWM on the AVR gives you 256 greyscale steps whereas the TLC5940 gives you 4096 giving a far smoother control. You also get the ability to control 5 seperate RGB LED's from one chip compared to 2 directly from the Arduino using PWM (although there are ways to simulate PWM on other Digital I/O lines in software).

I love the way the lights give a misty effect to the rear buildings making them look like they are floating in a sea of coloured mist. The video doesn't do it justice. The lamp looks far nicer in real life.

The skyline is based on Liverpool. These lamps are available for sale, with a skyline of your own choosing, upon request.

earthshinedesign.co.uk