Recently, my house was under some renovation and as a result I was left with so many scrap materials, especially, HDF (high density fiber) sheets and PVC pipes. So, I decided to make something useful from these materials and finally I thought of making a garden light ( or maybe a portable light).

To spice things up, along with the normal white LEDs, I decided to use a neopixel ring and an esp8266 development board , so that garden can be made to look in any color we want.

Supplies

Hardware

For the portable stand

PVC pipe(About 30 cm length)
HDF sheets
Fasteners(Anything would work, I used some nails and nuts)
Scrap PVC pieces

For the bulb

A bottle (Yes, you heard it right !!, preferably of a decent shape :)
ESP8266 WiFi development board
White LED lights x 9(got it from an old lamp)
Neopixel Ring (8 bit)(the link is a 16 bit one)
2N222 transistor x 2
470 Ohm resistor x 2
Perfboard
Male header pins ( 5 or 6 would be enough)

For the lamp head

Funnel (Confusing,right?)
Bottle cap

Others

Acrylic paint - Black
Adhesive
Heat Shrink Tube
Some screws (optional)
Glue Gun

I used Arduino IDE and Blynk (android app) for controlling the light. Also screws, bolts etc. were taken only considering the size and shape of the materials available.

Step 1: Determining the Size and Shape of the Light

When using scrap materials, I always use some modeling, so that I can look out for object that are already in my preferred shape and size. So I used tinkercad to model the lamp. My concept looked something like this

Step 2: Making the Stand - the Base

From the 3D design, the stand has a cross structure with a hollow cylinder where the bulb head and cover can be mounted.

So, initially the HDF sheets were cut, as in my case, I chose the dimensions to match with my 3D design. Using a hacksaw would make the job easier, and remember to sand the pieces after cutting.

The sheets were cut into 3 pieces (two with 10 cm length and one with 20 cm length). Then, these pieces were joined at halfway (of the longer piece) to make it look like a cross. Any glue (like superglue) would work, I used one named flexkwik.

Step 3: Making the Stand - the Bulb Mount

So this is basically a hollow PVC pipe of 5 cm diameter (approx.) and 30 cm length.

Two holes were made at the bottom so that it can be mounted on top of the base (that we made in the previous step).

Step 4: Making the Stand - the L Bracket

There is a phrase saying "fighting fire with fire". The same tactics was used here too. Using a lighter, scrap PVC pipe pieces were bent into an "L" shape. Holes were made in accordance with the bulb mount, so that it can be attached easily.

1/4 inch nails were handy while attaching the L- bracket to the base (cross shaped structure).

The bulb mount was then attached to the L -bracket using two bolts.

Step 5: The Bulb Head

I have seen my many kinds of garden light, but the funnel like structure(at the top) was always my favorite. So I decided to make one with a funnel xD

So, to build that, I used a funnel (medium sized, nearly 13 cm base diameter) . In order to close the top, a bottle cap was stuck up on the funnel end ( after removing some portion so that the cap would sit tight).

Step 6: The Bulb Cover

I had some bottles lying around, and to my luck I found one that fit my needs perfectly. I had to cut the base, as it was not flat, but otherwise this was a perfect choice.

Step 7: A Little Bit Paint Job

Plain black - that's how I painted it. I thought of using other colors but ended up painting the whole thing black. But it was way better than I thought it would end up at. Also, the acrylic paint did seem to fall off, so I had to do a second coat after the first one dried.

Step 8: Onto to the Electronics

Now the big part!!

My initial idea was to have an array of white LED light, that lights up when needed. But my esp8266 and neopixel ring had other ideas. So, I decided to include them in the project, which in turn would give me a colorful garden.

The circuit is pretty simple:

The white LED array will be attached to a transistor and is controlled by the esp8266

The neopixel ring posed me a certain issue: It won't light up if given 5V power and 3.3V logic . So the turn around was to use 3.3V voltage output of the esp8266 and it seemed to handle the power well (though I have not tried it at full brightness for hours). As a sidenote, the neopixel ring + esp8266 duo took about 200 mA current at 50% brightness ( The datasheet says maximum current 1A for the ams1117 regulator on esp8266).

However, this doesn't stop you from not using a transistor. The neopixel ring won't turnoff unless and until you cutoff it's data line (if you don't, the ring would turn into a havoc with weird lightings). So what I did was to set brightness to zero and then cutoff the data line (using an NPN transistor). This would not turn off the ring, but would rather look like it's turned off. (You can also completely shut it down using a PNP transistor, or with an NPN transistor along with the above setup).

NOTE : The easyeda software only had esp-12e footprint, ignore the footprint (the pin numbers are correct according to esp8266)

Step 9: Making the LED Array

I made three 3 x 1 led arrays with LEDs arranged parallelly. For this purpose, a large perfboard was cut into three pieces (1.5 x 10 cm). LEDs were then soldered to each of these maintaining equal distance between each . In order to avoid accidental shorting ( these boards would be placed close to each other), heat shrink tubings were used in between the LEDs. Finally, some male header pins were used, so that each of these boards can be connected to the main perfboard,

Step 10: Soldering and Attaching the Power Wires

All the components are soldered according to the circuit diagram. Some header pins were attached, keeping in mind about the esp8266 (I usually don't solder main boards on perfboard), so that jumper wires can be used to connect esp8266 to the main perfboard. Also keep in mind that we need space to attach esp8266 to this board( with the help of screws), so try to keep all the header pins together.

Finally, we need to attach the power wires, from my perfboard design, the 5V and the ground were brought to the center ( at the center of neopixel ring), on the thought that wires would be able to go through the center which would have been neat looking. But I forgot about the tension factor, which means it would be better to attach the wires onto something sturdy, so that all the tension forces, would not affect the solder joint (that is, the wire tip). So I had to attach the wires to one of the white led strip (which effectively is another solder joint, but much more stronger). Also, heat shrink tubes were used to arrange the wires .

Step 11: Attaching Everything Together

The bulb cover was attached to stand/bulb mount using an adhesive.

Since, the esp8266 and main perfboard are connected using jumper wires, the resulting wirings are bound to look messy. This is where heat shrink tube played a major role. All the loose wires were tightened together into a bundle , which made the whole wiring compact.

Now, it was a bit tricky to attach the bulb head to the bulb cover. I used some pen refills and screws, and finally, a glue gun to attach the bulb head (have a look at the images).

Note that the perfboard lies in between bulb head and bulb cover with neo pixel ring facing downwards.

Step 12: Setting Up Blynk

To control the garden light, we take the help of Blynk which has an arduino library to help connect esp8266 with the mobile application.

To setup the application (in this case, for controlling the garden light), you need to create a new project in the homescreen of the blynk mobile app and give it a name and add the widgets you like. Remember to add the pins for each of these widgets. Also, copy the authentication number as this is necessary in the source code(for esp8266).

Step 13: The Code

The code deals with two switches(one for neopixel ring and other for white LEDs), a brightness adjustor and a color changer, in the blynk app (the widgets mentioned in the above step).

The esp8266 connects with the WiFi using the hardcoded credentials and then checks for data from the blynk app. Once some data is received (either switching on lights, or changing color or brightness of neopixel ring,etc.) the esp8266 is made to switch on/off appropriate transistors using corresponding digital pins or to communicate with neopixel ring.

GardenLight.ino
Download

Step 14: The Power Source

I had an old mobile charger (5V, 550mA output) whose pins were broken. I tweaked it a little bit and added custom pins and has been a good friend of mine since then. All you need to do is to connect the power wires to the corresponding wires from the mobile charger.

Step 15: Final Look and Future Considerations

Since this is made from a lot of scrap materials, it is difficult to judge it's look (Well, everything looks beautiful if you look it at the right way ;)

Even though, I do not plan it to take it further, my future considerations would be add to add a backup battery that can be charged by a solar panel. Moreover it would be much better to add a PIR sensor, so that the light gets on whenever there is a movement near it.

Thank You for all those who read until here!! Have a good day