Introduction: Rainbow Voronoi Mushroom: a WiFi Controlled Glow in the Dark Night Light

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About: I'm a 41 year old theatrical designer and educator. I have boundless curiosity, chimerical aesthetic, and Sisyphean perseverance. The results of my whimsical adventures can be found here and on my instagram.
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I'm a bit of a project materials collector. Sometimes I will hold onto a part for years and then it will click like a rubegoldbergian machine. An idea comes to me and things fall into place and I know what I was saving it for. This project is an example of this. I was building a set of SlimeVR trackers for a different project and had a few WeMos D1 Mini micro controllers left over. While hunting on the internet for things I could do with these internet of things micro controllers I discovered wled which is a way of controlling addressable LEDs over Wi-Fi via micro controllers like the WeMos D1 Mini. The exact type of LED's I had left over from a light up staff project I had done a few years back. So there I was sitting with the parts to make some sort of wirelessly controlled LED Light I just needed to design what it would look like. At about this time things were really falling into place and what came across my Instagram feed but #gameofshrooms. Which is a yearly mushroom themed "art-n-seek" event. When I think about mushrooms I often thinK about them growing out of tree stumps or branches and it hit me I had that chunk of a Christmas tree waiting to be turned into something. Now with the parts and the concept lined up I moved on to thinking about how I would make the mushroom. I settled on designing a 3d printed one because I knew I could control the wall thickness to function as a diffuser for the LED Rings. With all the pieces falling into place I fired up Fusion360 and got to designing this 3d printed rainbow mushroom night light. I'll go into all the steps of the design process in this instructable but if you just want the STLs and to get going on the physical side of things feel free to skip ahead as desired.

Supplies

The links in the following list are not affiliate links. Just me trying to be helpful.

Tools

  • Soldering Iron
  • Helping Hands/Panavise Jr.
  • Drill Cordless or otherwise
  • forstner drill bits of various sizes (I used a 3mm Bit for the mounting holes and a 19mm one for the cavity.)
  • 3d printer
  • Hot glue gun
  • Clamps
  • Mini screw driver, I really like the Teeny Turner.
  • Razor/knife, I use this one
  • Computer
  • USB A to Micro USB Cable

Parts

Software

Optional Files (If you just want to print the lamp as I have it and not make it your own download these files and skip past the design section of the instructable.)

Step 1: Defining the Design Goals and Parameters

I find it really helpful for me when I'm starting a project to define the design goals. For this project I had some clear design choices to make. Here is my list of goals.

  1. Use my leftover WeMos D1 Mini for something
  2. Use my leftover 45mm LED Rings
  3. Hide the individual LEDs
  4. Connect to the hunk of wood
  5. Hide the wires
  6. Be a Mushroom

If you google mushrooms or mushroom lights you'll see a lot of examples. They are round and often in fantasy or psychedelic art a depicted glowing. I also found myself drawn to particularly drawn to mushrooms that made use of Voronoi patterns. The thing that drew me to 3d printed Voronoi patterned objects was that they are almost impossible to manufacture in another way while also looking organic. If I made a 3 part mushroom light. The resulting lamp would hold the LEDs, offer a diffused/obstructed view of the individual LEDs, I could hide the WeMos D1 Mini in the wooden base of the lamp, and run the wires down the center. Now that I had that settled I fired up Fusion 360 and Meshmixer and got started.

Step 2: Fusion 360 and Mesh Mixer

I knew I was going to want this Mushroom Lamp to be in three parts.

  1. The stem of the mushroom
  2. A LED light diffuser
  3. The Voronoi cap

Since the mushroom was going to be round I knew I was going to be using Fusion 360's Revolve function to make the three parts. For the first sketch I used the line tool to rough out and then refine the shape of the three different parts. I made the initial outline then used the offset tool to create the internal lines for the lamp shade. I wanted the lamp shade to be .8mm thick so it would print without any infill and two perimeters. This would help keep the quality of the diffused LED light consistent. Then once I was happy with how the shape looked I got to revolving. First I revolved the cap, then the LED light diffuser, and finally the body. If you are making your own designs I'd say just play around until you have a mushroom shape that makes you happy. With the general shapes for the three objects made it was time to make it look even more mushroomy.

If you've ever looked closely at the bottom of a mushroom you've no doubt noticed that it has a ridged texture knows as the gills of the mushroom. For the gills of my mushroom I created an offset plane on a vertical axis and drew a center point circle with the center on the bottom edge of the mushroom base. From there I extruded the bottom half of the circle into the body of the mushroom. I made sure to select the create new body option while extruding. This is important as the next step won't work if it is joined together with the mushroom base. Once I had the one ridge made I used the circular pattern tool to create perfectly spaced copies of the ridge all around the mushroom. I tweaked the number of ridges until I finally settled on 50 ridges for my lamp. With those 50 ridges made I extruded the flat surface of the mushroom base .2mm down while clicking join to unify the mushroom base and 50 ridges into a single body.

With the diffuser and mushroom base designed it was time to work on the Voronoi cap. To do this I selected the body and exported it as an STL. Once I had that STL I headed over to Meshmixer and imported it. The first thing to do in Meshmixer is to turn on the Wireframe view. The keyboard shortcut for that is 'W' with that pressed you'll see lots of evenly shaped triangles. These triangles are the foundation of what will be the Voronoi pattern. As they are now it wouldn't make for a very interesting organic pattern. That's where the reduce brush from the sculpt section comes in handy. I played around varying the size and strength parameters while "painting" different parts of the mushroom cap until it had a nice distribution of large and small triangles that felt a bit more organic/chaotic. The next step was to apply the Voronoi pattern. To do that in Meshmixer you select the make pattern tool in the edit section of the software. It starts off with a rod pattern. For the mushroom cap we want the Dual Edges pattern. At this point I might thought the software had crashed. It took my machine a good 35 seconds to crunch through to victory with no outward signs that it was doing anything. Once it was done I was greeted by a vision of what the future held. The only parameter I changed was the element dimensions I increased it from 2mm to 3mm. Having a .4mm nozzle FDM printer I knew the larger elements would be easier to print. With that done I hit enter Meshmixer turned out a glorious Voronoi pattern mushroom cap. This was really coming together. I exported my new mesh from Meshmixer and imported it back into Fusion 360 as a bmesh.

With the Voronoi mushroom cap imported back into Fusion 360 I used the section analysis tool and rotated it around to see if the new cap was going to run into any issues with sitting on the LED diffuser. It looked to me like the very tip of the LED diffuser was going to be a problem so I created an offset construction plane to use as a cutting tool and trimmed off the top of the LED diffuser. After that there were some hard angles on the tip so I used the fillet tool to round them out. With that final tweak to the design the mushroom was ready to print.

If you're not designing your own mushroom and would like the files for the 3 parts you can find them here.

Step 3: Get Your Print On

Now it was time to slice and print the three parts of the mushroom light. I used rainbow glow in the dark filament for the base and the liner. The hope was that when the light was turned off there would be some cool different glowing colors for a little bit. Unfortunately the nightlight was so small that the amount of filament used wasn't enough to change colors even once. So if you know of a more rapidly color changing glow in the dark filament please let me know. I sliced the mushroom base and the LED diffuser with a .15mm layer height and a 15% infill. The Voronoi cap I printed in the Jeans Red PLA as I felt the soft ref felt more natural with a .10mm layer height and 15% infill. In all honestly I printed out a few different colors before deciding red was my favorite. While the different pieces were printing I started working on the electronics.

Step 4: Flashing WLED to the WeMos D1 Mini

I learned my lesson on my last project with cheap WeMos D1 Minis that before you do anything with them you want to make sure you can flash them. I had a run of bad luck and only about 7 out of 10 working. That being said every one of the ones I got from the link I included earlier worked for me though your millage may vary. With that lesson in mind I used the micro usb cable to connect my WeMos D1 mini to my computer, fired up google chrome, and headed over to https://install.wled.me/ From there you can select the version of WLED you want to use I went with the stable 0.13.3 version. A pop up will come up asking to access your com ports with all of them listed. If you have more than one make sure to pick the right one. If no com ports show up you might need to find and download the drivers for the WeMos D1 Mini I had it work with no issues on one windows 10 machine and then another windows 10 machine needed the driver. The kno.wled.ge has troubleshooting guides if you are having trouble. Once your device is flashed you'll get a prompt to enter your Wi-Fi info you can skip this and do it later on the device itself.(I know I did.) With the device flashed I grabbed my phone and connected to the WLED Wi-Fi network with the default password wled1234 .Once I was connected to the network I was greeted by the screen that let me set up my Wi-Fi credentials or go right into the controls. At this point I was confident that the WeMos D1 Mini had been flashed correctly. Unless you have a really fast printer now might be a good time to take a break while things finish printing.

Step 5: Setting Up the Mushroom Base

Now that I had all the printed parts it was time to solder up the LEDs for the Mushroom Base. I used red wire for the +5v, black wire for the ground, and yellow wire for the data in. I didn't plan on having more than one mushroom so I didn't need a data out wire. Once the three wires were soldered to the corresponding spaces on the PCB I fed the three wires through the hole in the center of the mushroom base. If you need help with how to solder you're in the right place I even did the search for you already. How To Solder. Next step was figuring out the wooden base.

Step 6: Drilling Out Your Hunk of Wood: a Wish for a Bench Vise

I played around with the position of the mushroom base until I found a position until I was happy with how it was looking. I like giving it a little tilt. Then using the 3mm forstner drill bit I drilled out the hole for the mushroom base. The next step was clearing out the cavity for the WeMos D1 Mini. I'm going to admit there are probably a lot of ways to do this better than what I'm about to explain so if you think you have a better way of doing this step I'm almost 100 percent sure it is. I think a bench vice would have helped make this both safer and would have had better results. Since I don't have a bench vise I had to improvise. I have these little sand bags I made for a backyard game I used one to help create a stable surface for the uneven side of the wooden piece along with some clamps to secure things. Once I was confident it wasn't going anywhere I used my 19mm forstner bit to create overlapping cut outs in the bottom of the wooden piece to create a cavity for the microcontroller. Once I had it mostly cleared out I trimmed a few of the edges with an hobby knife. I checked to make sure the WeMos D1 Mini fit and planed out where the USB C power port was going to go. Then it was back to the 3mm forstner bit to drill one more hole. I fed the wires from the USB C power port through their new hole and used the 2 1.7m 6mm screws to secure it in place.

Step 7: Soldering Everything Together and Testing

I drew up a wiring diagram and if it makes sense to you feel free to skip reading the rest of this step. I fed the wires for the Mushroom base down through the wood hunk and soldered the red wire to the 5v terminal, the black wire to the Gnd terminal, and the yellow wire to the D4 terminal. I also carefully soldered the red and black wires of the USB C charging port to the corresponding colored wires terminals. With everything soldered up I crammed it into the base powered it up and tested it out. Now that I was confident it was all working it was time to get my hot glue gun and hide the wiring.

Step 8: Hot Glue, Press Fitting, and Hiding Wiring

I put a little dab of hot glue on the base of the mushroom base to secure it into the wood piece. Some hot glue to hold the LEDs to the mushroom base and some to help with strain relief for the wires. Once I was confident everything was secure I press fit the LED diffuser onto the mushroom base. Next I used self adhesive cork which I cut to size to hide the wiring and protect any surfaces the night light might be put on. I tested it again because that's how I roll.

Step 9: Drop the Voronoi Cap On, Connect, and Enjoy

Place the 3d printed Voronoi cap on the mushroom light. (It just loosely rests on top so which allows it to double as a desk fidget toy. Give it a spin you know you want to.) Once it was powered up I reconnected to the the light's Wi-Fi and using the controls played around with choosing different colors and some of the built in effects.

Thanks for taking the time to check out this instructable. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did making it. Let me know if you have any questions and if you make a light of your own I'd love to hear about it. If you want to see project photos before they hit instructables or want to see the projects that don't end up on instructables you can find me on instagram. Thanks again.

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