LED Infinity Table

Reflection

Spending six weeks at Bluestamp Engineering has not only been a great experience, but it has also been a time of realization. Realization that you can learn the most through hands on work on your own! That you don’t need to spend a whole day in a class learning about what Engineering is about. You only need hands on work and creativity to create something wonderful on your own. In the beginning I did not believe I was capable to keep up with what I believed to be a fast paced environment the students and leaders had in the classroom. I slowly began to realize that I was not so different and not so lost. By the end of the first week I had created a phone charger using a PCB Board and batteries and that was when it hit me. The sense of self accomplishment and amount of knowledge you gain from completing a small or large project is something I crave for now. I am extremely excited to share with everyone my Infinity LED Table.

Bill Of Materials

Ikea Table

NeoPixel LED Strip

Arduino Uno

Two Way Mirror

Reflective Mirror

1000uf Capacitor

4 male to male jumper wires

Laptop with Arduino app, Fritzing app, and Onshape

Final Milestone

Model and Measurements:

You can see model/measurements in this link

Before I could do anything major with the table I was provided with, I had to measure and know the table inside and out. I began this process by using a website named onshape. After signing up, I proceeded to create a 3D model of my table and the future cuts I would be performing. The website was helpful enough to provide a section devoted to making a professional measurement sheet. After all of this was done and approved by one of the leaders here at bluestamp I was then allowed training to use the power drill and handsaw to create cuts and holes to finally complete my table.

First Milestone

Schematic:

The schematic is shown here in this link

Code:

The main code is shown in this link

Library for code to work is shown in this link also.

Through out the whole process of making this LED strip to light up and create beautiful, lovely, and explosive patterns. I was some what frustrated with myself for not being able to figure out how to connect everything correctly based off of an instruct-able I was following, but it allowed me to experiment with different things I plugged and unplugged on the Arduino, electrolytic capacitor, 5v DC barrel jack, and a JST SM connector. After I figured out how to connect everything I had to add in the code to make this LED strip come to life. After code after code based off of different websites I realized the code was not working because I was not adding part of the codes library which was not provided. So I eventually found a library that can be used for my code which was included as “#include <Adafruit_NeoPixel.h>” this allowed arduino to be able to install the code I was using into the Arduino Circuit Board and LED strip lights.