Glow Cloud Mini Lamp

At long last, the Instructable you've all been waiting for - how to make a glowing cloud out of an RGB LED and an Arduino board! Night Vale fans and cumulonimbus lovers alike can now enjoy this fluffly night light.

Materials:

1x RGB LED

1x Arduino Uno

1x SPDT Mini Power Switch

3x 10k Ohm resistors

1x soldering iron

1x spool of wire

1x spool of solder

1x spool of fishing line or similar

1x bag of batting

optional

1x wire cutters

1x AC power adapter

Multiple spools in varying colors for clarity

Step 1: Build Your Circuit on a Breadboard.

Put together your circuit as shown here.

Step 2: Apply Arduino Code

Paste the code below into Arduino. Verify and upload.

Step 3: Take It Off the Breadboard.

Here’s where the soldering comes in.

3a. Solder a resistor to your red, green, and blue anodes. Don’t touch the common cathode (longest leg) yet!!

• I recommend shortening the resistor legs with wire cutters for ease of access.

3b. Solder your R, G, B wires to their respective anodes.

3c. Okay. Here comes the common cathode you’ve been waiting to solder. Solder a wire to the common cathode. Be generous with the length. This part should be a little bit longer than the R, G and B wires.

3d. Solder the free end of the wire to the center peg of your mini power switch. (As pictured)

3e. Finally, solder another length of wire to one of the outside pegs of your switch. (As pictured)

Step 4: Plug It In!

Plug your R wire into Pin 11, G wire into Pin 10, and B wire into Pin 9.

Plug the common wire into ground (GND).

Flip your switch, and presto! It’s a lamp.

Step 5: Make the Cloud.

Spread out your batting on the table and lay your circuit down with the LED roughly in the center. Leave the switch sticking out so you don’t have to fish for it every time you want to turn the lamp on and off.

Wrap the batting snugly around the circuit, tucking the Arduino and wires inside. You should be able to hide any trace of the wires comfortably.

Now, you need your fishing line. I used blue string for visibility’s sake in this tutorial.

Wrap the fishing line around the center of the cloud and tie a knot to secure it. Then work your way around the cloud, wrapping fishing line as needed to keep the insides in.

Finally, secure the end of the fishing line to the knot in the center or otherwise make a loop to hang your cloud.

You have the option to plug the AC adapter into the Arduino to turn on your lap without a computer.

Step 6: You're Done!

Hang the cloud in a dark space, flip the switch and enjoy!