Hello I'm Quinten and I made a project called Sunshine.

In short it's a smartlight that can display various effects ranging from fading to warm colors when the sun goes down to playing along with music.

I made it to brighten dark days, add ambience to my room and help me keep track when the sun goes down.

To make this project you will need the following supplies :

- a Pringles can

- a vase larger than the Pringles can

- optionally a 2th vase

- a big sheet of foamboard or any building material

- some tracing paper

- a Raspberry PI 4

- a way to power the PI ( 5V 3A USB-C adaptor )

- a Neopixel ledstrip ( 300 LEDS )

- a 5V 8A powersupply

- 2x 10kOhm resistors

- 2x LGT8F328p microcontrollers ( any Arduino should work too )

- an E-paper display

- a microphone module

- a TMP36

- a DHT11

- a DC barreljack

- a piece of perfboard

Tools I used while making this project include :

- a soldering iron

- solder

- electrical tape

- scissors

- a cutting board

- a box cutter

- a hot glue gun

- hot glue

- a metal ruler

Step 1: Attaching the LEDS to the Pringles Can.

Attach the LEDS to the Pringles can, make sure the input side of the NeoPixel strip is at the bottom of the lamp.

The metal side of the Pringles can is facing upwards.

Tightly wrap the LEDS around the can until you reach the top. In my case I cut the strip at 300 LEDS.

Step 2: Soldering Components.

I soldered all components to a piece of perfboard according to this schematic.

The perfboard is connected to the PI using a 20x2 female pin header.

If you dont feel comfortable soldering you can always use a breadboard, however this will make the connections quite flimsy and the entire assembly will be more bulky.

Step 3: Making the Case

To make the case we need 3 square pieces of equal size.

They have to be atleast a bit larger than the vase. Its entirely up to you how large you want it to be!

The first one you leave as a blank square.

The second one you make a small hole near the inner diameter of the vase to pass the wires through.

The third one you cut a circle in the center that fits the vase.

You also need 4 rectangular pieces of equal size. 2 of them need a few cuts.

The first one I cut holes for the ports on the PI and a hole to be able to connect the powersupply to the lamp.

The second one I cut a hole in the center to fit the display, these dimensions will be dependent on the display used.

In my case the square pieces are 20cm x 20cm

And the rectangular pieces are 20cm x 6cm

You now glue those to make a box, I didn't glue the top sheets for maintenance reasons.

Now attach the tracing paper to the vase like shown in the picture.

If you want to you can use the circular cutout in the top of the vase.

Step 4: Testfitting the Case.

Test and make sure everything fits nicely.

It should look like in this picture.

Step 5: Mounting the Hardware Inside the Case.

Make sure the PI is nicely connected to the IO backplate.

The display needs to be attached to the front plate besides that it doesnt matter where in the case you put the hardware, aslong as nothing is touching eachother to avoid shortcircuits.

If the microphone module doesnt pick up any sound adjust the potentiometer and or attach the microphone itself to one of the plates. Theres an LED onboard that blinks every time it picks up sound.

I also would suggest adding a flat piece of foamboard to hold the PI inplace.