Over Christmas we found time to get our giant light bulb up and running as a test rig for the Cheery lighting controller.

A few months ago we designed a filament  holder to fit inside the glass bulb using FreeCAD.

3d FreeCAD model

The filament holder was then dual printed with silver ABS and PVA. It just about fitted into our CPC 3D printer, and took about 12 hours to print.

Partial Print

Completed Print

Removed from printer

After printing we chucked it in a big tub of water to dissolve the PVA and it looked great.

Dissolving the PVA

Here is a video of the dissolving process in a mixture of slo-mo and time lapse.

We fitted the filament into the Giant Lightbulb to check that it fitted as designed!

It fits!

We then fitted 89 WS2812 LEDs to the filament holder in 8 strips and soldered them all together, fitting it together with a bit of three core flex, using the earth as the data line and live and neutral for the 5v supply. Eventually the Cheery WiFi controller will fit inside the base of the light bulb.

All wired up

No we connected it to an Arduino which I found in the bottom of my cupboard. With a quick compile of some demo code we have this video!

Amazing

Next update when we get the proper lighting controller working – then integration with our interactive kiosk products to achieve a fantastic exhibition stand.