Minecraft Ore Lamp

So we started a little fun project recently to make some RGB Mood Lamps. We chose a Minecraft Ore block as the basis for the lamp itself. I found the STL files to 3D Print the block on Thingiverse. A few were printed out using black filament and several were done in matt grey. The original lamps had a holder on the base designed to fit an Arduino Micro Pro. As this is a kind of Arduino I never use I redesigned a new base that would hold a Wemos D1 Mini. The Wemos has an ESP8266 module and so gives the lamp WiFi capability to enable remote control.

In the centre of the lamp are 5 RGB neopixels to allow any chosen colour on all 5 visible sides. The photo above shows some nice colour gradients between the sides.

After assembling the lamps I then wrote some code to make the lamps change colours, do some patterns and some modes such as ‘Police Mode’ where it flashes blue and red like a Police car.

I then added some further code to enable the lamp to be controlled from a mobile phone using the Android Blynk app. The app allows you to choose any colour you want, to turn the lamp on and off and to choose Police Mode. Further modes will be added as and when I get around to coding them.