What's up makers?! Mike Clifford here and today I'm going to show you how I created this
LED desk lamp.  I'm calling it the
"living art" desk lamp because when you
fire it up, it'll do all kinds of cool
visualization patterns.  It's also really
practical as a normal desk lamp because
you could switch the mode so it gives
out a nice white light and a warm white
or a cool white color of your choosing
it also has a red light as a nightlight
setting hey everyone real quick I
realized as I was about to start editing
that I totally forgot one really
important thing from my opening
monologue there and that was that I made
three of these things too and bamboo
plywood and one in walnut which had not
seen here the reason I made three of
them is because I'm celebrating fifty
thousand subscribers with a giveaway as
soon as I figure out the logistics of
organizing the giveaway which should be
sometime within the next week I'll make
an announcement here and on Instagram so
keep your eye out for that and you can
win one of these and some other cool
prizes but now let's get to the build to
construct the main miter box for the
light I used some scrapped bamboo
plywood and scrap walnut plywood that I
had lying around since the scraps were
different sizes I used different
techniques with the table saw to cut the
pieces and it looks a bit more
complicated than it is but in the end of
the day it's just four identical
rectangles with 45-degree edges and you
can cut them any way you like with the
table saw circular saw or miter saw
since we're making this look more
complicated than it is figured why not
have some fun and have some dramatic
b-roll music to go along with
oh man maybe I've been watching too many
PD McKinnon videos but I have fun with
that let me know what you think back to
the build the front of the light is made
from a one-eighth inch sheet of acrylic
and your table saw blade is probably
also one eighths of an inch so it pretty
much works perfectly to cut a slot in
the four sides of your box to hold the
acrylic from
Sparta's optional but I use the router
to give the edges of the light a nice
clean look making the first light I
routed what would be the front outer
edges of the light first before the glue
up and I realized afterwards it was a
mistake because the 45 degree miter
corners got a lot of tear out when going
through the router bit next I used a
rabbeting bit on all four sides of what
would be the back of the lamp to cut out
the rabbet for the back panel this I do
recommend doing before the glue up
because it gives you square corners in
your rabbit while I'm cutting the
acrylic sheets for the front of the
lights I just want a quick minute remind
you that if you like my videos please
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videos for you guys before the glue up I
use the tape as a clamp technique and
there are plethora of videos about this
so just search that if you need to
figure it out I won't go into detail
here the one thing I did do differently
was to use the acrylic front panel and
put it into the slots I cut in the four
sides to hold them in place and make it
easier to square up at the box during
the glue this worked really well you
just got to be careful not to get glue
onto the acrylic panel
I cut the square back panels for the
lights from quarter inch MDF using my
new funky crosscut sled okay so I got
our digress and talked about this funky
crosscut sled because I didn't expect to
like it as much as I did shop projects
normally aren't my thing so I want to
know if I can add some adducts realist
to some trout project would you like to
see some video for those on my channel
will leave a comment and let me know so
here I'm just marking and drilling a
quarter inch hole that will accept the
power jack and three three-quarter inch
holes that will allow air to circulate
and prevent overheating of the LEDs our
glue up is now dried so I removed all
the tape from the box and went about
drilling a hole to accept the LED push
button I use these same LED push buttons
in my Bluetooth speaker built and
inserted them into the wood in the same
way and it's a little bit tricky so if
you plan to make this go back and watch
that video to get the details on this
process don't know what I cut myself on
but actual blood sweat and tears going
into your lab before moving on to the
base I want to back up and revisit the
point about mistakenly routing the edges
of the lamp before the glue up for the
second two I routed the edges after the
glue up and it worked much better so
we're in the middle this project and ran
into a design dilemma my original plan
was to use these steel flat irons and
paint them white and then just attach
those to this LED matrix so that we can
rotate and then I'm just gonna use maybe
some bamboo or the same kind of wood to
attach this to the base but I just
didn't like how it looked so back to the
drawing board next idea was well maybe
I'll make a statement and I'll put him
on a live edge cookie slam so I got
these big slabs and I just tried how
they looked on top of them and it just
wasn't working at all though we're
getting even worse now finally what I
arrived on which i think is gonna look
pretty cool was just to use
a u-shaped bass made out of the same
material that we're making the box out
of going to take your 3/4 inch dowels
which have the quarter inch tapped hole
drilled in them
insert them into the matching 3/4 inch
hole put those into the 3/4 inch pulls
and the sides of the lamp and now you
can kind of tilt this around you can
direct the light down you can direct it
up gotta do it it's kind of like even
like an old spotlight we're gonna use
brass thumb screws here on the side that
are quarter inch go into the threaded
holes in the Dow hold it together so you
can lock it in place or unlock it to
move it around without any further ado
let's get going let's put the space
together and finish the slide up I'm
ready to turn it on
so the electronics for this are going to
be dead simple in fact you can do it
with no soldering yeah that I said that
no soldering the only things I soldered
were the Arduino Nano
and a screw terminal that allows you to
plug things easily in without soldering
into the Nano but you can buy both these
products pre soldered and I'm going to
put a link into video description to all
the things you need to do this without
soldering so you've got your LED matrix
and it's gonna come pre-wired so you
don't have to do any wiring there it's
got power and the connection to go to
your Arduino already in it so we're just
going to use some metal L braces and
we're going to put those you screw this
to the sides of the light on the inside
and we're going to then just use some
hot glue which I apologize I forgot to
get a shot of that but we're going to
just use hot glue to attach the LED
matrix and suspend it behind about a
half inch or 3/4 of an inch behind the
front so that you get some nice
diffusion then we're just going to take
our screw terminal and we're going to
hot glue it to the back inside of the
panel we're going to put our jack in now
this is an optional step here because I
did solder this jack but I'm going to
give you a link to a description to one
that you don't have to solder so you can
get by with that without soldering and
that gives you your power supply so
you're going to pull your power supply
in wires from the power are going to run
into these flip connectors which again
require no soldering to connect it to
the LED matrix the LED matrix is going
to run out to one of the jst s in your
Arduino screw terminal the other jst
from your LED push button is going to go
into your second jst and that's it
pretty happy how this one came out I
hope you like it too if you did hit the
like button subscribe so you get
notified about future bills and about
the contest to win one of these that's
all I got for this time so it's a wrap
I'll see you next time
