SepTwOrb, a 7 sided TwOrb lamp

During the Summer/Fall of 2024, quite a few seven sided wooden things were crafted in the woodshop. Once the proper miter angle was set on the table saw, it was really just a matter of cutting wood into equal lengths and gluing them together; and that is what I did… a lot. After I started to amass some septacular objects, it seemed like a good idea to continue crafting with those objects.

Aside from looking at a pile of seven sided wooden things and thinking it would be wise to make something out of them, there was also a pile of 5volt WS2801 Pixel LED strands in my electronics pile. They were the leftovers from the GLMR project, some of which were used in the Orb project. Not wanting the light strands to get to dusty, I created the TwOrb (Orb 2.0) project so that I could once again have a network controlled light.

By merging a 7 sided wooden thing with TwoOrb, the SepTwOrb project was born!

A seven sided wooden thing

seven sided wooden frame held in my fingertips. visible through the center of the frame is my pupper doggo This is how it started, or at least this is how it started after I started making 7 sided wooden things.

picking a microcontroller

7 sided wooden frame with white paper glued to the inside. there are 2 microcontrollers leaning against the frame. once is wider than the frame. After gluing a seven sided wooden thing to another seven sided wooden thing, I had a good frame to work with. A sheet of white paper was cut to shape (mostly) and glued to the frame. The ESP32-C3 I had been developing TwOrb with was going to be too big for this project. Fortunately, the Raspberry Pi Pico W is narrow enough to fit my needs.

THERE. ARE. SEVEN. LIGHTS!

seven illuminated pixel leds connected to a microcontroller, connected to a laptop which is displaying console output I really should have purchased the pico with pre-soldered headers. My mind says soldering is no problem, my eyes says those header pins are getting tinier by the year.

Hot glue

backside of the seven sided frame. there are seven pixel leds and a microcontroller hot glued to the inside of the frame If I had to do it all over again, I would custom cut the wooden pieces to suit the electronics, and not just cram some electronics into some random 7 sided wooden things.

Mounted on the wall

seven sided wooden fram hanging on a wall. there is a USB cable extending from the bottom of the frame Wow, in this lighting it is almost impossible to see the horribly bad drywall tape job I did a few years ago.

Light it up

seven sided wooden frame emitting blue light. the light is creating shadows on a horribly bad drywall tape job So what can it do? I'm glad I asked. TwOrb can set the color solid, or fade to a color, blink a color, or cycle through the rainbow, or fade to a random color over and over again; all by sending an HTTP command to an API endpoint.

But there is a problem. TwOrb doesn't have code to ensure that the device is always connected to the network. It will connect when the device powers on, but if there is a loss of connection, there is no mechanism to reconnect. Code from TwOrb was upcycled into the WaterTimer project, and in that project code was written to resolve the network problem. woowee, I really need to fold that fix back into TwOrb. Also, I really like saying 'tworb'

tworb tworb tworb

cheers,
jezra

Jezra.net