This is my DIY night light Kaleidoscopic projector that I created as a surprise Christmas gift for my wife. It started when I found some brand new strips of mirrored plastic trim panel that someone was discarding. My hoarding tendencies thought I could make something cool out of this. Sure enough a kaleidoscope came to mind.
An ordinary kaleidoscope is cool already but I thought it should project the image of what one normally sees onto a wall.
A static image was good but an active image was even better. This is why I decided the entire kaleidoscope should spin. With the LED's slightly off center from the scope, the projected image would be more interesting.
The next piece was the LED lighting. This LED driver PCB is an obsolete board that was discarded from work and I reprogrammed it to drive three colored LED's in a cyclical fading pattern.
The kaleidoscope is mounted onto a plastic gear wheel which is hollowed out. A small DC motor with a worm gear is used to drive the rotation of the kaleidoscope. The speed of the motor is variable by adjusting the output voltage of the DC/DC converter which powers it.
The lamp is powered by a 12V DC wall adapter.
3 янв 2018
