Requirements:
- Diffused RGBW light that is great for reading that can be mounted to the wall
- Requires different modes of operation. a) Crazy light show b) Adjustable R G B and W light via faders
- Reading mode should start out at the set brightness and then fade incrementally for an hour until eventually shutting off. You shouldn’t notice the light is getting dimmer.
This was a basic project. The ESP32 is overkill for this, but I had it on hand. For linear faders that are normally used on a mixing console create voltage dividers that are read by the ADC on the ESP32. The light is dimmed with standard PWM and MOSFETs. Fun artifact. My son wanted to know why his ceiling fan was spinning backwards. He learned all about aliasing! Fun stuff. The PWM frequency I chose is just a hair faster than the rotation of the fan. Persistence of vision says humans can see light when it blinks fast enough, but tell that to the fan. It knows!
This was a fun little project. The greatest challenge was getting the clearance right on the 3D printed “tracks” for the LEDs.
As always I always struggle with wiring and connectors. The NAME OF CONNECTOR GOES HER wasn’t nearly as handy for plugging and unplugging as I had hoped. I used an RJ45 connector for the ESP32 to talk to the fader. That worked well. The lesson is a consumer-approved connector should always be used for “consumer approved tasks” whatever that means.
