This article is a kind of compilation of an older blog post and a draft continuation of the topic, which until now has never been published.
Since both sources are directly connected, it makes sense to rework them into one cohesive and entirely new article.
So, here we go…
Some time ago, my study room underwent a major transformation. It was turned into a workshop-laboratory, a place for projects that demanded order and cleanliness. This is especially true for tasks related to electronics. The garage workshop isn’t suitable for such purposes. A circular saw, sander, CNC machines, and other equipment that generate tons of dust and shavings during operation are far from ideal neighbors for semiconductors and microchips.
One of the key factors that ensured comfortable work in the workshop-laboratory was lighting. When working with electronics, where it’s crucial to see every detail in fine detail, the importance of proper lighting cannot be overstated. Regular household lights simply can’t handle this task, so I paid special attention to creating bright and even lighting in the workspace that used to be my study room.
The transformation itself took place years ago — back in early 2021. That’s also when the overall lighting issue in the room was resolved. The standard ceiling light was replaced with two large and very bright LED panels:
Now, after several years, I can confidently say that this decision was exceptionally successful. These ceiling-mounted lights have made the study room one of the brightest spaces in the entire house. The only real contender is the garage, which houses the second part of my workshop.
Living with such lighting in a room, of course, isn’t exactly cozy. But these spaces were chosen for work, not for living. For living, we have the rest of the house, equipped with beautiful, warm lights that create a sense of comfort and coziness during the darker hours.
The next step was to create lighting directly for the workstations in the study room workshop. These can be roughly categorized as “computer”, “3D printing”, “soldering” and “assembly”:
I believe the roles assigned to these workstations are fairly self-explanatory based on their names.
The “computer” and “3D printing” stations didn’t require much additional lighting: the ceiling lights are sufficient for the former, while the latter benefits from the built-in lighting provided by the printer itself. The other two stations — “soldering” and “assembly” — required much more attention in this regard. The reason is that both consist of desks topped with shelving units, where most of my endless storage troves are concentrated:
These shelves and their contents partially block the direct light from the ceiling fixtures, making additional lighting essential for these work areas.
Thus began the first phase of the project described in this article.
While clearing out clutter in the study before its most recent renovation, I discovered a box filled with scraps and remnants of LED strips that had accumulated over the years. A foot of strip here, a fragment there, spools with leftover pieces of various types, a jar of segments containing three to six LEDs each, and so on. None of it was long enough for a self-contained project, yet I couldn’t bring myself to just throw these bits away. So, I decided to use this pile of LED scraps to create lights for the workbenches — a great way to painlessly dispose of old junk and free up space for new supplies.
The base for the long lamp shades above the desks could be made from any long, concave surface. For instance, a large-diameter PVC water pipe split in half using a table saw:
It had been a while since I worked on a project built from scraps, odds, and ends. But isn’t that the essence of DIY? The most traditional of all its roots. Sometimes it’s good to go back to basics…
The stockpile of LED strip scraps in my storage was significantly underestimated in the early stages of the project! After installing the initially planned quantity, I realized the reserves had hardly diminished. Meanwhile, my goal was to get rid of them entirely. This forced me to take up the soldering iron and combine all the remaining fragments and pieces into additional strips of the required length. I then covered the entire inner surface of the lamp shades with these strips, leaving no gaps:
Inside the shades, I tried to arrange the fragments as randomly as possible. The thing is, many of the pieces in my stash had different “color temperatures,” ranging from 2500K to 4000K and higher. My goal was to mix them together to create an average “color temperature,” not too yellow and not too bluish.
I must admit, a substantial portion of the scraps and larger fragments ended up in storage because they had originally been purchased by mistake with the wrong color temperature for the intended conditions. For example, the shelves in the living room underwent three different lighting setups before I landed on the desired “temperature.” Unfortunately, no amount of modeling can reliably help here, no matter how detailed it is. A color temperature that seemed fine at first glance would, over time, start to irritate — either due to excessive yellowness or an overly bluish tint. This is because, in such cases, the overall impression depends not only on the light illuminating the shelves but also on the objects displayed on them.
With such a large number of long LED strips, connecting them one after the other in series seemed like a bad idea. The brightness loss in the last “bulbs” in the chain would be significant due to internal resistance.
I had encountered this problem in past projects and knew it could be solved in several ways. For example, by connecting the LED strip segments in parallel rather than in series:
The resulting “pipe scraps with bulbs” were temporarily attached under the lower shelves of the racks above the desks for testing under real-world conditions. I needed to determine whether the current stage of the project was worth further effort or if the whole mess should be sent to the trash. After all, those LED strips had long deserved to end up there, and I didn’t mind sacrificing the pipe scraps either — my garage is already overflowing with them.
To my surprise, I found that despite being made from leftover pipe, scraps, and odds and ends, the lights turned out to be incredibly comfortable, convenient, and practical! They provided exactly what I had always lacked in terms of workspace lighting: they didn’t take up space, didn’t glare directly into my eyes, and were nearly invisible under the shelves. In fact, visitors often didn’t realize where the waterfall of light was coming from. And the light output was impressive! The “average color temperature” was also pleasing to my eyes.
Well then… so be it. It was time to turn these prototypes into something that could rightfully be called proper lights.
All that was left to do was to cap the ends of the pipes with decorative covers and equip them with mounts designed to hang under the lower shelf of the rack:
To simplify the printing process, each mount was printed in two halves and then glued together:
As can be seen from the photos and diagrams, the mounts hold the lamp shades at a slight angle along the longitudinal axis of the lamp rather than strictly vertically:
This was done to direct the light across the entire table surface — from the front edge to the back, all the way to the wall — while simultaneously keeping the light out of the peripheral vision of whoever is sitting at the table.
The degree of this angle… well, let’s just say it was chosen using precise calculations and justified assumptions. Or, to put it plainly — it was a wild guess. The idea was to fine-tune the angle on-site by printing several versions of the mounts with different rotations.
As it turned out, the guessed angle was perfect on the very first try! No changes to the design were necessary, and everything was left as it was:
The resulting lights served their purpose above the desks for many years. In fact, they are still in use to this day:
Thanks to their design, these lights cast almost no shadows and evenly illuminate the entire workspace above the desks. The color temperature of the light also turned out to be very comfortable for the eyes.
For a long time, these lamps were powered by a kind of lab power supply. It had many independent outputs, and a couple of them were dedicated to the lighting. However, this solution didn’t stand the test of time. It proved to be cumbersome and inconvenient to use. Clearly, the lamps needed their own dedicated power source.
When creating a power supply for the lamps, there were three key considerations:
- It needed to be relatively powerful. Each lamp consumes almost 3A at 12V.
- It needed to support brightness adjustment. Long-term use showed that full power isn’t always necessary.
- It needed to integrate with the broader smart home ecosystem to support automation.
Thus began what could be considered the second phase of the project.
Since the original project was born from scraps, odds, ends and plumbing, it was decided to continue in the same spirit. Fortunately, by that time, the storage bins had accumulated a new batch of junk that could be put to good use.
The foundation of the build was an existing 12V 360W power supply:
In this case, the power supply’s capacity far exceeded the needs of the lamps, but there wasn’t a more suitable one in the stash. The other options were either too weak or even more powerful than this one. Buying a new one wasn’t an option…
One way or another, this power supply became the basis for the entire setup:
Since the power supply essentially served as its own enclosure and no additional casing was planned, all the light control elements were placed in blocks positioned in front of and behind it (plus a mount for the rack on the side):
- The front block housed the controller, its sensors, and control buttons for three independent light sources.
- The rear block contained MOSFETs for output control, connectors for wiring, and a fan.
- The side mount, as you might guess, is simply a way to secure this beast to a vertical post of the rack.
Before assembling the entire setup, the power supply underwent a minor modification. The issue was that the controller in the front block needed to connect to the MOSFETs in the rear block via wiring. Since there was nothing between these blocks apart from the power supply itself, the wires had to be routed straight through the power supply:
It’s not the most elegant solution, but if you look at the render above, it’s clear that “elegance” isn’t exactly a key feature of this project. At least there’s no spaghetti of wires hanging on the outside.
The front block was designed to accommodate a standard controller based on the NNVI v6.0 board. These are basic smart home boards of my own design, intended for use with the ESP32 Dev Kit:
Their purpose is to replace standard wall switches in the house, allowing control of lights and ceiling fans. As a result, the dimensions and mounting holes of such a module are designed to fit inside a standard U.S. in-wall electrical box.
In other words, to attach the NNVI board to the power supply, I needed to “invent” a standard electrical box that would, at its rear, transition to the geometry of the power supply:
Once this piece was created, the entire unit became, in a sense, standardized and could be mounted onto the power supply as is, without requiring any additional modifications for the controller or its controls.
Additionally, the board already comes with built-in sensors for temperature, humidity, light, and motion. This means the setup isn’t just a power supply with buttons but a fully functional smart home infrastructure component:
The NNVI board was designed in configurations for 1, 2, and 3 buttons. In this particular case, 3 buttons were exactly what was needed. More precisely, 2 were necessary — for the lights above the desks. However, I have an idea for a future implementation, and that’s where the third button will come in handy.
The rear block is slightly more complex in design:
Its back panel features MOSFET-controlled outputs for the lamps, an input for connection to 110V, and a fan.
The fan is needed to cool the MOSFETs located deep within the rear block:
This setup implements the standard mechanism for controlling lights via MOSFETs. As a result, under certain conditions, the MOSFETs can generate considerable heat. The fan is there to cool them. However, the fan itself is also controlled through its own small MOSFET. This allows it to avoid running at full speed all the time. Instead, the controller adjusts the fan’s speed based on how many light-controlling MOSFETs are active at any given moment.
Additionally, the power supply itself has its own fan. This fan is also controllable but is managed by the internal electronics of the power supply, which activates it during high loads. Considering that “high load” for this power supply is far beyond what the lamps it powers could ever generate, the fan almost never turns on.
Lastly, in terms of electronics, since the power supply only outputs 12V, a small 5V converter was added to power the controller:
Technically, the controller could be powered directly from 12V. However, it’s better not to do so. For its built-in converter, 12V is the upper limit, and in the context of long-term 24/7 operation, this could lead to undesirable consequences — to put it mildly.
The final component of the casing was the mount for attaching the power supply to the rack post:
This mount isn’t connected to either the front block or the rear block and is attached using the standard threaded holes on the power supply’s casing. This means that if I decide to move the entire setup to another location, I’ll only need to reprint this mount. Alternatively, it could even be replaced with legs or some sort of stand.
The result of the endeavor:
With the ceiling lights and the room’s fan in place, the interface for controlling the room now looks like this:
The Official playlist is configured to play favorite radio stations through the speakers of the house’s centralized voice notification system that are located exclusively in the study. For background music during work, these speakers have turned out to be even more convenient than the computer’s player. After all, the computer usually has enough to handle without playing music…
You might wonder why the power supply has three buttons when it only controls the two lamps above the desks. The answer is simple: sooner or later, I’ll add lighting for the shelves located between the racks:
According to the original plan, this area was supposed to become a storage space for long USB cables, various extensions, and other wiring — a place where everything could be hung conveniently at full length and always be within reach. But that didn’t quite pan out…
Over the years, this area has organically transformed into a display of my few personal treasures of sentimental value. The third button is reserved for controlling the lighting on these shelves.
And that’s the story…