14 DAY TRIAL // 3D printing technology is being applied to complex electronics more and more with each month that passes. Lamps appear to be particularly popular, as is evident from the many lampshades and, more importantly, a certain self-assembling lamp.
Now, a man has invented another type of lamp, one that is colorful and shaped like the face of an elephant. He actually made the lamp for his daughter, to provide her with a good, soft, nice nightlight.
The lamp has been likened to origami elephants, which will hopefully detract from the arguable morbidity of the entire thing. After all, some might say that the lamp reminds them of wall-mounted head trophies.
Fortunately, Trent Brook's daughter Harpa is only 1.5 years old, so it will be a while before she is at the point where she can ask awkward questions about the light-giving decoration.
Trent Brooks used a Shapeways 3D printer to make the lamp, based on the model of a wireframe elephant head viewed in Blender software.
Only the outer layer was 3D printed, however. The inner workings had to be assembled by hand from various parts, since it will be years before 3D printers can automatically assemble complex electronics. Besides, the Shapeways 3D Printer used here can only print from plastic anyway.
An Arduino MEGA 256 microcontroller acts as the “core” of the lamp, but also has an Ethernet shield connected to a 50 cm / 19.68-inch RGB LED strip. There are 30 LEDs in total, used to paint a scintillating cloud of colors across the walls, floor, ceiling, and furniture of the bedchamber.
A speaker is included as well, to play white noise that will lull the girl to sleep, while the microphone allows the elephant's head to double as a music visualizer, with colors changing according to the differences in sound, when a soft tune is playing.
Finally, Brooks wrote an iPad app that will teach his daughter about colors, complete with an interface that shows the elephant head in different colors, allowing her to pick one. A hidden control panel will let the father change the LED light number (enables lamp brightness and saturation and allows for automatic cross fade between colors).
Altogether, the elephant head measures 1.6 x 1.6 x 1.6 inches / 500 x 500 x 300 mm, though Brooks had to sew the material on the elephant head himself (he only printed the wireframe).