Tired Of Boring Overhead Lighting? Create Your Own Custom Lights By Learning Arduino To Ditch The Jarring Overhead Lights, Program LED Strips, And Integrate LEDs In Your Builds
Overhead lighting is jarring and I hate it.
Yes, we need to be able to see and yes, sometimes overhead lighting is necessary. Disney line queues actually do a pretty good job of having creative, non-jarring overheads. But the standard home fan and light combo is outdated and needs to go.
As Makers, we’re creative and love to solve problems, so why not take control of our own lighting?
What’s The Alternative?
Thanks to the rise of micro-controllers like the Arduino, electronic components have gotten more advanced, less expensive to obtain, and easier to program than ever before.
An Arduino will only set you back $20-$30 and can be programmed to do just about anything you can imagine, including programming LED Strips. LED Strips are the backbone of custom lighting and a good strip is only about $30 for a 16 ft long strip, which should last a few medium-size projects. LED Strips can be cut into shorter sections, which lets you integrate them into your projects with a little extra effort and programming.
The creative opportunities are amazing, but the learning curve is perceived as being quite steep.
How To Climb The Learning Curve
When I wanted to start learning how to program Arduino’s to create my own lighting, I used the resources below:
I Like To Make Stuff Electronics Playlist on YouTube (free): The team at ILTMS is awesome. Over the years, they have added LEDs and electronics into a ton of projects and this playlist was an incredible source of inspiration.
Arduino For Makers ($120 Course): Also from the ILTMS team who created a fantastic course that goes through real examples with you that you can follow along with, even if you’ve never programmed before. I’m not affiliated with them, but I purchased the course with my own money and absolutely loved it.
Byte Sized Engineering Electronics Playlist on YouTube (free): Zach from Byte Sized Engineering has a ton of amazing micro-controller videos and is a wealth of knowledge on creative projects with electronics.
Stop Settling For Bad Lighting And Make Your Own
Compromising where you spend a ton of time isn’t worth the effort, especially somewhere like a home office or living space.
Instead of settling for what you can find at a store, learn a new skill and unlock your creativity.
I’m just starting to create my own custom lighting with Arduino and LED strips, so would love to hear how you would integrate custom lights into your projects as well!
