LED Desk Lamp
This is a project I took on over winter break to learn more about electronic components and have something to apply what I had learned in a recent programming class.
Over the 2020 winter break, I completed a personal project to design a desk lamp controlled through a Google Home Mini.
Project Purpose
- I wanted to design something from scratch using Fusion 360 that included multiple components in order to learn about tolerances required when 3D printing.
- I was eager to work on an Internet of things project that used an Arduino and an ESP8266.
- I wanted a project to practice software development since my upcoming semester lacked a computer programming class.
What I learned
- I learned the importance of creating components in Fusion 360. Working on a CAD project that I was both printing and assembling made me appreciate the importance of a well-planned design hierarchy. It makes the iterative process of any project much more straightforward.
- How to solder, a skill I have wanted to learn for a while.
- When 3D printing and using PLA, you need a lot more tolerance than you might think.
- In the Arduino environment, there are many packages available that do nearly everything I wanted in this project. Consequently, I got less practice programming than I expected.