Here is a collection of photos that show my progress on the lighting project.
The silver system is the name for my lighting network. A shortening of the name "again" leads to Ag, which is the chemical name of Silver. I chose the name again because I design products with longevity in mind. This lighting network doesn't use the internet or any sort of pairing and as such, it is much easier to set up and has no reliance on any 3rd party services.
I have done several installations of different lighting fixtures across SF that use my pattern engine written for this lighting system. All of these installs take advantage of features that are exclusive to my lighting network. The biggest benefit that my customers enjoy is that since there is no app or internet control, changing the lights is very easy and nobody in the office has to manage credentials or any sort of app for the system.
the Single Board 10W RGB LED (sbled) at full bright white
This is my most advanced lighting device. I designed my LED driver circuit around the PT4115. This lamp is compatible with all of my other lighting hardware. It works great inside of a pod shade or as a sunset projector lamp.
assembling the rev1 sbleds
In the first revision of the sbled pcb, I forgot to add pullup resistors to the output pins of the WS2811 chip. The chip acted as a current sink to control its output. This enforces a design method where the LEDs you want to control are placed upstream of the chip. In my scenario, I was using LED drivers (PT4115) that required more of a PWM input. I didn't realized that's what the datasheet was telling me until I had 5 of these non-funtional PCBs in hand. I solved this problem by manually adding some extra 10Kohm SMD resistors directly onto the pins of some NPN transistors that were connected to the output pins of the WS2811 and then soldering a wire to their other side. Very hacky solution, but it worked long enough for me to validate and implement the necessary changes for rev2.
The Integration (iteg) PCB housing
This integration pcb allows the user to connect any LED strip they have lying around (as long as its an addressable ws2811 based strip) and have them controlled by my lighting hardware. This allows users to make their own lamps. This is another cool lamp I made with the iteg pcb.
the Light Deck
This is the light deck. I wanted it to have a lot of knobs so you could load and customize patterns easily. You can see a demo of all of the different modes here.
Several Iterations of Silver System Devices
This is a collection of some of the first silver system devices. The hardware and firmware designs have matured significantly during the 3 years I have worked on this project. I started this project in my dorm room because the lighting sucked. I have now sold over $1500 of lamps to strangers on the internet and completed several installations in random offices in SF alongside earning my degree in Nuclear Engineering from UC Berkeley.