LED Diffuser From Plastic Bottle or Milk Bottle

I have a lot of these semi transparent bottle from drinks or milk bottles. They are perfect to be used as light diffuser for your LED lights project. So here is a write up on how to use one so that you have an excellent result.

• Semi transparent bottle (Plastic milk bottle can be used)
• Hair Style container
• Empty Pringles can
• Recycled power connected
• Recycled power supply (5V or 12V)
• ESP8266 or WeMos
• Self address able LED Strip WS2812 with the voltage to match the power supply
• Heat gun to shrink the plastic bottle
• Acto knife
• Gloves for safety

It takes a bit of practice to find things that are matching. It took me a while to find the perfect matching pair. In this case I have a drink bottles and the hair style container. But the plastic bottle is too big to fit into the hair style container.

So come the helper, Pringles can. I use the pringles can to shink the plastic bottle to fit into the hair style container.

Prepare the plastic bottle, wash it if it has the milk residue or in my case it is just water. Cut the top off and measure the heigh that you want. Cut the bottom of the pringles can (the metal bit). This is used as the base to shrink the plastic bottle.

Pull bottle on the pringles can making sure the bottom that was cut of is in the inside. This will help with the extraction later. Then pull out your heat gun and start to heat it up evenly. The plastic will melt and they tends to shink. Please note that you shouldn't touch the plastic, it is very very hot, use glove all the time.

Watch the magic happened as the bottle shink to fit the pringles can.

Now test the fit between the shrinked bottle and hair gel container. It it doesn't fit, you can slowly heat it up again using the heat gun before squeezing it in until it fits perfectly.

This is the simplest connection to make from the pin D4 (GPIO2) of WeMos as data and connecting this to the Data line of WS2812 LED Strip. The good thing using pin D4 is it is located next to GND

Then connect the 5V power from the power connector to LED 5V and Pin 5V of WeMos. And then connect the GND from power connector to WeMos GND and LED strip GND.

If you are using ESP8266 board you will need to make adjustment to the pin accordingly if you are not using pin D4.

Connect the ESP8266 board to your USB port and point your browser (use chrome) to the following site

https://install.wled.me/

Follow the instruction to upload the firmware. If all goes well you should be able to connect to the ESP8266 access point called WLED-AP and the default password is “wled1234” or you can scan the following QR code on your phone.

This should brings you the http://4.3.2.1 in your browser, where you can configure the WiFi, or just test the lights effect. You should be greeted with the second picture Welcome to WLED screen.

If you click the “TO THE CONTROLS!” button you should be able to play with the feature of the WLED as shown in the next image above, with pretty rainbow colours.

You can proceed to click on the “Config” or you can select “WIFI SETTINGS” on the first screen which will take you the next screen which shows the WiFi setup.

It allows you to enter your Network SSID and password to connect to your home router so that you can control it from anywhere at home. It is worth noting that WLED supports HomeAssistant, so if you have it, then it can come handy. If you are not sure what HomeAssistant is, you can find out more in my blog on How to Install HomeAssistant into Raspberry Pi.

Once it is configured then you can proceed to the next step.

Fixed the power connector the the base, drill a hole so that the power adaptor can be plugged in. Drill another hole so that you can put the wire for the LEDs through to the centre of the bottle.

Lay the LED at the bottom of the container facing up. You can use a bit of glue to secure the LEDs in place.

Plug the power in and enjoy the light effects. There are too many effect to choose from.

You can take this to the next step by connecting it with LEDFx program. But the scope is beyond this build. If you are interested you can visit my blog on how to install Audio Controlled LEDs.

Another thing that you can do is to turn this into Philip Hue clone, but this is also beyond the scope of this build. If you are interested you can visit my blog on how to Create DIYHue light using ESP8266. This will allows you to connect to the Hue Sync on your PC or Mac so that the lights will follow your screen colours while you are playing games or watching Netflix. For this build you can check out my blog on how to Connect DIYHue to Hue Sync.

I hope you like the idea of recycling the bottle that otherwise will be thrown away. Please feel free to ask me any questions should you have one.

Happy Recycling!!