Miniature Theatre Lighting

Theatre lighting is an important part of what makes any good production feel alive. One such way lighting brings flair to the show is the use of colors. Colors play a major impact on the mood that is being set in a scene, and these colors must often change frequently throughout the production. This project will help to convey this by showing step by step how to build a small scale theatre with LED lighting powered by a Arduino microcontroller. This is an excellent project to introduce students into the realm of electricity, programming, and engineering in a fun, hands on and inexpensive way!

If you would like to read more about colors and their affects on mood and emotions click here.

All the supplies used in this project can be found here. Anything that you may need to buy will have its Amazon purchase link attached, and some are common household items.

Supply List:

Arduino Uno Board

Arduino Programming Cable

Plastic Cardboard Sheets

1kohm Potentiometer

Breadboard and Wire Kit

LED Light Strip

Ruler or Tape Measure

Boxcutter or Knife

Duct Tape or any heavy duty tape

Computer

To begin the construction of the box, the plastic card board must first be cut down to size.

• Take 5 plastic cardboard sheets and cut them down to 1.5ft by 1.5ft squares.
• Take 2 1.5ft x 1.5ft squares and tape the corners of both squares together making a hinge.
• Repeat the last step using another sheet to form a "C" shape on the ground.
• Now using the tape, tape along the seems where each sheet meets one another.
• Taking another sheet, place it on top of the "C" and tape along the seems to create the floor.
• With the last sheet, the LED light strip will be placed on one side.
• Starting in a corner, peel back the adhesive and stick the light strip about 3 inches down from the edge.
• While slowly pulling back the adhesive, begin sticking the light strip to the sheet making an "S" pattern until the entire strip is attached.
• Flip the box upside down so the floor of the box is on the floor of the ground.
• Place the sheet with the lights attached to it with the lights facing towards the ground on top of the box.
• Now tape the last sheet to the rest of the box.
• Lastly, you will want to cut a small hole into the top of the box to feed the end of the light strip through to plug into something later.

Optional but not required:

• Taking a scrap piece of plastic card board place it against the open end of the box towards the top, it should prevent you from seeing the light strip.
• Once a size that is appealing is found, cut the scrap piece to this size.
• Place this strip along the face of the box and tape it together along its seems.
• This strip now prevents the light strips from being seen to anyone using this.

In this step, the wiring for the breadboard and the various electrical components is detailed.

• Unpackage and organize the wires bought into similar color and size.
• Taking a smaller black and yellow wire, place the yellow wire into the Arduino board in a pin labeled "5V". Then take the black cable and place it into a pin labeled "GND".
• Taking the other end of these wires, place the yellow wire into the red bus at the top of the breadboard. Then place the black cable into the blue bus right beneath the red bus.
• Now take one of the blue potentiometers and place it into the breadboard. The potentiometer will have a side with 3 slits in the back of it, place this side towards you as shown in the picture.
• Taking a smaller black and red wire, place the red wire into the left most slot of the potentiometer and the black one in the right most slot.
• Repeat the previous step two more times, equally spacing out the potentiometers between one another.
• Grab a long Red, Green, and White wire. Take the red wire and place one end into the middle slot of the left most potentiometer. Place the green wire in the middle slot of the middle potentiometer and lastly, place the white wire in the middle slot of the last potentiometer.
• With these three wires, taking the red one first, place the red into the pin on the board labelled "A0", then place the green into "A1" and the white into "A2".
• Now grab 4 long wires, one of each color: red, green, white, and yellow.
• Notice the breadboard has a break in the middle of the board, these two sides are not connected to one another and therefore will not conduct electricity to each other.
• On the bottom side or other side of the split in the breadboard, place these four wires into the breadboard in the order of: yellow, green, red, and white.
• With these wires, place the yellow into the pin on the board labelled "Vin", the red into "9", green into "10", and white into "11".
• Lastly, taking the end of the led strip, plug the cable into the breadboard with the black cable of the led strip being in the same column as the yellow wire you placed two steps ago.

This completes the wiring of the circuit!

The only thing left to do is program the microcontroller to be able to change the color of the light strip!

• To begin if not already downloaded, download the Arduino IDE software.
• The download link can be found here.
• Follow all download instructions found on Arduino's website.
• Once this is completed. Taking the cable purchased before, plug the USB end into your computer and the other end into the controller.
• Plug in the power supply that came with the light strip into the wall and the other end into the controller.
• Next, download the code provided here and place it into a folder on your computer.
• Now open the Arduino software that was downloaded. In the top corner under the file tab select open.
• Find the code you placed into a folder and open the program in the file.
• If done correctly, the code should appear on the screen with instructions walking through each step explaining what it is doing.
• Now press the tools tab in the top left of the screen.
• Under tools select the board drop down menu and then select the Arduino Uno option.
• Then you will want to select the port option and select the port your Arduino is using.
• Next press the checkmark button in the top left to verify the code is correct, no errors should occur. Then press the button with an arrow going to the right to download this code onto the microcontroller.
• You should now see that the lights are on!

(If it does not automatically show you the port being used by the Arduino there is a simple solution to find out what port is being used. If you are using a Windows computer using the search bar in the bottom left search device manager and select the device manager. Under device manager, if your Arduino is plugged in using the USB cable, there will be a tab labelled Ports(COM & LPT). Select this tab and it will tell you what COMPort the Arduino is using

Now for how to alter the colors of the lights.

• On the breadboard, the three potentiometers have knobs that can rotate.
• The potentiometer with the red wire in the middle controls the amount of red light, the one with the green wire controls the amount of green light, and lastly the white wire controls the amount of blue light.
• Turning the knobs left and right will increase or decrease the intensity of each light and you can combine various levels to produce different colors.
• If you find a combination you like, in the Arduino software, under the tools tab selecting "Serial Monitor" will allow you to see number codes for each color allowing you to reproduce a color at a later date.

Tip: These numbers are in order from left to right, red, green, and blue.

You have now completed the project! Congratulations and have fun with your very own customizable stage lighting! If this project interested you, you now have introductory level tools to be able to do all sorts of new projects using the Arduino Uno microcontroller. Have fun and happy coding!