New Lamp for Old With Arduino WemosD1 NTP Time

In this instructable I will show you how I turned this dated lamp which was going to be scrapped into a stylish retro lamp, the lamp originally was like a mustard yellow finish and has a chrome band running along the sides of the lamp and also along the sides of the base, it has an adjustable chrome slider running along a chromed upright hollow round bar, the chrome albeit pitted in places will polish up nicely.

To bring it up to date I will be installing a 7-Segment clock running on a Arduino Wemos D1 with NTP Time this will be housed in a Fusion 360 designed 3D printed enclosure and will also accommodate the on/off button switch.

With no further ado let's give this tired looking lamp a new life:))

Arduino Wemos D1(Amazon)

Micro C power supply 5v 2amp

TM1637 7 Segment display (Amazon)

LED 5v Light kit round(KitronikUK)

terminal block

2 core cable for the lamp

Blackboard paint

fine/medium sandpaper

Chrome polish

wax

Fusion 360

3D printer

The first task is to strip the lamp down and check all the components are good, the original light fitting can be disposed of(WEE Waste electrical equipment, there is a dedicated skip for this at the local council yard), as I am going to install an LED light fitting.

With all components laid out I separate the lamp head and base, these are going to be painted, the chrome bits are put to one side for polishing.

Everything came apart pretty easily and any screw fittings get a splash of WD40 to ease things when re-assembling.

Lamp head and base preparation:

There are one or 2 areas where the paint has lifted, so I set about sanding the 2 components with a fine sandpaper, the worst part will be covered by the 3D printed enclosure so the surface finish doesn't need to be great, as for the rest of the paintwork its just a light rub down with a fine sand paper, then clean with Methylated spirit prior to applying some paint.

The Chrome work is masked off prior to painting.

I had a tin of brush on blackboard paint and thought black would look nice along with the chrome work, and also the 3D Printed enclosure for the clock will be black PLA as well.

I will give each component 2/3 coats, I'm not using a primer on this occasion, Blackboard paint is ideal for some jobs, Its a matt finish and when applied with a brush you think it would have been sprayed on, I let the components air dry between coats and after the final coat I will leave for a couple of days to fully harden, the UK weather is pretty dull and damp at the moment so the longer the better.

The next job is to wax the 2 components, this puts a lustre onto the finish and looks pretty cool, when the same Blackboard paint and wax method is applied to wood they call this ebonising and this gives the wood that antiquated look(Tip of the day folks):))

The black and chrome really looks stylish.

Polishing the chrome components next.

For polishing the chrome work I'm going to be using an abrasive compound, Solvol Autosol in this case, I've used this for years and spent hours and hours polishing motorbikes that I have had in the past, the finish you can get on Chrome and Aluminium with a little elbow grease is amazing, I didn't use any wet and dry, just worked the polish in and then using a clean cloth to polish, polished the components up to a high lustre.

Things are taking shape now, so its onto designing and 3D printing the enclosure to house the 7 segment display and switch:

I didn't want to cut into the base to install the display, it's like a cast metal, there was already a hole left from where the original on/off switch was so this can be used for cables going from the enclosure into the base, plus having the display flat to the base would make it hard to see the time, so the enclosure will have a sloping face.

The dimensions are 80mm in Length and 50mm Width with a lip around the edges and to accommodate the display and switch so the enclosure needs to be 30mm in height.

In Fusion 360 a new sketch is created and the front plane is selected, create a rectangle of 50mm x 2mm then measure 5mm in from both sides this will form the lip, then from the back 5mm line take a vertical line up 30mm and from the other 5mm line a vertical line of 5mm from the 30mm line sketch a line across stopping short of the 5mm line to create a sloping face for the display, I just guessed the angle, we can now select offset and unchecking chain selection allows us just to highlight the lines we need, I brought this inboard 2mm this will form the walls of the enclosure.

We can now extrude the sketch starting with the base first, we are using symmetric so we need to input half the measurement of the base which in this case is 40mm, the same method applies with the enclosure sketch, use symmetric and extrude to 35mm giving us the 5mm lip.

We now need to form some ends to the component, to do this we can project the end of the component the extrude inboard 2mm and joint the existing, same applies to the other end or mirror the first end using the centre plane.

We can now cut out the rectangle for the display on the sloping face, selecting offset plane click on the sloping face and sketch a rectangle, in this case it is 30.2mm and 14.2mm the display will be a snug fit with a splash of hot glue to hold in place, extrude the rectangle inwards using cut, the display has a white border so this should look nice protruding through or a bezel can be created in the design stage.

The next part of the design is to create a hole for the on/off switch, there is enough room for this to be centrally positioned on the top of the component, the switch is 12mm so I make the hole 12.2mm for clearance, extrude inwards to cut.

We now need to create a rectangle in the base and extrude this inboard, this will give us plenty of space for cables etc, the final part is to create fillets for a more aesthetically pleasing look this was a 1mm fillet and the switch hole was given a 0.5mm chamfer, the switch has a rubber O ring, the chamfer will accommodate this giving the switch a flush fit to the surface.

We can now 3D print the part, It's a 5 hour plus print, but there is a lot of support, I want the external finish to be as good as it can be.

Onto the electrics:

In the bigger scheme of things this part is pretty straight forward with very few connections to be made and using the Arduino NTP code means the time will change automatically to suit daylight saving adjustments.

We are using a Wemos D1 purely because I had one but any processor like a Node MCU with wifi capabilities will be ok, there is also the option to use a real time clock, its a bit of a faff changing the time so I've opted for the Wemos wifi set up.

The Wemos needs to be set up correctly before it will work, you go into manage boards as in the screen shots after first adding a json file in preferences, there are plenty of online tutorials on how to do this part.

The only connections from the Wemos to the TM1637 display are in the code and they are CLK on the display to D2 on the Wemos and DI0 is D3 plus the 5v and Gnd from the Wemos to the TM1637 Display, I will use a micro C 5V Power supply, this will in turn supply both the wemos and the LED light which has a Chrome push button on/off switch, the 5v And Gnd will also be taken from the Wemos D1, I have used a 4 Way terminal block for 5v and Gnd connections and also for the led light and switch connections.

I was scratching my head a bit when it came to this stage, I didn't want any lighting at the regular 230v UK supply as I'm already using a 5v Power supply for the WemosD1, I also looked at the 12v option but again nothing was jumping out at me and supplying different voltages is never easy, and finally after a lot of searching on the Internet I found a company in the UK called Kitronik this company supplies 5v Desktop Light LED lighting kits, this was the solution I was looking for.

They have square kits and also a round version as well, all reasonably priced, so I ordered 2 of the square kits and 1 of the round kits, the 5v supply will be enough to power both the Wemos and the led light, I also ordered the power supply from Kitronik as this was very reasonably priced as well, it is worth mentioning that I don't have any affiliations with Kitronik or anyone for that matter, I just think credit where it's due on occasion, and this solution has worked perfectly for me.

When the kits arrived I had to solder some resistors onto the pcb and the LED bulbs, but the kits come with full instructions making this easy

I am opting for the round LED set up for the Desk lamp and just use some 2 core black cable to supply the 5v and Gnd to the Led, this cable fits nicely through the hollow chrome riser and then I will suspend the LED fitting with a 3D Printed stand off to the rear of the lamp are ventilation slots, I can use the 2 of the outer slots for this purpose.

I designed the stand of in Fusion 360 and was just a case of creating a 50mm circle using the top plane, then measuring out from the centre a vertical line up of 16mm then the same going down, to the ends of these lines I created 3mm circles, these 3mm holes will be extended and thread added to secure the support to the back of the lamp, extrude the base 3mm and then we can create the stand offs for the LED lamp, the holes on the LED pcb are 42mm between centres, so again measuring horizontally this time from the centre 21mm each way and create 6mm circles, then extrude and join to 25mm then create 3mm centre circles to the top face of each upright and extrude these down 15mm, what we can do now is put a a thread into these 2 holes.

To make a thread press S on the keyboard then T then select thread from the drop down, select one of the holes then hold Ctrl to select the other, in the box select modelled and full length, the thread is then added and this will 3D print, with the other 2 holes again another centre on each of the holes at 6mm and extrude to 6mm create another circle to the top of both faces and extrude to 2mm and using the the hoop above the

We can now do the final assembly of the Lamp, the first job is to position where I want the Wemos, then solder the connections in to the Lamp and the clock, cable containment will be a couple of dabs of hot glue as the clock will be a permanent feature,

All in all a nice little project to take on, the 7 segment clock and the LED light are interesting features making the clock just that bit different from the norm.

There was very little outlay for the components which is always good and at the end of the day the clock has been saved from the scrapyard or skip.

I have used blackboard paint for a couple of projects now and I'm really impressed with the finish, its so easy to brush on and really does dry to a smooth no brush lines Matt finish and then waxed it looks even better and you could also polish as well if you prefer more of a lustre.

The other great find in this project was the LED light Kit, I couldn't find anything 5v online so I could run off the same power supply, these open many doors for future Lights with clocks etc, and so easy to assemble too and great Instructions, and the amount of light it gives out is just right...Once again Perfect!

This Lamp has been fixed!

As always I hope you enjoyed this Instructable and take something from it and thanks for looking.