The Ambience Organic Lamp - Fire, Water, Earth, Air

Why I have chosen this one.

When I decided to enter this contest I was utterly confused about which element to choose for my contesting project among the 4 Fire, Water, Earth, Air. Because I am very close to mother nature and these all are natural elements I really love and play. Before I visualized one project based on water but I was missing others, so decided to take the challenge to play with it all and make a project blend of all 4 Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. The Ambience Organic Lamp.

Aroma and Light to Relax at Night!

The whole idea is to make the Ambience Lamp using Clay Lamp, made up of the third element EARTH, to use Aroma Oil as WATER the second element, a Candle as FIRE the first one, Aroma pumped in the AIR, our fourth element by smoothly heating the aroma oil by candle and last but not least Blinking Lights as an addon beauty to our Ambience Organic Lamp.

How does it work?

We have put one clay beacon filled with aroma oil on the top of our clay lamp and which releases aroma fumes in the air when heated through thermal conduction of heat from the candle fire and fixed three electronics colorful LEDs those turn on automatically in the dark and turn off when there is light. You can hang this to your ceilings like a regular pendant lamp you do, or place it near the bed as a night lamp. Please see the video to understand the concept.

Let us discover our 4 Elements Fire, Water, Earth, Air one by one! and make Ambience Organic Lamp

I love clay pottery since my childhood and have give try to it once also. I have got this Clay Lamp from one humble lady selling near to my home. There were many of there like this but I have selected keeping the project requirements in mind like placing the clay beacon and fixing the electronics. This is made with hands using processed soil presenting our element Earth. You can find a similar clay lamp easily from a clay pottery shop near your home. Please see the raw image when I just unpacked it unwrapping the packing paper, which was a daily Hindi newspaper. So, no plastics carry bags even everything is organic right from the scratch.

I have used a small beacon-type candle to conduct that to our aroma oil diffuser. This is very common you can get this from any general shop for very few little bucks and if you don't find the same one you can use a tiny candle that fixes up in the clay lamp properly. Candle beacon is our FIRE element.

I have bought organic Tea Tree aroma oil as a representation of WATER. Trees/plants absorb water, translocate, store, and utilize. This is the same water here in a natural form with the essence and goodness of trees to calm down our sensories. You can purchase any fragrance like rose, sandalwood, peppermint, etc. Please see the image of the aroma oil bottle I purchase online.

Clay Beacon

The image next to oil is a clay beacon I purchased from the same lady selling pottery stuff. This is also made through the same process as explained in the clay lamp block. We will pour our tea oil and use it as an aromatic diffuser. This type of clay beacon is very common in India as they are used in festivals and rituals. But finding in the European or Western countries could be a difficult job. You can use a small metal pot but still, a clay beacon is strongly recommended for this project so you can buy it online.

Yes, get a spoon from your kitchen you don't like or use it. Because that after you would not be able to use it! We are using the spoon as a sitting place for our aromatic clay beacon. So get ready to sacrifice your spoon! With the help of a plier, you have to bend its handle 60 degrees anti-clockwise and fixed it into the clay lamp as shown in the image.

In this part, we will fix our spoon, place the clay beacon on it, and place the candle under it. There is not much explanation required I marked directions in the picture and a picture speaks a thousand words! When you are done with this part move, ahead we are going to make it electrifying adding some electronics.

I am an electronics guy so how can I leave a project without it. So I have made a special light blinking circuit that turns on automatically at night and turns off in the day in the light. All the components are available in any electronics shop nearby you or else you could find them online. I have rather made 2 versions of the circuit. circuit version 1.0 is for the electronics layman. And version 2.0 is also for laymen who can do little more effort to make the circuit on-off automatic. Definitely, for an electronics guy, this is just a cakewalk. See, components in the image and list below.

1. BC547 Transistor
2. 3mm LDR
3. 50K Potentiometer
4. 3-pieces of self blinking LEDs, the number is 5RGBVC
5. USB Cable
6. Zero PCB
7. Power Bank

We have two circuit diagrams version 1.0 and 2.0. Both work fine. The only difference is version 2.0 turns on and off automatically. At night turns on automatically and turns off in the day. You can choose whichever you like.

You would like to check the circuit how is working. So for that, you can fix components on the breadboard and connect them using wires. Cover the LDR with hands all LEDs should start blinking. See the above image and testing video.

It's time for some hard work. Get you zero PCB also called general-purpose PCB and solder all the components as shown in the circuit diagram. Kindly note the following things while assembling electronics components on the PCB.

• Don't cut the legs of the LDR installed it on the corner where light can easily fall on it.
• Draw three long wires for LEDs from the collector of the transistor BC547
• And the fourth one supplies +5V wire pull out it from the PCB.

See, the above images of my assembled PCB. Once you are done place them in a plastic box.

Please see the images above depicting work direction.

Sensitivity Adjuster: LDR, a light-dependent resistor, as the name suggests its resistance decreases as the light intensity increases. So, we have to adjust the sensitivity by rotating the know such that LED lights stay turn off when there is light in the room and turn on when there is darkness in the room. You can change the sensitivity at any time like when you have shifted the Ambiance Organic Lamp to another room where light and darkness are in different proportions as compared to the previous.

Here we will fix our electronics into and on our clay lamp. Connect LED's cathode to the 3 wires coming from the box and anode, bigger lead in size is the anode, to the fourth wire +5V. Now fix them in 3 different places with the help of silicon glue as I have connected bending the LEDs so that lights fall inside the lamp. Fix the box on the backside so that LDR can see easily dark and light. And finally the power supply wire to the power bank for power supply. See images above depicting the work direction marked as step number.

So, we have successfully created our Ambience Organic Lamp which is made of all four vital elements Fire, Water, Earth, Air.

Thanks, Fire, Water, Earth, Air

Rajeev Mehndiratta