Fake window blinds light project. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: John_Edward
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2015, 10:50:45 pm
content: My room has two windows on one of the walls, but the corner I sit in is really dark even during bright summer days. Now the dark Finnish winter is coming, and inspired by the2007 concept pictures, I'm going to try building my own fake window blinds light. What I would like to do, is grab one of those LED ceiling light panels, mount it on (or in) the wall, slap some blinds on top and call it a day (heh). Sadly in Finland, those lights are really expensive (60x60cm panels are roughly 200€), and it wouldn't really be a project anyway. So, I'm going the DIY route.Two choices remain; 12v LED strips/tape in a box with no real diffuser panel, which would require a deep enclosure, or reusing an old back light panel from a monitor or TV, possibly changing CCFL tubes to LEDs.I'm starting with this second idea as I have the perfect base for it. It's most likely going to be too small for my room, but it's a proof of concept. And if it works well enough, there are many walls in my house that could use a fake windowAs for the blinds, quite nice wooden ones I've got from a local recycling centre for free, as they don't roll up properly.---First step, disassembling the monitor to get access to the backlight.I'm using an old Dell 2001FP, 2004 vintage. The backlight works flawlessly and is bright, but the screen itself has the 'plasma tv burn-in' effect so it's not very nice to use. It uses an external 20V 4.5A PSU, which means I won't have problem with exposed mains.Disassembly wasn't much more than removing screws and popping a few plastic clips.I was left with the backlight diffusor and CCFL tubes in a nice compact assembly, and the separate CCFL driver board.It connects to the main board with a simple 8 pin header, which I probed to actually just have VCC, GND and two control pins, one was at 3.3V, other at 3.2V. After attaching a tiny dc/dc converter and testing a little, I connected the pins together and the result was that the light is brightest when the voltage is 1.2V, off if it goes lower, and dims the higher the voltage goes (Well, I went up to 5V, didn't want to risk breaking something). So I set it to around 1.3V and left it alone. Most likely this wasn't how it was meant to be controlled, but if it works, eh.I then proceeded to temporarily mount it on a piece of... something wood-like with some zipties, and I'm now keeping it on and seeing if something overheats and it spontaneously combusts. Light output according to my phone at 1 meter is 295 lux, and it definitely is the brightest lights I have. It also has a fairly wide angle.Power usage is fairly high at roughly 35 Watts.If it seems like it's stable and will work for longer as well, I'll start hacking the blinds to size, build a nice frame for the whole thing as well as figuring out some way to switch it on and off, other than unplugging it.BTW, the reverse side of the LCD panel is a pretty good mirror, just slightly darkens the image. Might put that to use as well.(Sorry for the horrible pictures, I only have my Samsung S4 Mini. I'll grab some better pictures when I start building the frame.)

author: knks
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2015, 12:56:49 am
content: 1. Find big LCD TV with broken screen (here in Australia it will cost you $0), remove the LCD layer, turn it on.2. Slap some blinds on top3. Enjoy the view