Aurora Borealis - Northern Lights Projector

thingiverse

This projector brings beauty into darkness and creates a beautiful meditative light sculpture. Project it on a ceiling, on a wall, on a curtain or cloth, or on snow or even on falling snowflakes. Example projections with three different lens rotations: https://youtu.be/VnL35YqNMfA The projector uses asymmetric Fresnel lenses (cut from full page plastic Fresnel magnifier) to project distorted images of color changing Neopixels. The resulting image can be adjusted by rotating the lenses. The projector is operated by Arduino Uno. Necessary parts are listed in the instructions pdf. Most notable of them are a full page Fresnel lens, Neopixel rings, a rotary encoder with switch, a light dependent resistor (LDR) and a 5V power supply. The projector is controlled by a rotary encoder with switch and a light dependent resistor (LDR). The lightness of Neopixels can be adjusted by turning the encoder. The projector has 3 modes, which are cycled by pressing the button of the rotary encoder: 1. OFF; initial state 2. AUTO; projector wakes when it becomes dim 3. ON; always on Edit 30.12.2020: Minor clarifications in instructions, removal of unused development-time variables from sketch.