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DIY LED-Illuminated Sleep Chamber

Posted by timothy on from the good-in-bed dept.

Bulldozer2003 writes "'Finally something both nerdy AND sexy engineers can do.' It sounds like an oxymoron but this guy took a cue from The Vos Pad and decked out his own dorm room bed with Light Emitting Diodes. They're even fully adjustable 'allowing me to create every color of the rainbow.' Total cost, according to him in an email: 'Around $25, the LEDs cost me about $0.25 a piece in bulk, and the potentiometers cost about $6 a piece from digikey. I got the LM317 voltage regulators as a free sample from Texas Instruments. Lots of companies will ship you free samples, its a good deal for college students.'"

12 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. The LED Pimp Bed... by truesaer · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...guaranteed to be sex free, no doubt!

  2. It's simple... by hwoolery · · Score: 5, Funny

    Step 1: Light up dorm room with ludicrous light display.

    Step 2: ...

    Step 3: Women!

  3. Reminds me... by flatface · · Score: 5, Informative

    Reminds me a lot of this guy's projects. He made some damn cool things out of LEDs there, complete with howtos.

  4. Obligatory Pun by nijk · · Score: 5, Funny

    So do you mean free as in speech, or free as in beer?

  5. Step 2 by Polarism · · Score: 5, Funny

    Plastic Surgery!

    --
    All your base are belong to Google.
  6. Haiku by Ligur · · Score: 5, Funny

    Man who lights his bed
    with a multicoloured led
    will never get head

    --
    Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
  7. agh by miseryinmotion · · Score: 5, Funny

    I bet his roomate absolutely hates him

    1. Re:agh by JayTeeUK · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not as much as his University's network administrators:

      "Forbidden
      Available bandwidth quota for this filesystem has been exceeded.
      (/bkpeters/www/LEDBed/index.html)

      Please, try again later."
      --
      James Tait, Programmer and Free Software Advocate
      JID: jayteeuk@wyrddreams.org
  8. How long do LEDs last? by falzer · · Score: 5, Funny

    25$ for 50,000 hours worth of birth control. What a bargain!

  9. Re:Electric bill? by spdt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most LEDs operate at a relatively low current (~20mA) and voltage (~3V). This amounts to maybe .06 Watts (60mW) per LED. It looks like he has 5 panels of 4 LEDs and a 6-LED reading lamp, from the pictures; this makes 26 LEDs, consuming around 1.5 Watts in total. This is 1/40th of the power consumption of a single 60-Watt light bulb. If we say that electricity costs $.06/kWh ("US Federal Average"), then it would cost approximately $.09 to run these lights for 1000 hours.

    The kinds of LEDs will probably have different operating characteristics than those I have in my head (like those UV LEDs, which are higher frequency -and energy- than I'm used to).

    Whatever it is, it will not exceed the power output of the wall wart he's using.

  10. Not bad but... by Len+Budney · · Score: 5, Informative

    Interesting! This guy's project basically connects a dimmer switch each to red, green and blue LED strings. The colors sorta mix, sorta producing colored light, but as you can see in his pictures there are major fringing effects (multicolored bands of light). The howto on this page, suggested by another poster, gives a much cleaner result.

    The link above uses a microcontroller and pulse-width modulation to vary each color's intensity, producing a much more even color effect.

    Now, of course, I want to redo the apartment with them. Eternal lighting with no more power consumption than a couple of flashlights...yum...

  11. And the score is... by pylonz · · Score: 5, Funny

    8 points for creativity 10 points for lustful intentions 1 point for soldering