WLED Degchi Lamp

August 17, 2022

While traveling in India I came across these nice looking tin lamps.

It is sometimes called a Degchi lamp. Since I am not a fan of open flames so leds will have to fill in the role of a candle. This build will be a bit rough. I will refine the lamp in later posts.

Parts

Controller

Software

WLED

wled

Binary

Wled binary

Flashing

You will need a 3.3v usb to serial adapter. An FTDI based usb to serial adapteris perfered.

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esptool/en/latest/esp32/
Method 2 https://kno.wled.ge/basics/install-binary/

Connections

Connection between the usb to serial adapter and the ESP8266.

Logic Level set to 3.3V
ESP -> FTDI
TX -> RX
RX -> TX
VCC -> 5V
GND -> GND

Operating system permission workarounds

In order to write data to ttyUSB or other serieal ports you must be a member of the dialout group.

sudo usermod -a -G dialout your_user_name

Log out log in

Flash WLED onto the ESP

sudo python3 ./esptool.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 write_flash 0x0 ./WLED_0.13.1_ESP8266.bin

Electronics

Schematic

Electronics Rough Fit

Playing around with the electronics to confirm that the design works as expected.

Everything is hooked up but the lights are not working.

Discovered that the OE pin on the TXS0108E needs to be pulled high to VA (ESP Logic Level High 3.3V)

Physical Construction

Lamp

Test Fit

Lets see how everything could fit inside the lamp. Who cares how it looks at the moment. We will polish it later.

Electronics Enclosure

FreeCad Model

Degchi_Lamp_Enclosure.FCStd

First atttempt to create a quick enclosure.

View of the enclosure lid.

Enclosure STLs

Degchi_Lamp_Enclosure-Degchi_Lamp_Electronics_Enclosure.stl

Enclosure Main Body

Degchi_Lamp_Enclosure-Degchi_Lamp_Electronics_Cover.stl

Enclosure Main Body

Enclosure Assembly

1 amp Fuse

All the electronics seem to fit. A more professional version will be created when I get the parts.

Forcing all the electronics into the enclosure.

Everything is coming together.

Power on testing

Led Mounts

The inside of the lamp is coated in a thick non conductive coating. For the time being the led strip is just placed inside the lamp body.

Connecting to WIFI

WLED 13.1 has some trouble connecting to wifi networks.

Set wifi control channel to a fixed channel. e.g 1
Change channel width to 20 Mhz
Bind to static ip in router
Add the same static ip in wled wifi settings

Results

I am not a fan of this very large black power cable. I will replace the power cord with USB-C.
After measuring the power usage of the lamp at peak load it looks like USB-C is a good option. Peak load 0.6 Amps
This will be covered in a follow up article.