After a long time without project updates, I finally had time to assemble the new version of the LOLB. In the process of upgrading the electronics, I also ended up adding mp3/amp and a speaker to the bottom of the device.

Have fun watching the video I made after finishing in the Attraktor makerspace last night:

It seems like that cheap mp3 player/amplifier board i once bought from Pollin as well as a full range speaker that sits in the bottom of the LOLB were no bad deal at all, it even came with a remote which you can see in the video.

On the mp3 player board, I identified the pin with the unamplified analog audio signal coming from the MP3 decoder on the board and fed it into one of the Teensy 3.0's analog pins using the recommended circuit from the Teensy Audio "Docs" (the design tool). On the Teensy I'm running a bit of fft, beat detection and of course the phase dimmer timing. All the PCBs were mounted inside the LOLB's bottom with an yet to document custom milled PCB holder.

Also, a nice wooden baseplate was milled with 16 cutouts for the 16 lamp cables. I played around a lot with arranging the bulbs "nicely" in the glass cylinder, but eventually, I found it looks the best if they're just arranged in wild heap.

That steel housing originally was the base part of a glass/metal flower vase. The glass part of the vase, you might have guessed it, now sits heads over on top of the base and contains all the lightbulbs. Having the vase upcycled like that, I just needed to file some cutouts in the steel base for all the connectors and buttons/switches. It now can be comfortably reprogrammed it via USB from outside, has an illuminated pushbutton for switching through different sound reactivity modes and allows the connection of an external sound analog sound source.

Since this first LOLB is a christmas present for someone, I will give it away this month and will definitely miss it. It seems that the LOLB really is capable of radiating a nice and cosy atmosphere in a living room without being to intrusive.

So, well, I think I'll make more of them eventually, but probably not before middle of next year, since we're in the process of moving to the US and it doesn't quite make sense to build lots of 230V circuitry anymore.