Color changing lava lamp

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Hi all,

I just joined the forum.  Wanted to let people know that I am working on a color changing lava lamp.  Mine will be called the Fire Light.  I'm hoping to get it on kickstarter soon.  I have a working prototype running now.  I'm also building custom, heavy duty steel bases for them.  I'm in the process of finding parts suppliers and getting costs for the parts.  Just wanted to see if there was any interest in this.  I am working now on getting 3 or 4 different prototype designs of bases built so that I can put together a video for kickstarter.  I'll get some pictures posted soon.  I am having a problem with my phone camera not capturing the colors very well.  I'm not sure how I'll deal with that when I try to make a video.

 

jb

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Also, I still have some work to do on the code for the color sequence of the LED.  It's just running a simple piece of code right now that quickly cycles through a few colors.  When I get everything put together and working right, I'll refine the program so that it changes through quite a few different colors.  It'll have at least a couple buttons on it so you can select from 3 or 4 different color change speeds, and you can select particular static colors.  In the future I may also add Bluetooth and build apps for iPhone and Android so that you can control it with your phone.

I am NOT using one of these cheap Chinese RGB LED bulbs with a cheap remote control that works when it feels like it.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Ok.  Things have taken a little longer than I had hoped.  I still have a lot of work to do.  Here is a video of the Fire Light running.  You can see why I've been a little hesitant to post pictures and video. The light just does not look right on the camera. In a couple spots I try to refocus on the lamp and you can start to see the wax ok. The lighter colors especially just look faded on the video. It looks a lot better and really solid in person. Still working on painting the other bases. And the video quality is a little lower when uploaded.

https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.blakesley.77/videos/vb.1554192690/1...

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Work in progress.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Also, the white dye works well in the goo kit wax.  It looks pretty solid.  I suspect that if you were revamping a regular colored lava lamp, you could put some of this white dye in, then your color, and it would look solid like original lava.

Here's that link to the video of my color changing fire light running.  Again, the lighting sucks.

https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.blakesley.77/videos/vb.1554192690/1...

[Claude J]

the bases are cool.

I could see these being made out of polished Billet Aluminum as an option

[Jeremy Blakesley]

I just got my first run of prototype custom heater elements in for the Fire Light.  Now I have to build the control circuitry for them.  There is a lot of work yet to be done on these things.  It may be a couple more months before I can get my kickstarter going.  I'm ironing out the details to have my custom bottles made.  That's the most expensive and time consuming part.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Here are the purple/orange and the green/blue bases.  These are just experiment colors.  I'm not a decorator or an artist.  They'll be available in a large range of colors of your choice.  Also, this is just some crappy spray paint.  They'll be done professionally later.

[Carol]

They look cool!!!!!

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Still working on this thing.  Everything is quite time consuming.  I am finalizing the design for my glass bottle.  I've gone through a few revisions trying to get something that looks right with my bases.  I have some paper mock ups I made to set on the base to see how they look.  I think I'll go with this bullet shaped one.  I'll post some other revisions too.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

Ok.  I just sent this cad drawing to the bottle manufacturer.  They'll get started with the 3D rendering and building my molds, and in about 45 days I should have some samples.  Hurry up and wait.

[Jeremy Blakesley]

So the bottle people said they can't do that 90 degree bend near the bottom end of the bottle.  They said it needs to go down at an angle.  So I redesigned that and I went ahead and did my own 3Drendering and sent it to them.

Hopefully they'll get started making my mold and samples soon.  They did say there will be a delay because of Chinese New Year coming up.  They are taking forever getting the details straight though.

[Arne]

how about the option of uv light (power led or cheap laser) so that uv active formulae light up or even glow in the dark like the base of this one