After moving to my new address, I decided to design my own custom led-lights with in-wall touchscreen monitor for control. This by connecting them to a wired Xnorduino communication bus.

<WRAP center round info 60%> Note:

1. The camera strobing effect from the LED-drivers, is not visible to the human eye!
2. This video was deliberately captured vertically!
3. Yes, the white cabinet with strange LED lights inside contains the server hosting this webpage.

</WRAP>

A cat6 communication cable cable was installed across the ceiling, prior of finalizing the room. As has been makred, in the left image below. In the right image, the cable can be seen.

An additional power supply was required, as each of both LED lights can draw up to 1.5A at 24V (36 watt), surpassing the 1A max current of cat6. I therefore decided to position all connection points behind the wooden pilar in an attempt to hide the cable mess. A custom cover was designed using FreeCad and 3D printed on my Prusa MK4 afterwards. See images below.

A custom LedDriver PCB was designed using KiCad. The PCB contains 8 individually controllable LED drivers, of which:

• 4 are used for 6500K cold white LED's with a 95% CRI
• 4 are used for 1800K warm white LED's with a 90% CRI

The PCB has some extra optional expansion footprints available for:

• XBee3 zigbee communication
• Temperature sensor
• Current & voltage sensor

<WRAP center round important 60%> A glass fuse holder has been included in the design, for safety reasons! This is mandatory and a 1.6A slow blow fuse should be selected appropriately! </WRAP>

In addition I designed a smaller white LED circuitboard, with an FPC connection. Each LED driver can connect up to 8 of these, but only 4 in series due to current limitations of the FPC cables. This isn't any problem, as the LED driver PCB is positioned in the middle, giving us acces for 2 x 4 white LED PCB's on each side. Totaling 32 white PCB's, with 6 LED's each.

Early tests concluded a succesfull result, as can be seen in the images underneath.

I had some leftover wooden boards, due to recently renovating a room. In order to reduce waste, I decided to reuse them as base-material for my ceiling lights. I tried building the light without 3D printing any parts, but changed my mind afterwards as the final result wasn't very neat.

Two different types of structural clips where 3D printed to keep the wooden planks neatly in place. The left image shows the structural clip on the outside of the ceiling light, the right image show the center clip. Collarfabb woodfill PLA was chosen for this print.

Every white PCB was meant to be screwed onto the structure, using 2 screws each. This many screws seemed a waste of time, as each light holds 32 of these white PCB's. I therefore went with the alternative of printing clips, that hold the LED circuitboards in-place on the structure. The LED's used are high-efficiency medium-power, so the temperature doesn't surpass beyond 45°C on max intensity. Which doesn't result in any danger of melting the PLA clips.

I also programmed the LED-driver pcb's firmware, so that the actual maximum configurable intensity is around 70% of the rated LED current. LED's their efficiency and durability lower drastically above 70%, as more heat is generated. Heat is mostly the reason why commercial LED's tend to die way faster than they're rated for. So I hope these lights last many many years.

A center holder was also 3D printed to keep the control circuitboard in place, the LED drivers can become hot so a little air-gap was foreseen to avoid melting the plastic.

The installation was rather easy, using nearly invisible fish-wire with decent weight rating.