USB powered/controlled LED base to light up a Selenite crystal (or other transparent object) preprogrammed with a range of routines.

TODO: Add video of lamp

The unit is just a Neopixel Jewel 7 connected to an Arduino Nano. I used solid core 22 AWG wire and mounted it to a piece of craft wood with thumb tacks, and added a layer of foam padding underneath. Solid core wires are a good choice since they're stiff enough to hold the Neopixel board in place.

I happened to have an enclosure from a cheap base I'd bought before. All you really need is an enclosure with a gap for the USB port and a transparent top.

Install selenite.ino on your Arduino. Depending on how you wired your circuit, you may need to adjust PIN to the number of whichever data pin you wired the Neopixel to.

Installation with arduino-cli:

arduino-cli compile --fqbn arduino:avr:nano
arduino-cli upload --fqbn arduino:avr:nano -p /dev/selenite-lamp

Currently the CLI depends on nightly Rust (see rust-lang/rust#60553). Build with cargo:

cargo build --release

This will generate a standalone binary at target/release/selenite-lamp.

selenite-lamp 0.2.1

USAGE:
    selenite-lamp [OPTIONS] <SERIAL_PORT> <SUBCOMMAND>

ARGS:
    <SERIAL_PORT>    Serial port to connect to. Something like `/dev/ttyUSB0` or `COM1` [env:
                     SELENITE_PORT=/dev/selenite-lamp]

OPTIONS:
    -v, --verbose    Print verbose output
    -h, --help       Print help information
    -V, --version    Print version information

SUBCOMMANDS:
    query         Query the current command state
    stop          Turn off the lights
    cycle-hues    Cycle through the rainbow
    pulse-hue     Pulse a specific hue
    show-rgb      Show a specific RGB color
    gleam         Randomly pulse groups of leds to create a gleaming effect
    watch-file    Watch the provided file for json, and update when it changes
    help          Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Most subcommands take parameters. Use selenite-lamp help <SUBCOMMAND> for details.

Instead of providing the serial port as an argument, you can set the SERIAL_PORT environment variable which you can then set in ~/.bashrc (or configuration file for whatever shell you use).

selenite-lamp /dev/ttyUSB0 query

selenite-lamp /dev/selenite-lamp gleam 20000 0.004

SELENITE_PORT=/dev/ttyUSB0 selenite-lamp cycle-hues

On systems with udev (most modern Linux systems), you can create a udev rule to configure the USB port and create a named symlink when the lamp is plugged in. This way you can have the device at a consistent location (say /dev/selenite-lamp).

The udev rule should look something like:

/etc/udev/rules.d/99-selenite-lamp.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1a86", ATTRS{idProduct}=="7523", SYMLINK+="selenite-lamp", RUN+="/bin/stty -F /dev/selenite-lamp -hupcl"

where the vendor and product ids are the actual values from your Arduino (I'm using a cheap Arduino clone, your values will probably be different!). You can find those values by running:

sudo dmesg | grep usb

with the lamp plugged in, and looking for your Arduino's values.

Note that the udev rules need to be reloaded before new rules take effect:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules