See How Bob Clagett Built This Tron-Inspired Room for His Workshop

Bob Clagett has been building projects full-time for nearly a decade now, and over time, his shop had grown and became increasingly cluttered. So as an effort to perform a complete overhaul, Clagett set out to construct a dedicated room for his 3D printers and electronics work- free from the dust and grime in the rest of the shop. But after the painting had wrapped up, he realized the space needed some extra decor to breathe life into an otherwise plain, dark room.

The ceiling

Lighting was going to feature prominently throughout this new room that made Clagett revisit certain movie franchises in hopes of taking inspiration. Ultimately, this ended with him selecting Tron due to the film's extensive usage of edge lighting and futuristic, diffused ambiance. In keeping with the designs and art style, he opted to include several long RGBIC strips that work by illuminating individually-addressable sections of the strip rather than specific LEDs. Controlling five of these strips is an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi since the previous ESP8266 induced strange flickering. After a random interval, the sketch will select a random strip and then start a quick animation that sends a pulse of light down it, thus giving the impression of data flowing across the ceiling.

Indicating internet connectivity

Thanks to the UNO R4 WiFi's internet connectivity, Clagett wanted to take things a step beyond animations and integrate some kind of external functionality. With his shop's window being so prominent, he was able to wrap the same type of RGBIC diffused LED strip around its perimeter and connect it to the Arduino. From here, he modified the sketch to check for an active internet connection and display the test results in either blue for connected or red for a disconnected status.

Fluorescent lighting

Besides a few additional strips running around the wall, Clagett realized his 3D printer filament and some of his markers fluoresced under UV light, which led him to design a rotating drum featuring various cut-outs that create a shimmering effect while the drum spins around a UV bulb. A secondary Arduino UNO R4 Minima was attached to a 5V stepper motor and sends carefully timed pulses to advance the drum.

From the window's edge-lighting to the strips on the ceiling, all of these sources of illumination were able to bring an element of liveliness into Clagett's newly renovated space. To see the process of assembling everything in more detail, you can watch his build log video here on YouTube.