{"id":3528,"date":"2023-09-22T22:36:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T20:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robinglauser.ch\/blog\/?p=3528"},"modified":"2025-01-09T22:10:52","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T20:10:52","slug":"building-a-luxafor-clone-in-under-an-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robinglauser.ch\/blog\/2023\/09\/22\/building-a-luxafor-clone-in-under-an-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Luxafor Clone in under an hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

After having the pleasure of using a Luxafor<\/a> focus light for a few weeks, tragedy struck. My coworker, who is also my former roommate and the person who introduced the idea to our department, told me I had to pass it on to someone else to try out.<\/p>\n

What is Luxafor<\/a>?<\/b> It’s a small LED device that attaches to your computer monitor. You can set it to different colors to indicate your availability to coworkers (e.g., red for “busy”, green for “available”).<\/div>\n

Hearing this on Friday, only one thought came to mind for any sane person with too much time on their hands: “It can’t be that hard; I’ll just build my own over the weekend.”<\/p>\n

At 20:02, I sent the following message to my coworker:<\/p>\n

Luxafor Clone in 3 2 1<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I already had all the things I thought I needed, so I began piling up electronic components on my desk.<\/p>\n

After deciding on an Arduino Nano<\/a> as my microprocessor, I grabbed a few LEDs and looked up which resistor I needed. Luckily, I had written the Ohm value on the packaging of the resistor; otherwise, I would have had to measure it myself.<\/p>\n

At 20:28, I sent the following image along with a message to my coworker:<\/p>\n

How much ohm is that again?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was just joking; I tested it again to make sure past Robin hadn’t messed up or played a joke at my expense.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the revolutionary fade example<\/a>, I extended it to four LEDs (red, blue, green, yellow) and connected the circuit. I then had to assure my roommates that I wasn’t building a bomb and that I knew what I was doing.<\/p>\n

\"The
The image depicts an Arduino Uno, which is a different model from the Arduino Nano I used in the project. However, the pin assignments for the RGB LED should still work, as both boards have similar pins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

https:\/\/www.tinkercad.com\/things\/7dWSkelaL4U-fantastic-wolt-wluff\/editel?sharecode=0wMHIj7wv8QL4QKExafMtm0PTadmth-g0ccmTQbffYg<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I uploaded this Arduino code (definitely not co-written by ChatGPT) to the Arduino Nano.<\/p>\n