Custom lighting for my bookshelf

Beside my desk, I have a bookshelf. While this “book”shelf barely contains any books, it is a key part of my hobby work as it contains all kinds of electronic components, a server, some networking gear, and my 3D printer.

A few years ago, I semi-permanently affixed a strip of PWM-controllable RGB LEDs around the frame of my desk to make it glow at night, and since then I’ve been looking for more things to LED-ify. Thus, the next logical step was to light up my bookshelf!

Lights on my desk

The plan

My bookshelf is laid out as follows:

I only wanted to light up the top row, since the bottom row has very little room for light to bounce around in, so after a few hours of tinkering, I settled on the following wiring layout (top-down view):

NOTE: In both images, the purple lines represent the LED strips, and the red lines represent the wires connecting them.

I opted to use some WS2812 LED strips, and a small Arduino to tie everything together software-wise.

Of course, in real life, the wiring looks a.. um.. appropriate amount of sketchy.

A photo of the left-most section

A custom LED controller

The LED controller that came with my LED strips isn’t awesome… mainly because it doesn’t even power on 😆. So, equipped with an Arduino and a soldering iron, I set out to make my own.

The software isn’t really important here, since its basically the NeoPixel example code, but I did opt to make my program function with one button.

I can tap the button to cycle through a few different preset colours, and I can also hold it for a few seconds to turn the whole thing on and off.

The controller itself is 100% function and 0% aesthetic, but that sums up most of my personal harware projects, so it fits right in.

The results

So, how does it look?

Great actually!

A note from later me

Hi! It is currently February 2, 2024. I’ve recently re-written and open-sourced the software tha powers this shelf. Feel free to check it out on GitHub.