Ring Light With Creality Motherboard Dimmer

thingiverse

I designed this ring light as part of a camera setup to take product pictures for an online store. Apparently, a ring light is better than a normal flash for product photos, preventing shadows from becoming as much of an issue. I used some extremely bright 24V LEDs and it was sometimes too bright! To fix this, I created a LED dimmer out of an old printer controller board that I had leftover from my printer upgrade. The arduino code I wrote for the light dimmer is designed to run on a Creality V1.1.x motherboard. I have a few of them since they've been replaced in my own machines. For the adjustment knob, I used a 10K potentiometer, and drew 5V from the ISP header, feeding the value to the hotend thermister read pin. The case also includes a hole for a SPST switch or another potentiometer. You'll need to put a bootloader on the board to send arduino code to it. M3 screws can be used with no nut, screwed directly into the plastic. The case cover snaps on. Two more M3 screws hold the ring platform to the light ring part. To mount the ring light to the camera, sandwich the RingPlatform piece in the screw mount of the camera's tripod connection. I added a second light control circuit to the sketch which works off the heatbed mosfet and temp sensor. I also enlarged the access port for the usb so it doesn't obstruct.