René Bergenroth - Master of Arts Digital Media
This is a 3D model of a ring light prototype. The model is interactive and can be viewed from different angles using your mouse or touch controls.
The living room table is ready, stocked with drinks 🍾 and snacks 🍽️. We're playing a tabletop escape game. 🎮
✨ I lean back, gaze upward—and there it is. 👁️ A light that fills the room, creating an atmosphere that immerses me in Japanese mythology.🌸
This is what the Ring Light Project will be capable of in the future. 💡🚀🌌
I have always wanted lighting to be more than just a simple way to illuminate a room. It should evoke emotions.
That's why I already have over 40 different RGB lights in my home, capable of glowing in the most vibrant rainbow colors I can imagine. But that's not enough for me—because these lights are static.
You set a scene once, and that's it.
For example, one of our scenes is called Cuddle. This scene bathes the room in warm, reddish tones—cozy, inviting, and perfect for relaxing. But when friends come over, Cuddle doesn't quite fit the mood.
That's when Blossom comes in. It features green and pink hues, simulating cherry blossoms. Also beautiful—but still static.
To break free from this rigidity, I wanted to build my own living room table lamp. One that doesn't just provide light, but actively spreads emotions and creates an ambiance beyond anything you'd expect.
Through animated lighting, dynamically adjusting to the mood, yet bright enough to illuminate the next board game—or even enhance the next escape room experience with an immersive atmosphere.
And that's exactly why I started this project. Of course, I started small.
Maybe I've even blown up a few components along the way. Who knows. 😄
Many lighting systems are designed to simply receive a color code, derive the corresponding color, and display it. But that's exactly where my project introduces a unique twist.
My lamp is intended to integrate seamlessly into existing systems like HomeKit and other smart home platforms. Instead of just displaying a static color, the Ring Light interprets the color values and dynamically adapts the lighting.
For example, if a red tone is received, the light wouldn't just glow red. Instead, it could take inspiration from fire or lava. The Ring Light would then cast a warm, radiant glow towards the ceiling, while maintaining a softer illumination on the table.
Blue tones could create an entirely different atmosphere—perhaps evoking the feeling of midnight. And what if a shooting star animation gracefully moves across the ceiling?
To achieve this effect, the lamp must hang at an optimal height—low enough to use the ceiling as a projection surface, but not too low to still illuminate the entire room effectively.
Of course, these are just wild ideas for now. But that's what experiments are for, and I'm determined to bring them to life.
It all started simply with a birthday gift from my good friends Julia and Ubo. They gave me a small Raspberry Pi Zero 2. And that's how it began. I dug out my Advent calendar, which I once received from my husband, filled with many small components for Raspberry Pi, and just started to experiment a bit.
Now it continued. I had started to learn FreeCut and simultaneously did some experiments with my Raspberry Pi to get LEDs, and it was incredibly fun.
One of my biggest takeaways from this project was realizing how little I actually knew going into it. It was quite funny to see how many issues and obstacles I had to overcome just to get this prototype working. But now, I have a lamp that can be powered via USB-C, a microcontroller that I can access over Wi-Fi, and a simple-looking outer shell.
A few weeks later, I decided to build a larger version of the lamp. However, I ran into several challenges while trying to design an outer shell that could be properly assembled and 3D printed with my printer. Since my printer’s build volume is limited to 265 x 265 x 265 mm, I couldn’t print a 2-meter-long lamp in one piece. I had to break the design into smaller segments to make it printable.
Using FreeCAD wasn’t exactly straightforward either—it’s not the most intuitive tool for creating complex designs. Still, I was glad that I had already bought a five-meter-long LED strip and managed to redesign the housing for the power supply. Since the power unit is a generic product from China, I wasn’t sure how safe it is, and I didn’t want to touch it while it’s connected to the power grid, so I built a safer, enclosed casing for it.
I have now built a prototype of the ring light. It is not yet functional, but it is a good starting point.
Because my husband has a digital clock on his bed, I want to build him a new one with with some more features and not only to show the current time. But what I was not aware of how extremely bright these dots that displays are and now in need to say it in german: Das ist ja voll der Baustrahler.
But I have to be honest with you, I totally paused this project right now because I do If you want more to do something with digital products, like my new website, this one here. loobel.de