A miniature Vegas Sphere is the perfect nightlight

Sphere in Las Vegas is inarguably one of the most notable architectural achievements of the 21st century so far. Gaudy? Maybe. Controversial? Definitely. Interesting? Absolutely — no one can debate that with a straight face. When 15-year-old Ben Kennedy’s bedroom nightlight broke, he decided to use the Sphere as the inspiration for this DIY LED nightlight.

Like Sphere at the Venetian Resort, Kennedy’s nightlight is a spherical display. It may only be a few inches tall, but it has a whopping 800 LEDs underneath the translucent outer shell. Those are WS2812b individually addressable RGB LEDs, so each can be set to a unique color and brightness independent of its neighbors. It is, in essence, an LED screen wrapped around a three-dimensional ball.

Inside the outer shell is a 3D-printed frame, designed in Fusion 360, onto which Kennedy glued the LED strips. That frame has a kind of tiered structure to match the shape of the sphere. The outer diffuser shell and base were also 3D-printed. An Arduino Nano Every board controls the LEDs using the popular FastLED library, which is ideal for animating a large number of LEDs like this. Those naturally draw a lot of power, so Kennedy purchased a beefy 5V 15A power supply.

To swap between colors and animations, Kennedy reused the infrared remote that came with his old nightlight. He attached an infrared receiver to the Arduino and recorded the codes sent by that remote, then associated them with specific colors and effects in his sketch. He even used potentiometers to dial-in specific hues so they perfectly match the buttons on the remote

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