The IKEA OBEGRÄNSAD is a pixel-style LED wall lamp that comes with a few baked-in animations, and [ph1p] improved it immensely with an ESP32 board and new firmware. The new controller provides all kinds of great new abilities, including new modes and animations, WiFi control, and the ability to send your own images or drawings to the panel. All it takes is desoldering the original controller and swapping in a programmed ESP32.
Sadly, opening the unit up is a bit of a pain. It seems the back panel is attached with rivets rather than screws, but it will yield to a little bit of prying force. High Bay Light
The good news is that once the back panel is off, the inside of the OBEGRÄNSAD is very hackable. All the parts and connectors are easily accessible from where they are, and a nicely-labeled pin header makes a convenient attachment point for the new ESP32 board. There’s no need to disassemble any further once the back is off, and that’s always nice.
Going a bit smaller, we’ve also seen an IKEA LED nightlight greatly improved by a little hacking, and there are plenty more IKEA hacks where that came from.
Now it just needs a Bad Apple demo.
It could be even better with colour addressable leds.
Check out Pimoroni’s Cosmic Unicorn
$120 At that price I should start connecting the Pixie Purse panels that I bought on Amazon.com. ASIN B071LQR2QG
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/new/swedish-house-mafia-obegraensad-pub4d829620
“A square mixed with a circle. Two of the most iconic shapes. In the entire collection we have only worked with these two shapes.”
Can you run the game of life there?
Yes, according to the linked repository.
If you want one, you have to hurry. The “Obegränsad” lamp is a limited edition product. “Obegränsad” means “unlimited” in Swedish, by the way.
Given the code in https://github.com/ph1p/ikea-led-obegraensad/blob/main/src/screen.cpp#L105-L116 the matrix is controlled as a large shift register with an output latch, simply on-off, for 16×16=256 pixels. To get multiple brightness steps, might one of you have experimentally determined the maximum possible frequency on the shift register clock input?
FTR: As far as I can see, the build-in “raindrop” animation uses the fastest refresh rate and it shifts bits in at a peak rate of ca 220k bit/s. It seems to do this in groups of one byte, with an extra delay between bytes and between “frames”, for an effective total frame rate of ca 530 Hz. This animation uses gray-scale pixels, therefore the overkill frame rate (dimmer pixels are repeated less often). Doesn’t mean that is the max the hardware can handle, of course, but it’s already plenty IMHO. The overall brightness seems to be controlled via PWM on the “EN” line. Everything is in 5V logic.
a 32×32 addressable rgb led matrix is much more flexible and cheaper…
True, and they already make the Game Frame and the Pixoo if you want ready to go options.
Doom play or it never happened… :)
Doom might be a bit of a stretch, but space invaders and pong are an absolute must.
Hm, I have some IKEA Frekvens 16×16 lamps, time to open them up and see what’s inside.
I just had a look on Ikea at the Obegransad lamps only to see those Frekvens as well and had the same thought.
Unsurprisingly, they’ve already been re-engineered by the resourceful [sprite_tm]: https://spritesmods.com/?art=frekvens
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