Have you ever exited a dark movie theater in the middle of the afternoon and found yourself blinded by the sudden transition to bright sunlight? Etienne Leroy faces the same problem after watching a movie on his home projector and turning on the lights. Because those lights are intense and instantly come on at full brightness, the transition can be very harsh. To increase comfort, he designed a ring-shaped lamp that lightens progressively.

ECLIPSE is a ring-shaped lamp that shines its light upon the wall onto which it is mounted. When activated, it gradually increased the brightness of the light in order to avoid a jarring transition after movie time. There are no longer any worries about hurt eyes and the lamp looks gorgeous, so it adds to the home’s decor instead of detracting from it. Best of all, ECLIPSE is easy and affordable to build if you want your own.

The lamp’s frame is printable in small sections that should fit on most consumer 3D printers. Illumination comes from a strip of “warm white” LEDs, though it would be easy to substitute another color or even RGB LEDs. An Arduino Nano controls those LEDs, increasing brightness slowly over a set period of time. It uses an infrared receiver module, so users can take advantage of the remotes they already own and have handy to turn the ECLIPSE lamp on. It will work with any infrared remote and the user only needs to decode the specific code sent by their remote when they press the desired button.