Turn a Boring Old IKEA Lamp Into a Sound-Reactive Light Display

Like everything else at IKEA, the GRÖNÖ lamp is stylishly-minimalist and affordable. That means that they sell a lot of those lamps, and many of them inevitably end up at Goodwill stores and other thrift shops for bargain basement prices. You could just buy one and use it as is, or you could follow MnMakerMan’s tutorial to turn it into a more interesting sound-reactive lamp.

The GRÖNÖ table lamp is about as Scandinavian as a design can be, and the entire body is just a simple rectangular prism of frosted glass. That glass is meant to keep the light soft, but it also does a great job at diffusing LEDs without needing any additional treatment. So, MnMakerMan decided to take advantage of that fact to convert his lamp to LED, and added a bunch of new WiFi-controlled lighting effects while he was at it.

The primary components for this project are a NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller development board, a strip of 15 Adafruit NeoPixel LEDs (or equivalent WS2812B individually-addressable RGB LEDs), and a Electret microphone amplifier based on the MAX4466 op-amp. The schematic is as simple as can be, and you’ll only need to connect a few wires. Then upload MnMakerMan’s code that allows for control of the ESP8266 through a web interface. Finally, 3D-print the end caps that hold the electronics. The result is a stylish LED lamp with a number of lighting effects, including sound-reactivity.