Show HN: Remote-Controlled IKEA Deathstar Lamp | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Remote-Controlled IKEA Deathstar Lamp

gitlab.com

291 pointssephalon55 comments

Repainting the iconic IKEA PS 2014 lamp into the Deathstar from Star Wars has been a popular IKEA hack for quite some time.

This variant additionally replaces the manual, rope-operated mechanism to open and close the lamp with a remote-controlled motor.

The firmware is based on ESPHome, and its excellent Home Assistant integration enables one to implement higher-level features, like a "sundial" where the aperture of the Deathstar follows the sun elevation throughout the day (see the timelapse video).

That said, I will not consider this project as complete until the Imperial March can be played over the stepper motor (just like the legendary Floppotron) ;-)

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Cool project indeed. I used to own the first model and thought about how one could motorize the lamp. I used to own the one which didn’t have the reflected coating on the inside panels. At least in Germany they changed that a few years back from plain white to silver or gold reflection. And now the lamp is also available in bigger sizes. I bought it like most because of the interesting design. But was never really pleased with it. Practical use of keeping it closed is zero. I guess that was the reason to motorize it ;) But even in the open configuration it’s so dark that it’s unusable as a promised light source.

I have the one with copper inside coating, it works well as a lamp above the dining table with an 800 lumen LED lamp in it. I usually don't even have it set to the highest brightness.

Maybe the coated ones do work better. For my use the lamp was simply not bright enough.

Oh, no: the practical reason to keep it closed is when you switch it on at night, it shouldn’t suddenly brighten up the room at max volume, but open up progressively so your eyes can accomodate.

Of course if you live with someone, you don’t switch on the lights at night ;)

Part of the reason for automating it was that I wanted to integrate the lamp into my home theater setup: When the movie starts, the lamp slowly closes and synchronously dims out (guests always react with a smile to this). Pressing the pause button dims it up again and gives one just enough light to find the bathroom ;-)

That sounds awesome. How much noise makes the motor during open/close cycle? I remember that the plastic had quite some friction on its own.

Yes, noise is a problem, which unfortunately makes the lamp quite unpopular with my girlfriend ;-) Some is indeed coming from the folding mechanism itself, but the majority of noise is actually caused by the stepper motor, despite limiting the current to the necessary minimum. One could try to switch to a more advanced (i.e. silent) stepper motor driver than the A4988 (I mainly picked that one because ESPHome already has a driver for it), or use a servo motor instead.

I owned one of these lights before it went viral and it was a nightmare to install. The thing doesn’t screw into the ceiling like every other light figure does. Instead you install a hook and dangle the damn thing off the hook. Which means the plastic surround never goes flush with the ceiling.

Even when you do finally get it flush after several painful iterations of hanging it, gravity stretches the cord causing the base to come slightly away from the ceiling again.

If you’re OCD like me, it made the light a horrible reminder of that OCD. So in the end I gave up on the light.

Pity because it’s a really cool looking light.

Never seen a light fixture that screws into the ceiling.

Some fixtures screw into an electrical box attached to the studs in the ceiling. The IKEA SIMRISHAMN pendant does that, for example.

Looking at the Ikea US website, the Simrishamn and PS 2014 seem to have similar solutions: a plate that screws into an electrical box and provides a hook (the lowest common international denominator).

What do you do if you want to move a ceiling light a bit to the side? Do you install an entire new electrical box?

If those electrical boxes are anything like the ones in the video I shared, then they’re trivial to move.

You don’t actually need the box though. In fact they weren’t even available in my previous two homes. It’s really more a convenience thing than anything.

But again, this is assuming we are talking about the same thing (region differences and all).

In the US, NEC and most local codes (which are often based on some version of the NEC) require that connections be made inside a box. This is largely because connections are the most likely place for an electrical fire to start and the box helps contain it.

I can’t speak for where you are, but it’s the norm in the uk. Eg around 4:25 in this video https://youtu.be/WZizlnLfLks?si=LjRI1EWIHhn6Ktgx

When I bought the Ikea light, it was just hook and no way to fix the plastic surround to the ceiling.

Ikea might have updated the light since then though. As I said before, I got the light when it was new, long before it went viral, and ikea might have tweaked the design since.

You haven’t been to Germany, I guess. Or the Netherlands.

I wonder if this is a Swedish thing. I recently moved to a newly built apartment in Stockholm (as a non-Swede). All spots to put a ceiling light come with a hook and DCL socket, so it makes it super easy to swap lamps.

What a gem of a project. I am a huge fan of the PS 2014. To me it is one of the best IKEA products ever, even better than the discontiued Broder shelf system. We bought the large version with copper reflector for my son's room almost ten years ago and until today the mechanism works and it just looks great (it "ties the room together" for those who know). My idea was to replace the balls on the strings with little iron cast x-wings from a key chain ring, but they would always fly into the wrong direction, because the connector is at the back of the x-wing. I do not want some x-wings constantly flying cowardly away from our death star.

This project looks awesome and I will give it a shot, because it actually looks doable for a first ESP32 project. But I will first try it on the smaller version of the PS 2014 before I start working on my son's lamp.

When expanded and illuminated red from within it looks like it's exploding, so you can think of it as xwings retreating to safe distance after successful bombing run :)

I've got to say, the IKEA PS 2014 lamp is really a Death Star - not just because of its spherical shape, but also because it played a significant role in bankrupting the factory that produced it. According to Wikipedia, the Szarvasi Vas-Fémipari Zrt. factory in Hungary had big plans to expand its production in 2011, including manufacturing high-end design lamps for Western European markets. By 2018, they had invested 2 billion forints in a development project that would make them the exclusive supplier of one of IKEA's lamp families. At its peak, the factory was producing 130,000 coffee makers and 2 million lamps per year. However, it seems that producing the PS 2014 lamp at a price point that was too low to be sustainable ultimately led to the factory's downfall. It's a cautionary tale about the risks of prioritizing low costs over sustainability and fair labor practices. The Death Star lamp may have been a stylish and affordable addition to many homes, but its production came at a significant cost to the workers and community involved.

This lamp made a big splash among game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi and his friends/fans a few years back, because it resembles the first boss of Rez (on which Mizuguchi was the lead): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tStDX7QHNwI

When I saw this story I didn't recognize the model number and I thought "Hey, is that the Rez lamp?" sure enough...

This reminds me of a sort of adjacent hack, or maybe adaptation.

I bought one of those ikea lamps, but never put it into service because it was a hardwired lamp, which made it a "project" installation.

Then one day at home depot, I noticed they sell an adapter from hanging lamp to track lighting rail. Wire the adapter, snap into tracklight over dining table.

It might be easier to use ikea ceiling lamps this way.

Can the Deathstar lamp firmware be customized to add new modes, like an automatic opening and closing cycle synced to music or other triggers?

The firmware is based on ESPHome, which integrates particularly well into Home Assistant, a popular home automation software; therefore I would recommend to implement such features on a higher layer than the firmware. See here how to e.g. implement a "sundial" function: https://gitlab.com/sephalon/deathstar_lamp#home-assistant-in...

Just in time for May 4th. Well done!

Why does this lamp make people think of the death star? Me and my wife bought it ten years ago because of the cool mechanism and immediately started calling it the death star, but I struggle to see what the resemblance really is.

I find your comment very confusing! You don’t understand why people call it the Death Star but as soon as you got the lamp you started calling it the Death Star but you struggle to see the resemblance? Surely you’ve answered your own question…?!

No. This is a case where I am confused by my own behaviour as well! Clearly there is something about it but it's not something I'm conscious about.

I always called it DustStar because God damn does it collect dust.

Because it looks like the Death Star.

As others have said, I think it’s because it looks like the Death Star. I don’t even know Star Wars and I googled what the Death Star looks like and immediately thought “oh, right, this is why people call it the Death Star lamp…”

As an amusing side note, iOS autocapitalises “Death Star”.

The question is why all see the same and not just OP

Because it.. kind of looks like the death star?

Three simple reasons:

- It's spherical

- The pattern of the tiles slightly resembles the pattern on the death star

- When you open it, it looks like it "explodes", like every proper death star eventually does

I think it’s the angular shapes on a globe that triggers that.

https://starcorridors.github.io/src/img/death-star.png

lmao that lamp always made me wanna try something like this but i never had the patience gotta ask though, stuff like this - does it stay fun after the novelty wears off

Didn't know anyone still used gitlab. Also video not working..

The embedded video in the README is working just fine in Safari on iOS

Not for me

Doesn't seem to work in Brave

I'm using Brave on Android, works fine. Maybe the author updated it?

Safari iOS not working here either

Doesn't work in desktop Safari either.

Doesn't work in Firefox for Android ("file is corrupt").

Works in Waterfox.

How about this?

https://gitlab.com/sephalon/deathstar_lamp/-/blob/master/doc...

iOS (all the sma browsers / safari) it does not load. Download is jot an issue.

Plays in VLC if you download it.

Why so?

> Didn't know anyone still used gitlab

Why wouldn't someone use gitlab

For self-hosting, there are non-profits available, and in commercial world pricing got out of hand when comparing features. GitHub dominates too much.

Thanks for letting me know about the video playback issue, I used the following script to create the timelapse:

  ffmpeg \
   -pattern_type glob \
   -framerate 30 \
   -i "img/*.JPG" \
   -i "star_wars_style_march.mp3" \
   -s:v 1920x1080 \
   -c:a libopus \
   -c:v vp9 \
   -shortest \
   deathstar_timelapse.webm

I actually thought that VP9 and Opus are well supported everywhere by now, but maybe that is not the case…

Regarding GitLab, as a general rule, I try to avoid products dominating the market, and I quite like their OSS policy…

You should have used mp4. Not all browsers support vp9.

VP9/WEBM should be supported by all modern browsers: https://caniuse.com/webm

Android Firefox says it won't play because it's corrupted.

I have converted the timelapse to H.264/AAC, hope this plays everywhere now.

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