The Conception
This was a project that I started in 2024. After moving out of my parents’ place into my own apartment, I was furnishing my new bedroom-turned-studio with some Amazon lights, but I didn’t feel satisfied with it. Something felt off, a little limiting with what it offered. You see, I had a vision of swirling, dancing lights that envelop the space, almost sentient in movement. A mind of its own that lives within the confines of wires and capacitors, yet yearns to be seen all the same. That’s pretty much the origin of Kev_Bot, and I knew that I had to make it myself to see it through. After weeks of researching, learning, building, soldering, programming, etc., Kev_Bot was finally born.
The Details
When I started this endeavor, I had little to no experience with electrical engineering, apart from some tinkering with mechanical keyboards. But not having experience in a skill or topic has rarely stopped me when I have decided to commit. Luckily, I found a starting point while researching custom lights, an open source library called WLED. From there, I was able to figure out what exactly was needed to complete this project, and I got to work. The internals of Kev_Bot are comprised of an ESP32 ethernet controller that is wired to over 570+ addressable RGB LEDs placed around my room. The light fixtures I assembled myself in order to get the exact lengths and LED types needed to fit my specs. Since the lights are connected to my home network via Ethernet, I am able to control them extensively via my phone or computer. WLED has many preset effects and colors built in to choose from, which I enjoyed up until I realized that I can’t really fine-tune these effects, or sequence them in any easy way. I knew then that I had to dive even further. I feel like it’s always been that way; you approach the finish line and get excited, only to have your hopes dashed as the line gets arbitrarily pulled back another 10 miles or so.
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