Adding colored LEDs

This is a great suggestion - I will ping him, and see when we can pull together some info. If you haven't yet, you may want to contact "hero_pup", who posted on _our subreddit_ about his experience doing this.

Having fully disassembled my own table, I'll confirm that it should be entirely possible.  

There's two ways depending on how you want to go about things.  If you're ok with removing and reconnecting the wires, then you'll be able to feed them up through a small slot in the sand tray.  Have a look under your table and you'll see the existing LED wire go through that slot.  It's wide enough for the wires, but not for a connector.

If you don't mind a little more work, then you can remove the tray entirely.  It's held down with some silicone sealant, so should come up without any real problem, just be gentle.  If you're doing this, I'd remove the existing light strip first.  It will come off with no issues, and gentle pulling where the foam sticky pads secure it.  There's three around the table edge.  That will allow the tray to lift free.  

From there, feed the wires through the slot I mentioned, then clean up the old silicone, lay down a light bead and put the tray back on.  Be careful to line up the slot with the boards underneath so the cables will reach the boards.

Throw the sand bags on the tray for an hour or so until the silicon cures, and you're good to put the sand back, and carry on as normal. 

All in all it's a pretty easy process, and should take no more than an hour, probably a lot less.  No table damage, and I think no drilling required!  

If you want any other hints or tips, let me know.  I've probably seen more of the tables guts than most outside of Sisyphus HQ 🙂

@ndhutchison This is great info! What kind of strip did you use? Did you add a driver? 

@hunterdubose The process above should certainly work well if you're comfortable modding your table as such. You may have difficulty with the Hue strip if the cable coming off is large. As @ndhutchison mentioned, I'm sure the connector won't fit through the slot in the pan so you  may need to splice the wires or break the silicone seal.

I imagine advising customers to modify our product is not the best business practice. But hey, I'm a hacker at heart so I'd love to see some pictures and hear how it goes!

I'd be happy to answer any additional questions here, but I'll ping you via email if you prefer that.

I'm interested in doing this as well, let me know if you have had success.   I wasn't sure if the power requirements would match up between the existing LEDs and the Hue system.   I have several Hue lights throughout my house and this would be a great addition to the existing room lights to match up.

Wow! Color me interested as well.  My Sisyphus table is in my living room (as the centerpiece of my home) and that room already has Hue lighting. Getting the table in sync with those bulbs sounds like a dream come true.  ????

I am happy to report that I successfully added Lifx Z leds to my table (and I am not handy at all). I separated the LED hoop from the table and attached the Lifx Z strip on the remaining space, very carefully peeled back the velvet around the slot where the wires for the white LED come through, made that slot just big enough to fit the LED cord through (using an exacto knife and a micro hacking method), patted down the velvet, replaced the LED hoop upside-down and plugged it in!

It is GORGEOUS!!!!

The whole thing took maybe 30 minutes, most of which was spent hacking away at the table. I am certain someone with tools and skills could do it faster and better, but the truth is that you cannot see the damage created unless you take the glass top and the ring off of the table.

Two notes:

1) I have a 3' table and need to order one extension strip. The 6.6' that comes with the LifX Z starter kit is not enough. I would have known this if I had bothered to do the math, but I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to add it if everything else was successful.

2) I highly recommend the LifX Z over Phillips Hue unless you are really invested in the Hue system. We do have Hue lights in our home, but I chose the LifX Z strip instead because it allows for zoned colors and animation, so you can have a rainbow of colors on the table. It is really something to behold. LifX is hubless and home-kit compatible, so those were pluses as well.

Happy to answer any questions! Cheers. 🙂

Jessica

Nice! Thanks for sharing your success. Consider posting pictures (I'm not sure if they work here, maybe with an imgur link, or use the SisyphusIndustries subreddit.

Someday I'd like to hook up an RGB or RGBW addressable strip to the Raspberry Pi and talk Bruce into giving me some rho/theta coordinates so it could do zoned lighting based on the ball position.

I will post a couple of picks of the strip and the hole I had to make it the table the next time I take the glass off, but in the meantime, here is a snap of the result.

🙂

Sharp!

@jessicarunnelsmac-com FANTASTIC!

@dithermaster How do you mean? (The *.thr format is nothing but theta/rho coords!)

I mean a realtime stream of the current position so I could adjust the addressable LEDs based on where the ball currently is (e.g., make it brighter when the ball is near, or change the color, or whatever). A separate process on the Pi could run the LEDs, or a separate small Arduino could do it. So some inter-process communication, or a serial port stream. It doesn't have to be high resolution. 

That's quite feasible. During track plotting, every step each motor takes is counted. From these counts the current position of the ball can be easily calculated.

@bruce Cool. If I get closer to doing this project I'll get in touch. The updates would not have to be frequent (10 Hz would be plenty) nor would the resolution have to be very terribly high.

Updates: I got my Life Z extension strip and it popped in very easily. You can only trim the strips between every 6th light, but it just so happens that it fits PERFECTLY in the 36" table by cutting off just the last two sets of 6. I am going to attach some pictures as promised. 

I think I can only attache one file per post, so this will be a short collection of posts. First up is a close up of the Life Z cord poking through the slit I made in the velvet. You can see that the velvet lays down very neatly over/around it.

Next is a view from the underside. This is where I feel certain it can be done much more elegantly than I did it. But it works well and I haven't had any issues. I probably should seal it with silicon, but I am worried that that might muck up the velvet that is laying over the hole tbh...

You can see that I have just wrapped the old LED cord under the table for safekeeping.

Next up is a straight on view of the new connection and the end of the new strip. The connector for the old LEDs is just tucked along the backside of the hoop in case I ever decide I want/need to go back.

Penultimate pic is an overhead shot of the whole shebang with the ring off so you can get an idea of the scale of the damage done.

And last, but not least, is a view from the far side of the table right at the table's edge, so you can see what it looks like if you are trying really hard to see what is going on. The most notable thing here is that you can clearly see the row of "old" LEDs along the bottom. I suppose you could remove them, but they don't bother me. Just be aware that you can see them from a bit higher up as well. 🙂