DIY LED Photography Ring Light

2017-08-23 | By All About Circuits

License: See Original Project

In this tutorial, we are going to build our own LED ring for photography! This project uses an RGBW LED ring, a small Arduino-compatible board, and a potentiometer to make a cool and adjustable LED ring light. Depending on your camera, you may need to adjust the size of the filter and LED ring to best suit your needs!

The final product!

MY LED ring was designed to fit a lens that uses a 52 mm filter. This is a relatively simple project that can be completed with just a hot glue gun and a soldering iron. I used a CNC router to machine an adapter ring so I could attach the LEDs to the filter, you can still do this project without a CNC machine.

Tools Required

The CNC router I used to make the adapter ring

A few tools are required for this project. A soldering iron is required to connect all of the electronics. A hot glue gun is needed to assemble the components and provide stress relief to the wires. Flexible glue like E9000 or Shoe Goo can be used instead of hot glue. Also, I used a ShapeOko CNC router to machine out the 52 mm to LED ring adapter, but that’s not required.

Tip: Caution should be used with dealing with tools such as soldering irons, hot glue guns, and power tools. Be sure to follow the manufacturer's safety recommendations.

Schematic

This project is relatively basic.

The schematic can be seen above. The 10 k Ohm potentiometer gets connected to the +5 V Bus, Analog 5 (A5), and ground. The Neopixel ring is attached to the +5 V bus, digital pin 5, and ground.

Gathering Parts

For a light source, I used a 4500 K variant of a 24 NeoPixel RGBW. I originally used an RGB ring, but the RGBW ring produces a truer white and has a greater light output. RGBW LED rings can be difficult to source, but Adafruit has a few options available. For this project, I used Adafruit part 2862.

An Adafruit Trinket that controls the LEDs

This project uses a 5 V, 16 Mhz Adafruit Pro Trinket, but nearly any Arduino-compatible board can be used. In many cases, the software for this project won't need to be changed.

The 10 k Ohm potentiometer used

For this project, a potentiometer is used to adjust the brightness of the LED ring. I used a 10 k Ohm single turn potentiometer, but many other potentiometers would also be fine.

In order to attach this light to a camera, I used a 52 mm threaded filter. You won't need to use an expensive filter since the glass can be carefully removed if desired.

I used an AmazonBasics 52 mm UV filter. I was able to remove the glass in the filter by unscrewing the retaining ring.

The AmazonBasics 52 mm filter used

The quantity of materials you’ll need varies based on your construction. I used plywood to make the filter-to-LED-ring adapter thin (approximately 0.1 inches thick). I also used approximately 9 feet of stranded wire, two small zip ties, and a small quantity of heat shrink.

Assembly

Now that the parts and design are laid out, we can get to building!

Soldering

A little bit of easy through-hole soldering is required to get this up and working.

First solder on the potentiometer based on the schematic.

In the image below, I have a red wire going to +5 V, a black wire going to ground, and an orange wire going to the analog input.

The 10 K potentiometer solder connection

Next, you’ll need to solder the wire to the LED ring and to the Adafruit Trinket. The length of your wire is up to, but I used about 3 feet.

In the image below, I have a blue wire going to +5 V, a green wire going to ground, and the yellow wire is the signal.

The Trinket and wiring

Tip: Once soldering is done and the connections are confirmed to be working, add a drop of hot glue to the connection point to act as a form of stress relief. I used a zip tie to bundle the wires around the Trinket PCB.

LED Ring Assembly

The CNC router making the adapter ring

In order to have a relatively nice looking completed project, I used a ShapeOko CNC router to machine an adapter ring. Once the adapter was routed out and deburred, I glued the LED ring and 52 mm UV filter into place.

LED ring light assembly

I know not everyone has access to a CNC router. If you don’t have access to one, the 52 mm filter can be glued or epoxied directly to the LED ring. Care should be taken not to short out traces or pads on the LED ring against the metal 52 mm filter.

LED ring on the 52 mm filter

Download Software

Now that our hardware is assembled, it is now time to download the software!

The software for this project is relatively basic. The code is based heavily on Adafruit's Neopixel library using functions such as “strip.begin()”, “strip.show()”, and “strip.Color()”. These functions make the timing required for the Neopixels an afterthought as the library takes care of it all.

These functions also make the code easy to use and update as needed to fit your application exactly. Additionally, the “colorWipe()” is from Adafruit’s “standtest.ino” example project.

The important line of code in this project is:

colorWipe(strip.Color(analogRead(A5)/4, analogRead(A5)/4, analogRead(A5)/4, analogRead(A5)/4));

This line of code reads pin 5 of the Trinket’s ADC value, creates an RGBW color code, and sends the data to the colorWipe() function.

Downloads

There are two download links below: One contains the Carbide Create file for the adapter ring and the other contains the software used for this project.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9npcDtU-qDZa1kzZHdmcEI1MHc/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9npcDtU-qDZRmFZNHByTWhLd1E/view?usp=sharing

In order for this to compile in the Arduino IDE, a newer version of Adafruit’s Neopixel library is required. I used version 1.0.5 without issue. Older versions of the library do not support the RGBW Neopixels.

Instructions on how to install this library can be found on Adafruit’s website.

Get Out and Use It!

The completed LED ring light

I’ve been using this LED ring light for a few months now, I use it for nearly all of my teardown articles where macro photography is required. Here are some photos I’ve taken with it: