Touch Controlled Light With Paper Lamp Shade

In this instructable I am explaining how you can build a touch controlled light with paper made lamp shade.It is an easy Project that anyone can build it at home.It utilizes arduino capacitive sensing library to turn on or off light by touching on the home made touch sensor-(the home made sensor is nothing but a aluminium foil).

Lets get started...

To Make Paper Lamp Shade:

• Chart Paper
• Scale
• Double Sided foam tape
• Pencil
• Hobby Knife (or) Razor Blade
• Scissor

To Make Touch controlled Light:

• Arduino UNO
• 5 mm White LED
• 1 MΩ Resistor
• Jumper wire
  1. Male to Female Jumper Wire -1
  2. Male to Male Jumper Wire -1
• Aluminium Foil
• Insulation Tape(Black)

• By using scissor cut out Chart Paper with the given dimension(see above image)
• So we will have two pieces of paper,one will be used to cover the lamp and other will be used to hold the circuitry in the system.

• By using a hobby knife cut as per the above image

The idea is based on on capacitive library of arduino.To know about how it is working Please follow the below link

Capacitive Sensing Library

I would like to give a brief introduction on how capacitive library works:

The capacitiveSensor library turns two or more Arduino pins into a capacitive sensor, which can sense the electrical capacitance of the human body. All the sensor setup requires is a medium to high value resistor and a piece of wire and a small (to large) piece of aluminum foil on the end. At its most sensitive, the sensor will start to sense a hand or body inches away from the sensor. he capacitiveSensor method toggles a microcontroller send pin to a new state and then waits for the receive pin to change to the same state as the send pin.

• You must install Capacitive Sensing Library

You can download Capacitive Sensing Library from here

Please follow the link to know how to install a library in Arduino IDE

How to install Additional Arduino Libraries

The touch sensor can be made from any metallic objects.I have used aluminium foil to make this.

For many applications, a more useful range of values is obtained if the sensor is covered with paper, plastic, or another insulating material, so that users do not actually touch the metal foil.

So I have covered it with a insulation tape ,and it works well :)

• Complete the connection as per the circuit.

Hardware Setup

• Insert the high value resistor (1 M Ω) in between 2 and 4th pin of arduino.
• As per the program pin 4 is receive pin , so connect the aluminium foil (foil act as capacitive sensor) to the receive pin. (refer circuit diagram).
• Connect Led in-between GND and 8th pin.

Launch Arduino IDE Software and select the correct COM Port and upload the code that is given below.

Place the circuit on the second Paper and ensure that it is working.

• Place arduino board and touch sensor on the correct position.
• Attach it to the second paper by double sided tape.
• add double sided tape to the sides of paper

Here as I am using arduino uno It's size is somewhat big there is small problem to insert it into the lamp shade.