Starfield ceiling in our nursery

[Harrison]

Yeah, you kinda fucked yourself on that one.

[Maeya]

May I be incredibly rude and nosy and ask roughly how much a project like this would cost in supplies and time?

[vonkaar]

The illuminator and fibers cost about $200. This could be done with a static light for a lot less... maybe $50 for a 'proper' LED illuminator.

Time... well, it depends on how you go about it. The professionals typically install a drop ceiling. You frame your ceiling in with 2x4s and attach your pre-wired star panels onto the frame. This way, you can do all of your stars in the comfort of your home or workshop. I didn't want to do this because... well, I can't even remember why I chose this particular method. Something about the a/c vent and fan... but, we ended up taking the vent down to replace with a new and shiney one, and I replaced the fan as well... so... bleh.

If I were to do this again, I'd probably do a false-ceiling. As it was, the labor was probably 4 hours up in the attic, though that felt more like 40. Ah well, live and learn. I'd imagine a false-ceiling setup would only take a couple of hours.

[vonkaar]

now... if you have $20k to spend, you can hire the REAL artists who can do shit like this:

[Maeya]

I actually like yours better And that's really not so bad. I was picturing in the $1000 range.

[brinstar]

ya i am totally going to do this when i get a house

[vonkaar]

my instructable just got featured =) hooray!

[brinstar]

PS i think the fireworks look stupid

[vonkaar]

not my cup of tea either =p.

I have seen some shooting star setups that were incredible. I was inspired to do this by a star-ceiling installed in the concession stand at a local movie theater. The installers used probably 10x the stars that I have, and there were maybe 3-4 twelve-foot shooting stars, along with several smaller ones. Most of the shooting stars on Youtube look like shit, but the ones at the theater were amazing. I priced that out and it looked like it would be $300 for EACH shooting star... unless I wanted to do it myself. Way too much work, I say.

[Zanchief]

Congratulations, you just made me feel like an inadequate parent.

[Tikker]

lol

My kid has to do with a loft bed, with mini office/secret hide-out below

[ClakarEQ]

My older boy would hate that. The animations of it would keep him up. However I personally think what you've done is pretty cool. Having put in ceiling fans and fixtures in all my rooms, I can appreciate the "attic" experience.

I have a question though, you mentioned it was LED and also mentioned "heat". The devices I've seen like this used a halogen(sp) bulb (??), maybe a 10watter but it kicked out heat like crazy. Just saying, make sure you don't have a fire hazard or some shit. Also, if the bulb blows, what a PITA (of course this depends on where the light source is in the attic).

[vonkaar]

read the instructable =p.

the light source is a pair of 3w LEDs... the halogen ones are hot as hell and more expensive.

light source is in the nursery closet

[brinstar]

my instructable article about this project:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to- ... d-ceiling/

yeah i know, FORUM NECROMANCY *casts engulfing darkness*

but i came across instructables.com today through another site (lifehacker, which also owns). i set up an RSS feed and was going through it, and figured a good place to start would be "top ten best of... (by category)"

lo and behold the #1 page in the "home" category was "how to create a fiber optic starfield ceiling"

i clicked it and watched the video, and sure enough there was that smug gay-for-NBA texas twang


nearly 70,000 views, in case you don't believe us about how fucking cool this thing is

[vonkaar]

Thanks =)

She REALLY loves the thing too... Early on, we could get her to settle down by "turning the stars on." She would be totally fussy and then suddenly mellow out with the glowing lights. That was nice. Now, the only way to get her to read with us (without trying to eat the books) is if we have the lights going.

I'm knee-deep in the 2nd project... learning all about the arduino (and rainbowduino) for this thing. I'm planning on doing a new project for each birthday. The stars were her zeroth (DEFINITELY a word) birthday, this next one is for her 1st birthday. I don't know that I'll be able to do this big of a project for every child... on every birthday... but it's a fun tradition anyway.

I'm sure the later kids will complain when all they get for their 7th birthday was a rubber-band gun... but w/e. She's the first and I have the most energy right now .

Oh! The coolest thing about all of this was the popularity. Youtube sent me an invitation to put adsense up on the video, which I accepted. It took them a week before any ads showed up, which was well after the popularity died down... but I guess I keep getting a few hits here and there. I have something like $130 in my adsense account. Not too bad. If I had that adsense going when all the hits were coming in from lifehacker, gizmodo and others... it might have even paid for the project.

more to come

[brinstar]

arduino...

basic electronics principles are buried somewhere in my brain-- circuitry, diodes, capacitors, shit like that-- but arduinos might as well run on fucking moon magic

i need to figure out htf they work though because i know you can do some crazy shit with them

what are you planning?

[vonkaar]

If you have basic soldering skills, and the ability to read schematics at an elementary level, you should be able to play with arduinos just fine. There are sooooo many skilled developers out there that open-source EVERYTHING that they do, you don't have to know the programming side at all.

I don't want to go into all of the details on the new project... it's still very much in the planning stage, so things could change. The basic concept at this point is an interactive mobile/chandelier/light-box thingy using (more) fiber optics and acrylic.