DIY Your Programmable Digital Lava Lamp

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Created by Julian Butler the unique project inspired by the original lava lamp from the sixties and seventies offers a fantastic alternative which is also much quicker to turn on and off.

Using a Raspberry Pi and Micah Elizabeth Scott‘s FadeCandy board, plus 120 NeoPixel LEDs, Julian got to work programming lights and prototyping casings until he was happy with the result.
And the result is a beautiful, programmable digital lava lamp: all the mesmerising fun of a regular lava lamp, without the excruciating wait time and significant risk of second-degree burns. Plus, it will never leak, and it can be any colour you like.

I’ve owned lava lamps over the last 25 years and I really like them and this seemed like a really smart advancement. I was looking for a project that would force me to delve into addressable LEDs so I decided to make my own. What’s better than a lava lamp that can be every lava lamp?

I started a massive Evernote file filled with questions about how to build it, what hardware to choose, what functions it could/should have etc. I consulted with friends and pooled ideas about different modes and what they thought might be cool etc.

For more information you can visit the project’s page on Julian Butler’s blog or on Raspberrypi.org

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