A few years ago a friend gave me an “Urban Shop” glitter lamp as a gift. It was a neat twist on a lava lamp that used LEDs and glitter with a motor that spun the fluid using a magnetic string bar.

While it was a great vibe, it used three AA batteries and the stirring would cycle on and off regularly causing the noise to start and stop, which I found more distracting than just leaving it on.

I found that the on-off switch was actual an on-on switch without a second connection, so I took an old USB cable and hardwired the second switch terminal so that I could power it from a power supply or batteries.

This was a drastic improvement to me, but I didn’t like the cord always being attached and the motor cycling was still annoying. Eventually, the lamp ended up on a shelf for a later date.

Today, I pulled the lamp down because I finally tried ESPHome because I keep hearing about it in other people’s projects and wanted to finally try the full smart conversion of this lamp. After several hours of trying to reuse the existing surface-mount LEDs and wiring, I gutted the whole damn thing and installed my own 5mm LEDs, rewired the motor, and added a button for controls and wired everything into a Raspberry Pi Pico W I had bought years ago.

Now I have a lamp that can be controlled locally from the button, can be reprogrammed from my computer without moving the lamp, can be controlled from Home Assistant, and performs exactly how I want.