Huge interactive moon lamp installation with 13 stepper motors

80cm wide artificial moon lamp with flexible elements to simulate waves and ripples on the moon surface, paired with controlled lighting around the moon disk. The combination of waves over the rigid surface with hard side light is very mesmerizing to watch. I designed this "lamp" with a original NASA moon surface, split in many parts. These parts are connected with flexible elements (TPU) to 13 stepper motors in the back. Each motor can lift its node ca. 20mm. Cheap 5V motors 28BYI-48 and ULN2003 stepper drivers were used. Each motor unit has a cheap fork lift barrier from Amazon as a reference indicator. For easy maintenace each motor has a pin pin-header and is fixed with two screws. As the print file of the moon surface is very big (~500MB) I also included a flat surface version. This is much smaller and can be modified with any pattern of your desire. Around the moon disk is a round housing to hold a WS2812B Neopixel strip. Togehter with some lights in the back this can show intense light scenes. Everything is mounted to a small wood frame, which was then mounted to the wall. A radar microwave sensor detects humans nearby and starts the animation of waves over the moon's surface. Powered by 3x ESP32s for all the motor cables with break out boards for easy cable management and a 300W PSU, mainly for all the lights. I used a AI to create a ESP program for one master and two slaves, connected via ESPnow and via MQTT to my home automation system for all the controll parameters. As this program is quite tailored to my home automation setup, I haven't included it in the data set. If you want it, DM me. As this a quite comlicated build regarding wiring, soldering and programming I see this as a start for your project, not a 1:1 guided documentation. I included Step and SolidWorks Files of all parts and assemblies, Here are also all screws, washers and nuts included. Feel free to modify it! The moon surface and ring housing is PLA, the flexible connectors are TPU. All was printed on a Qidi Plus4 I also created a handheld wireless controller with a round LCD screen for manual change of the parameters, which is very satifying The controller can be found here -> wireless controller Have fun, Sebastian