DIY USB Lamp: Custom Lighting with Recycled Box

If you have a USB desk lamp like this at home, it's already pretty good with touch control and adjustable brightness and color. But you can also make one yourself using recycled materials.

Here's how:

Materials: An old Skyworth set-top box customized by a telecom company, a hollow epoxy resin rod, and a few tools.

Start by making holes in the set-top box, including through the bottom panel and internal circuit board.

Separate the circuit board's copper traces, keeping only the DC input port and the switch. Phone wires work well; they look nice and can handle low-voltage DC power.

Wrap some tape around the bottom of the rod to increase its diameter a bit; no need for glue, making it easy to disassemble!

If the hole isn't the standard size and the drill bit is too big, you can use a piece of plastic wrapped around the rod to fit snugly. Finally, use 502 glue to secure everything in place.

The lamp might be a bit top-heavy, so you need to find two old lamp ballasts and placed them inside with two batteries for extra weight. It worked out quite well!

To make the USB-DC plug:

The original lamp board was too large, so you can remove the LEDs and smoothed it out, then applied thermal paste and glued it back together in reverse. Next, cut out some notches and attach them backward to secure the smaller board.

Here's the final product! It turned out better and brighter than a store-bought one!