Articulating Raspberry Pi Camera Mount cover with ring light

Model originally uploaded to Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3518289.

NB: You might want to print this with something like PETG or a higher temperature capable material. This will help to prevent warping from the heat of the LED ring.

I use an enclosure for printing, so the light levels aren't great, I have a strip of LEDs mounted to the top of the enclosure, but whatever is being printed is pretty much in shadow because of the extruder. Now with this part, I can finally see what is being printed!

This is a modified face plate for the Articulated Raspberry Pi Camera Mount that houses a ring of LEDs, I have tested it with a ring of 16 Neopixels, available from Adafruit, and a 12 LED ZIP Circle, available from Pimoroni.

I would personally recommend getting one of the RGBW Neopixel rings, as it means you can get a nice natural white light instead of the slightly more blue light that you get when you run the RGB LEDs at full tilt to get a white colour.

You will also need a microcontroller to control the LEDs, in my case I used an ATtiny85 MCU. Depending on the power supply to your printer you may need a step down voltage regulator, pre built versions of which can be found on eBay or Amazon, or you can have a go at deriving a 5V supply yourself with a linear voltage regulator or go all fancy and build a proper switching voltage regulator like I did, details of which can be found in the 'Installation' section.