This journey started with the excellent Moon lamp design by user moononournation. All credit to them for doing the hard part, like creating a printable moon from NASA data. Their lamp design was supposed to hang from the ceiling, and use a single E27 LED bulb. Trouble was, I couldn't find any E27 LED bulb with less than 38mm diameter so it would fit through the hole.

Then I found the LED strip moon lamp by urbaier which used the ESP8266 NodeMCU controller with WS2812B LED strips. Nice, but too small for my taste. I had already used WLED for another lamp though, and so I set out to make my own moon lamp.

Essentially, this design is a mix of the two. It's about as large a moon as you can print on most printers, it only needs a 5V 2A USB power supply (any fast phone charger power supply will do) and so it only has a single slim cable, and it's app controllable.

If you don't know WLED, do check it out here: https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED
WLED will allow you to turn your lamps on and off with Alexa or any other home automation hub. It also has a nifty little iOS and Android app that lets you control your lamps via smartphone. You can even automate turning the lamp on with Apple Shortcuts and Siri.

You need to print the following:

• Moon (duh)
• Tri Pedestal 3 pieces (print orientation is wrong, print with the bolt head hole facing up)
• LED_column
  I soldered my USB cable to the ESP. If you want a pluggable solution, print the alternative version LED_column_plugin !
• LED column cap (again, part should be flipped)
• ESP Cover

I printed all parts except the tripod in matte white PLA which seems to be the best solution for good colour. 0.2 mm resolution worked for me, the original creator recommends 0.16 mm. You can print the moon without supports if your printer is up to it, otherwise you need supports in the center. For the cap which makes the moon round, I used the adaptive layer thickness tool in Prusa Slicer to make it look good (You don't have to do this, it sits on the bottom and is invisible)

Other instructions:

• Setting up an ESP8266 see here
• Glue the cap onto the column with superglue, align carefully
• The ESP8266 is bolted into the column after everything is soldered up AND WORKS
• Cover the NodeMCU with the ESP cover
• Wrap the LED strip in a spiral starting at the top around the part, stop 10 mm or half an inch above the cap. You need about 60-70 LEDs, I recommend wrapping it without taking the protective strip off so you can figure out the length you need.
• Fix the LED strip with two zip ties using the provided channels at the top
• For long term safety, fix the end of the LED strip with a drop of superglue. The LEDs get quite warm and the glue strip is not fully reliable.
• Bolt the LED assembly into the moon lamp with 6x M3x8 mm bolts.
• The tripod only fits together one way. You need 3x M3x20 bolts to bolt it together.