Sliding Into Perfection: The Open Task Light

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A few years ago Dyson released a desk lamp that could slide up and down, in and out, balancing itself at every position. [Steven Bennett] saw that lamp and wanted to make his own. From this passion, the Open Task Light was born.We covered the prototype of the Open Task Light back in 2023, and the project is a superb example of iteration. In his 15-part video series on the lamp, you can watch him take on each new aspect of the light, improving the mechanisms, electronics, and production. All those small changes add up to this beautifully finished product.The first thing you’ll notice about the lamp is how little there is to notice: just a pair of extruded aluminum rails with a lamp head on one end and some rollers in the middle. Look a little closer at the rail and you’ll find a PCB running its length, feeding the lamp through pogo pins and leaving no exposed wires. The lamp uses a heat pipe to dump the LED’s heat, again hidden inside the aluminum extrusion. An ESP32 talks to a dedicated LED driver that runs a Cree high-CRI LED. The base comes in several variations for freestanding use or clamping to a table, and it rides on bearings so it can rotate as freely as the lamp’s other axes of movement.The original lamp this was inspired by carries a hefty price tag, and while the 50-plus-part BOM on this one adds up, it still comes in at well under half the price of its inspiration. The best part: the Open Task Light is open. You can make it your own, head over to [Steven Bennett]’s GitHub to check out the parts. He has also published a well-documented guide on assembling the Open Task Light.Given the incredible work [Steven] has put into his lamp, we can’t wait to see his next passion project.