Or: How I made the single most flammable object in my flat.

Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting.

And while I would love to say that it was this line that inspired me, it was rather a friend of mine that had those 20$ plastic candles hanging from strings in her hallway. Waving a plastic wand around they not only turned on, but also left quite the impression on me. However, the more keen eyed might have already noticed: There are no candles on my photos. There’s no wand either. This is not even about floating candles and I’m just about done with them. Now while I really liked the looks, I didn’t like the thought of changing batteries every week (I never checked the runtime of those plastic candles you find everywhere, but I doubt it’s anywhere near acceptable for me). Adding permanent wiring came to my mind, but this would require hiding cables and a transformer somewhere. Not that easy with the average ceiling, at least if you live in a rented flat and consider moving within the next 15 years. Luckily J.K. Rowling also came up with this whole indoor cloud thing, so I ended up with a build idea after all.

Now that you know how this idea came about, let me ramble about the build a little. Not that I think I’m the most qualified person to do this - you will be able to find plenty of images online where people did the same thing, arguably lots nicer than my own build. But no one tells you that you should not be doing this because it’s annoying and sticky and fiber gets everywhere. Also it’s not unlikely to catch fire and burn down my whole apartment with it. But starting from the start: I grabbed some cheap 20mm thick foam board, attached two wooden cross members to it and into those some hooks. This way I can hang the whole sheet to the ceiling and also got space for the cable bits. While still being cumbersome to hang, it allows for an undisturbed underside (where the cloud part is). And even more important: The cloud can be assembled on the living room floor (or any other floor you would like to cover in glue and fiberfill). Next were the LEDs, where I grabbed 8m of 60LEDs/m strip. With a fitting transformers and a ZigBee controller everything lights up and integrates into Home Assistant. Playing a little with the look I decided on a fairly dense layout, leaving only around 5cm between the rows of LEDs. The fiberfill does a good job of covering up whichever bad job you did laying out the LEDs and no one will be able to see that you bend the strips around the corners instead of doing a proper wiring job. Speaking of the fiberfill: You don’t need much of it. If I had to guess, 500g would be plenty for my 120*60cm panel. I don’t have an exact number here, but the reason is not that I seem to have no perception of how much 5kg of fiberfill are. So I totally don’t have a human sized box of fiberfill sitting in my apartment that barely lost any weight. And even though it’s not much weight you need for the cloud, it sure seems like a lot when it frees itself from the double sided tape and comes tumbling down. After being pissed at the tape and myself for being lazy, I did it ‘right’. Hot glue and spray glue did a good job at fixing the fiberfill to the foam board, my hands and the floor. No more cloud fall so far.

All jokes aside: I tried to sneak a few actual numbers and useful information into my text, and yes it was annoying to build. On the other hand it’s low effort in both tool requirements and cost. If you have a way of getting outside for the glue up, I’m certain that’s a good idea. At least if you use spray glue. Also while the fiberfill did a great job at covering up the LEDs and making it look fluffy, it barely covered up the contour of my very rectangular board. I thought it would do more here, but it is what it is now. And regarding the fire hazard: Enclosing the strips in aluminium channels is certainly a good idea!

The whole looks is not for everyone and I’m fully prepared to take it down in a year or two because it turned into a filthy rain cloud. But until then it sure does give off some nice light and makes for an interesting piece to look at.