In the olden days (i.e. back in the early 1980s) I was an electronics technician, trained to work on electrical and electronic equipment, and then I came across computers and was hooked. I can't say that I "never looked back" however, because from time to time I did look longingly over at the electronics side of things, and how much that has been changing through the years.
I even worked in a startup building a smart thermostat designed, at least in part, to help people reduce the cost of their home heating. I ended up taking over the responsibility for the embedded C code on that hardware because my eyes started bleeding when I looked at what was there - 3700-odd warnings on compile!
So now I'm retired, and have access to an endless stream of fascinating little devices from Ali Express I decided to renovate one of our wall lights that I have always like the form factor, but never liked the internal fluorescent tube, and the subtle buzz that it made. My plan was to rip out all of the gubbins inside it and go round and round (carefully) with a few metres of RGBCW LED strip all stuffed inside with an LED power supply and controller.
The result is my new renovated light! It's 12W of nicely smooth ambient wall light that fits into our living room much better than the few wall-mounted spotlights that used to be there, and now it's full integrated with Home Assistant through the Matter LED controller. It's nice that a light that always used to make me feel just a little grumpy whenever I noticed it, now makes me smile instead!
The photo perhaps looks like the light is slightly uneven, and I guess it is, to the camera, but to the naked eye the light is very smooth, and actually smoother than the old fluorescent tube ever was. I was also lucky to find a super-small 24v LED power-supply - about 15mm x 15mm x 120mm so that most of the internal volume of the lamp is available for running the LED strip back and forth inside along the top and back of the enclosure.