Builing a bigger bar graph

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Take a gander at the Giant LED bar graph which [Chunky Hampton] recently completed (from this image we don’t think the nick name suits him). It’s simple both mechanically and electrically, but we love the look and think it would be a nice addition to your home, hackerspace, or as a children’s museum exhibit (we’re looking at you [Mr. Porter]).

The enclosure is a hunk of PVC electrical conduit. It’s got to be one of the largest sizes, but still should be found at most home stores. The base mounts easily and the cover snaps into place. [Chunky] used a hole saw to create the openings for the LED modules. They’re circular boards with multiple single-color LEDs on them. A common power bus feeds the high side of each bit, while a couple of transistor ICs controlled by 595 shift registers address them on the low side. From there just use any controller you wish, but in this case it’s an Arduino.

[Chunky] uses the meter to display power output from his stationary bicycle generator. But he also put together a little Larson Scanner demo which you can see after the break.

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Filed Under: led hacks Tagged With: , , , ,

Robotic light painting in 3D

May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

For the last few months, [Ben] has been building a 3D light painting robot. Instead of a couple Arduino-controlled LEDs that a person moves around the Lightplot, as [Ben] calls it, uses a robotic arm to move a LED in 3D space.

The build started with [Ben] testing his idea by putting a laser pointer on an altitude and azimuth mount made out of LEGO. Eventually [Ben] decided to build a 3D plotter rig for a more impressive show. The 3D plotter sits in on a tripod with three axes of motion – up and down, clockwise and counterclockwise, and ‘in’ and ‘out’. A small RGB LED at the end of the robotic arm is controlled along with the servos and motors, making it possible to plot vector lines in 3D space.

There are a whole bunch of demo videos after the break. They look fantastic, but we’d really like to see the Lightplot be used outside on a dark, starry night.

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Wristwatch measures your perception of time; also tells time

May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This wristwatch is hiding a lot of features in its hardware and its software. It’s called the TicTocTrac and it’s a Senior project for a pair of students at Cornell University. Judging from the sheer volume and quality of the project documentation we wonder if someone has a science writing career ahead of them? Be we digress… It’s a clock and we love it!

First off, this does more than just tell the time. In fact, that’s almost an ancillary function in this case. The wristwatch is more of a metering device to record your own time-based behaviors. Find yourself checking your watch frequently as the lunch break approaches? This watch records that activity and you can later graph the data. This allows you to analyze how you percieve the passage of time. The more often you check the time, the slower you feel time progressing. The documentation does a much better job of describing this than we have time for, so check it out.

On the hardware side of things we’re quite impressed. The housing is 3D printed. It hides two half-circle PCBs below the full-circle PCB face plate. The half-boards leave space for a tiny rechargeable battery, and host a vibrating motor and RTC chip. Instead of using buttons, there’s a piezo sensor which detects when you tap on the top of the watch.

Filed Under: clock hacks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Building Main Street, USA in a coffee table

May 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Alex George] has been collecting miniatures of Main Street, USA in Disney Land hand crafted by artist [Robert Olszewski]. These models are incredibly accurate, but sadly static. [Alex] has some of the floats from the Main Street Electrical Parade that light up with the help of a few LEDs. One day, [Alex] found himself wishing he could watch a miniature parade circling around his diorama and did what any of us would do: make a tiny electrical parade move around his miniature town.

[Alex] began his build by designing a system of chains and sprockets underneath his miniature Main Street. When not on display, the parade floats are hidden underneath the town. At night, though, the parade ascends to the surface to put on a show.

It’s not an electrical parade if there aren’t any lights, so [Alex] grabbed a couple Blinkms to attach to the underside of each float. These are small programmable RGB LEDs that can repeat the same sequence of lights for the entire time the parade is visible. A very excellent job and a masterwork of craftsmanship for both [Alex] and [Robert Olszewski].

[Alex]’s ‘making of’ video and a full demo of the float are available after the break.

via boingboing

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Filed Under: led hacks Tagged With: , ,

Huge water and light VU meter plus more

May 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is the senior design project for a group at the University of Vermont. It’s a wet, bubbly, blinky, interactive thing. Each column is a clear tube filled with water, with a string of fully addressable RGB LEDs suspended in the center. In idle mode, the lights scroll through a series of interesting patterns while the water is filled with bubbles to add some depth to the presentation. There is also a VU meter function, as seen here and during the Portal theme song that ends the video demo after the break.

A Teensy++ board is used to address the display. It’s set up to receive serial commands from a Processing script which is responsible for generating the animations. At the top of the frame you can see there’s a Kinect sensor. By standing in the standard post (we think it should be called the Kinect mug shot) the installation will automatically switch over to body control. We could see this thing making its way into a long airplane terminal hallway, following the travelers along their trek from one terminal to the next.

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Fiber optic chandelier with wireless controls

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

After seeing a cool fiberoptic chandelier on Ebay for over $1,000, [Apex Logic] figured he could build one himself that would not only be cheaper, but have more features. Some of the features he was after were for it to be wirelessly controlled, have the ability for full RGB control, and of course to have a custom look. He pulled it off quite nicely as you can see in the video below. He has a wireless controller with 3 sliders representing RGB that you can catch a glimpse of in the second video below.

His page with the build details and the code seems to have suffered some ill fate this morning. Here it is, for when it returns.

[via Adafruit]

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Filed Under: home hacks Tagged With: , ,
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