LED pimp bed

posted Oct 6th 2005 9:30am by
filed under: home entertainment hacks

pimp bed

[Mojo Jojo] mentioned this link in yesterday’s comments. It’s really simple and the author has expanded the description since it was featured on Slashdot. The hack describes how to wire sets of red, green, and blue LEDs with the goal of producing all possible colors. Definitely a cool effect with minimal effort, a good starter project. Not sure if kits are still being sold, but they should save you some money on parts. Can someone come up with an adaptive color controller for this?

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28 Responses to LED pimp bed

  • billytheimpaler says:
    October 6, 2005 at 9:52 am

    the sad truth is that anybody nerdy enough to create such a cool “led pimp bed” will have no use for it.

    just kidding, you can sleep in it.

    Reply Report comment
  • anuron says:
    October 6, 2005 at 10:06 am

    btw:
    http://koeln.ccc.de/prozesse/running/fnordlicht/
    that’s another project of that type.

    Reply Report comment
  • lashen.com says:
    October 6, 2005 at 10:48 am

    One on bit-tech.. Always meant to build it.

    http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2002/08/28/rainbow_led/1.html

    Reply Report comment
  • lashen.com says:
    October 6, 2005 at 10:52 am

    btw, who here thinks that there should be a dedicated led hack section?

    Reply Report comment
  • booger says:
    October 6, 2005 at 11:00 am

    this is stupid. you can get any amount of LED rope in any configuration you want at

    http://www.outwaterplastics.com

    what a waste of brainpower..

    Reply Report comment
  • composte233 says:
    October 6, 2005 at 11:03 am

    no stupid..

    http://www.outwater.com

    Reply Report comment
  • Neoteny says:
    October 6, 2005 at 11:55 am

    Maybe if these god damned pictures were in color we could make it out.

    Reply Report comment
  • strider_mt2k says:
    October 6, 2005 at 11:59 am

    If you had just left the word ‘pimp’ out of it you might have retained a shred of cred.

    Now it’s just kinda pathetic.

    So many pimps enjoy the luxury and class of a cinder block wall too…

    Reply Report comment
  • John Bokma says:
    October 6, 2005 at 1:11 pm

    @1: When I was young I made a light dimmer for school assignment. At home, I connected it to: 3 home made lamps, each consisting of an old soup can, with a holder for a light bulb, and a coloured light bulb (IIRC I had red, blue and yellow), and to a string of small lights (christmas lights), which I had above my bed.

    My girlfriends at that time really loved the effect: the dimmer was turned so low that the christmass lights just glowed, and the coloured lights looked more like something glowing in a can.

    Also I had painted the sloped roof (looked like /— ) a very dark purple which was an awesome backdrop for the big green plant I had, and of course the special light effects.

    In short: being a nerd isn’t that bad if you can give it a female touch.

    Reply Report comment
  • jon says:
    October 6, 2005 at 1:41 pm

    sandals and socks. nice.
    https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/bkpeters/www/LEDBed/imagepages/image10.html

    and wouldn’t he need to use red, blue, and yellow to get “any color of the rainbow”? (he uses red, blue, and green) those are the primary colours after all.

    Reply Report comment
  • nitroburn says:
    October 6, 2005 at 4:16 pm

    Pretty cool lighting.

    Those whining “You can get LED rope.” Give it up. That is totally not the point and you look like an idiot for mentioning it. Any idiot can grab LED rope, making your own takes a little more work and will.

    Reply Report comment
  • Cameron bergh says:
    October 6, 2005 at 5:38 pm

    You know why these hacks suck? hackaday.com is now owned by AOL. Remember how nullsoft was cool until aol bought them? well anything that aol doesnt like (see: any interesting hack) will now be forcibly removed.

    prepare for castration

    Reply Report comment
  • CDE says:
    October 6, 2005 at 6:36 pm

    AOL now owns hackaday. Fsck. If only make zine would get its act together. Hackaday surely is going to AoHell in a hand basket.

    Reply Report comment
  • joshua holbrook says:
    October 6, 2005 at 7:24 pm

    I still like winamp. *shrug*

    I figure as long as AOL doesn’t try to use its ownership to change the content of hackaday things will be fine… and why would they? It’s doing fine as-is.

    Of course, I would have said the same thing about G4-TechTV too. :D

    Reply Report comment
  • grayskies says:
    October 6, 2005 at 7:29 pm

    honestly, get off of it guys. We all know its cool to hate aol. How much direction did Weblogs, Inc have on Hackaday? They had the annoying “Best of weblogs inc” and the banner at the top. I doubt AOL is going to change much (if anything) to the site. The only thing i could see happening is censorship of anything anti-aol.

    Reply Report comment
  • Quafboy says:
    October 6, 2005 at 9:31 pm

    I usually love hackadays content. This one is sub par. I posted 9 or 10 other hack links to thier tip line that were far superior to this. (no offense hackaday :-()

    Reply Report comment
  • Charlie says:
    October 7, 2005 at 1:00 am

    Nice – very nice

    Reply Report comment
  • Nobody says:
    October 7, 2005 at 1:29 am

    censorship of anything anti-aol.

    Oh hell no… COMUNISM!!!!

    Reply Report comment
  • Alex says:
    October 7, 2005 at 5:30 am

    Red-Green-Blue are the projection primary colours – ie anything that puts out light – eg monitors, TV, LED beds.

    Red-Blue-Yellow are the reflective primary colours – ie when light is reflected – eg paintings, newspapers (although most print now uses CMYK)

    Reply Report comment
  • Ketter says:
    October 7, 2005 at 1:38 pm

    #10, although the primary colors for paint are Red/Blue/Yellow, the primary colors for light are Red/Green/Blue (RGB sound familiar?). The “pimp Bed” utilizes the same effects present in your TV, go look close at the pixels.

    Reply Report comment
  • Tadpole Buckshot says:
    October 7, 2005 at 6:12 pm

    aol a day.. No.
    Please tell me the aol “man” hasn’t gotten his hand into the puppet hole of hackaday.. Is it pointy fingery corporate shill time already?

    Reply Report comment
  • bugloaf says:
    October 10, 2005 at 10:35 am

    I think he should have used pulse width modulation to vary the colors.

    Reply Report comment
  • Mike says:
    October 21, 2005 at 1:20 pm

    I agree, a dedicated LED hack section would be awesome!

    I would have to agree again that a more “professional” method in obtaining accurate color mixing would be through PWM (pulse width modulation), although using straightforward dimmer/potentiometer will enable you to crudely mix colors at a relatively low cost.

    Here are a few good sources for RGB controllers, listed by my preferred ranking:

    Master SoftPot Controller RGB:
    http://storesense.neoverve.com/ledeffects/Detail.bok?no=95
    Preprogrammed/programmable (via proprietary software) RGB controller; easy to operate, excellent potentiometer.

    Bigclive’s RGB Controller Kit:
    http://www.emanator.demon.co.uk/bigclive/shop.htm
    Most economical choice, easy to assemble kit, robust RGB/FX capabilities but no potentiometer.

    RGB Bar Controller#1: (scroll way down)
    http://www.fiberopticproducts.com/Leds.htm
    Slightly pricey for a straightforward, gradual fade/color select RGB
    controller, dupe the chip and make your own board for less.

    As mentioned on Bigclive’s site, it’s best to use individual LEDs, Red Green and Blue, and reply on spacing instead of using a 4 lead RGB LED; you’ll get far “better” color-mixing.

    Anyone with any information/suggestion as to how emulate a Philips Chameleon lamp, I’d love to hear your input!

    …and LED rope light is absolute garbage.

    Reply Report comment
  • Paul says:
    December 27, 2005 at 1:37 pm

    #23, thanks for the links. I’ve taken a look at a few of them, will purchase in the next week or so (for a different project and provided my girlfriend gives the okay…I spend too much money on geek items…)

    Also, I enjoyed the comment(s) about reflective primary vs. projective primary. I’d always wondered, but never took the time to figure it out.

    Reply Report comment
  • rupidust says:
    July 2, 2006 at 3:59 pm

    You people are a bunch of lame brained stupid idiots. To hell with staying on topic. To hell with exposing the techniques involved. To hell with refraiming from inserting your moronic interpretions of the creator and creator intentions. And to hell with respecting the creator or showing any actual creations of your own as a comparison. That is why you are as I described from sentence number 1.

    Allowing capital letters in these field boxes would oh so lower your stupidity points.

    Reply Report comment
  • esoos says:
    July 13, 2006 at 4:50 pm

    This is a decent hack (color pics would be nice), and mike’s got some good comments. One of those links is broken, but you can find the Master SoftPot Controller RGB on this page:

    http://www.ledeffects.com/catalog/controllers_mstr.htm

    (scroll down)

    Reply Report comment
  • phil says:
    May 30, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    Anyone have a mirror of the site? I get a 404.

    Reply Report comment
  • Polar says:
    September 11, 2007 at 9:33 am

    I love everything about this site. I need a very simple project which i can do on my on (basically on electronics-telecommunication)

    Reply Report comment

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