LED Pimp Bed

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?

28 thoughts on “LED Pimp Bed

  1. @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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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.

  6. 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)

  7. #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.

  8. 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.

  9. #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.

  10. 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.

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