Bliplace LED Toy

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These wearable LED toys called Bliplace are freshly made and headed to Burning Man. They’re pretty much just a sound reactive toy, but [Tanjent] decided to go pretty in depth in the design. They are 1″ wide octagons with 3 super bright LEDs and a microphone. The microphone is sampled at 4400 hz by the ATTiny25v and the signal is split into high and low frequency streams. The center LED is low frequency, the sides are the high. They can run a full week on a battery. He’ll be handing out 350 of them at Burning Man, then releasing the source code, boards, and kits after that.

28 thoughts on “Bliplace LED Toy

  1. if you have a look at his flicker site, it shows his design and coin cell batteries.

    i want one; scratch that. i want 100. think of the cool display you could make with a bunch of these. he should be sending a few hackaday’s way, to distribute as they please :D

  2. I can’t make it to the event, but i’ll be glad to read up on ’em when the plans get posted.

    I absolutely love stuff like this and hope the creator gets a good view of a crowd with these in it during some live music or loud…anything.

    I’m thinking the effect may be quite nice.

  3. Other notes –

    Bliplaces do automatic gain control and gamma-corrected PWM – the brightness of the LEDs should always match the beat of the sounds around them as long as it’s at least speaking volume.

    ISP pins are broken out to the mounting holes on sides of the board for easier reprogramming.

    If you don’t need the mic, the audio input can handle line-level signals with a minor patch. Future board revs will have separate audio in mounting holes.

    Kits will be around $5 + shipping.

  4. @foxy – you can put rgb leds on them, but you’ll need 4.5 volts instead of 3 volts and you’ll have to adjust the resistor values to match. swapping the power cap with a larger one would also be a good idea.

    i’ll write up a couple configurations pos-BM

  5. cool, can’t wait to get a kit or 2, or 10. glad to hear rgb leds is possible, although i have no idea what you mean by just having to adjust the resistor values as i am just getting my feet wet with this whole circuits stuff. wish i had realized i liked electrical design and circuits a lot before i went and got a mechanical engineering degree, i’d probably be making something awesome like this project right now if i could.

  6. @foxy – lol, i have no EE degree, i just started teaching myself electronics a few months ago. this is my first real production product, previously i was just puttering around with arduinos and headphone amplifier circuits. :)

  7. Hi Tanjent, great design! We gotta combine this with the LumiNet lightup suits I made for the playa – see http://luminet.cc. I’ll come by your tent today and leave a couple sample nodes, the designs are quite similar. I’m at HappyLand, 3:30 & G. Sent you a gmail with more details.

    Cheers, Jan

  8. Tanjent, thanks for the very cool adornment. It’s a little creepy looking into a mirror while I’m talking to someone — feels like it’s reading my thoughts for all to see.

    I was preparing to fire up my kinetic fire art, The Chaotick, when you came by with a bliplace for me. All in all, a pretty nice evening. Thanks again!

  9. You gave me one of these last year (2009) out on the playa. I must say, it was a treasured gift that resulted in a great deal of fun. Have replaced the battery and will have it again with me this year.

    Thank you for the joy and generosity!

  10. I have acquired the very last 30 bliplace kits from Tanjent. They will be available at the “Learn to Solder” table run by Jigsaw Renaissance at the Seattle Maker Faire tomorrow.

  11. And I have put together another 30 kits, which will be available for $10 each at the Learn to Solder tables run by Jigsaw Renaissance at the Seattle Mini Maker Faire tomorrow and Sunday, March 22-23, 2014 at the EMP Museum. See you there!

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