An Improved Bubble Display With RGB LEDs

Making a bubble display is quite an undertaking, but [Jay] takes advantage of iterative design to construct this impressive (and at 60 tubes, massive) bubble display. The display functions by dispensing bubbles to serve as illuminated pixels in each tube as they rise through the fluid. His build log steps through the display’s construction with a keen attention to detail and above all, patience.

Rather than diving right in and slapping some tubes together, [Jay] took the time to research other bubble display projects, including one we featured a few years back that grew out of yet another HackaDay article. His prototypes started off small to test potential features: whether to use water or glycerin, timing for the air pumps and bubble size, and several others. [Jay] even filled the log with videos of every test, so you can watch the problems and solutions unfold at each step.

The finished display boasts sixty 30″ tall tubes, making it 64″ wide. [Jay] also installed RGB LEDs at every edge where the tubes meet to better distribute the light. You can watch one of the many videos of the display at work below.

14 thoughts on “An Improved Bubble Display With RGB LEDs

  1. This is pretty sweet, I remember the previous ones here from years ago. Filling it with glycerine seems to give a *lot* more control over the positioning of the bubble. RGB LEDs are always a welcome touch. Nice work!

  2. Very cool. in 2006, I helped Bruce Shapiro build a 3-story tall 96-tube bubble display at the Ontario Science Centre http://bobodyne.com/web-docs/robots/OSC/ It was incredible. http://taomc.com/art/permanent_installations/pipedream_series/pipedream_iii.html I built a pair of Linux machines that took a webcam image, dithered it to 1-bit deep, sent it to another machine over WiFi and “plotted” the image into the bubbles. It’s since been replaced by a newer, better system.

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