A lot of love went into this glowing Valentine

[Will] didn’t pick up a card, rose, and bottle of wine for Valentine’s Day like most guys. Nope, he planned way ahead and built this color-selectable glowing Valentine. When we first saw it, we figured he threw some LEDs together with a microcontroller and edge-lit a piece of acrylic. While that is technically what happened, there was a lot … Read the rest

Hackaday Links: December 25, 2011

Ah, Christmas. That wonderful time of year when you can roll out of bed to the screams and wails of children, grab a hot cocoa, and spend several hours arguing with an 8-year-old about which LEGO set to build first. Simply magical. While you’re waiting for the Doctor Who Christmas special to come on, settle down with these wonderful Christmas-themed … Read the rest

How to grow your own EL wire DNA helix lamp

el-wire-helix-lamp

[LucidMovement] was looking for some crystal-based artwork and just couldn’t seem to find anything that fit the bill, so he decided to build something himself.

The inspiration for his desk lamp came from something we’re all familiar with, a DNA double-helix. To grow the crystals he built a helix-shaped growing substrate out of nichrome and EL wires, submerging them in … Read the rest

Lighted acrylic Christmas ornaments

If you’ve gone to the trouble of building your own CNC mill we know you’re always on the lookout for things to use it for. [Boris Landoni] wrote in with just the thing for the holiday season; a set of lighted acrylic Christmas ornaments.

One of the interesting properties of acrylic is how it reacts when edge-lit. The material … Read the rest

Hone your skills by building control modules

If you ask us, there’s no substitute for learning by doing. But often the hardest part of acquiring new skills is coming up with the idea for a project that utilizes them. [Mike Rankin] wanted to develop a project using laser cut acrylic, and settled on building a control box for an RGB LED strip. He got some practice … Read the rest

Electro-active polymers

What’s that you say? You’ve got rigid materials that change their shape when exposed to electric current? Sign us up for some! Although the fabrication process looks a bit daunting, we love the results of working with electro-active polymers. These are sheets of plastic that can flex by contracting in one direction when the juice is turned on. It … Read the rest

Converting a laptop computer into a desktop machine

[Michael Chen] found himself in possession of a thoroughly broken laptop. The hinges connecting the screen to the body of the computer were shot, and the battery was non-functional. After a bit of thinking he decided that it wouldn’t take much to resurrect the hardware by turning it into a desktop machine.

At the core of this hack is … Read the rest