A Wooden LED Matrix Coffee Table

[johannes] writes in with a pretty impressive LED table he built. The table is based around WS2801 serially addressable LEDs which are controlled by a Raspberry Pi. The Pi serves up a node.js-driven web interface developed by [Andrew Munsell] for a room lighting setup. The web interface controls the pattern shown on the display and the animation speed.

[johannes] built a wooden coffee table around the LED matrix, which includes a matte glass top to help diffuse the lighting. An outlet to plug in a laptop and two USB charging ports are panel-mounted on the side of the enclosure, which are a nice touch. The power supply for the LEDs is also inside the enclosure, eliminating the need for an external power brick.

While [johannes] hasn’t written any software of his own yet, he plans on adding music synchronization and visualizations for weather and other data. Check out the video after the break to see the table in action.

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Addressable RGB LED Coffee Table

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[Alexander] has just put the finishing touches on his Addressable RGB LED Coffee Table and it looks amazing!

Making use of his local hackerspace, Sector67 in Madison, Wisconsin, he learned how to use woodworking equipment to build the table out of nice curly maple wood sheet.

Next up he purchased two 4’x8′ pieces of 2.8mm bamboo plywood — even had to rent a U-Haul just to get it back to the space. Talk about dedication to a project! Having never used a laser cutter before either, [Alexander] was quickly fed up with the crappy laser interface software, so instead, he hand wrote the shapes as SVGs in notepad and then converted them to DXFs. That sounds like a rather slow way to do it, but he thinks it ended up being quicker since it’s all straight lines. Two hours of laser time later, and he had a series of slotted strips to create the grid for the LEDs.

To really light up his project, he’s using nice big 12mm RGB LEDs that he’s ordered off of eBay — they came in four strands of 50 which made it super easy to wire. A beefy 5V 12A PSU provides the juice, and an Arduino takes care of the addressing. He’s even hidden the main power cord through one of the legs!

It’s a gorgeous build, and an impressive project for being a first-timer on most of the equipment used. See for yourself in the short video after the break.

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