The people at Brilldea have come up with LED Painter, a 16-channel RGB LED controller capable of controlling up to 48 independent LEDs. It uses a Texas Instrument TLC5940 to control the LEDs and can be connected to more LED Painter boards, creating a large array of RGB lights. The TLC5940 itself has been modified to make connecting independent LEDs easier.
The team strung together nine of these along with a Propeller-based controller called a Prop Blade and fitted the lights into three windows with semi-opaque glass to create a display of dancing randomized RGB lights. If all the dancing lights have inspired you, the TLC5940s are fairly inexpensive, but you’ll need both through-hole devices and some SMT components to get if off the ground.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2M1D4mfgI&hl=en&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
[via Hacked Gadgets]
You can get samples of the TLC5940 from TI’s website. I picked up a couple tubes of the DIPs myself, not sure if they offer SMT samples, but they’re worth a few bucks a piece otherwise.
Anyone else sick of LED “art”?
On the contrary, I quite enjoy it.
Anything with LEDs and a bit of clever work is nice, and if it can be part of an art installation then even better.
may be useful for someone.
but why is this filed under misc hacks? there are nearly 700 misc hacks and most of them are just dead end articles going nowhere mixed with hacks. This is a commercial product showcased here.
maybe news if it just came out, definitely not a hack so we are missing some category here. maybe something called “products”.
I agree with Tamber. Its pretty cool, its enjoyable if pulled off correctly.
As far as LED light fixtures go, this one is the best I’ve seen. All the rest look cheesy and shitty, and this one was done right the first time.
Did anyone else notice that the datasheet download is a corrupt? I wanted to look at the bill of materials for the full build but neither Preview nor Acrobat Pro will open it (OS X 10.5.4)..
Finally, I’ve been waiting for this since I bought some 5940s for a friend’s katamari costume that never happened (king’s head piece with correct light patterns)