Ahh, the Lite Brite.
What could be more fun than pushing dozens of little plastic pegs through a piece of black paper in order to create a pixelated, though colorful image? Well, I can think of quite a few things more engaging than that, and luckily so can [Lonnie Honeycutt] over at MeanPC.
While contemplating what to build with a pile of LEDs, his daughter came into the room with her portable Lite Brite. He thought that the pegs she was using looked awfully similar to the LEDs on his desk, so he did some test fitting and was surprised to see that they fit almost perfectly.
[Lonnie] thought that the toy would make an excellent clock, and his daughter happily agreed to let Dad do some tinkering. A few hours, an Arduino, and some Charlieplexing later, he had a nice looking clock that his kids were sure to enjoy.
If you’re interested in seeing more about how constructed, be sure to check out his YouTube channel and Instructable, where he happily provides all of the build details.
Doesn’t an Arduino seems a bit overkill for this project? Cool concept though.
Well… if you want to spend the extra time debugging and making functions for a toy clock then go ahead :)
Yes it does. I’m thinking about ripping the Arduino out and replacing it with a TI Launchpad MSP-430.
Next: A Lite Brite with LED pegs. Bonus points for repurposing plug-and-socket pairs from old Christmas light strings.
16 videos? very thorough
not sure the kids will get the same enjoyment from a clock as the original toy.
as a kid, replace that clock with an RGB LED matrix that covers the original lite-brite area and we have a deal. It can still be a clock, but I want my modern equivalent of retro-pixel-art!
or maybe a CHOOF style laser doodle!
http://ch00ftech.com/2012/07/26/the-laser-doodler/