A Spinning Beachball Of Doom That You Can Carry In Your Pocket

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Need a way to tell the world that you’re mentally ‘out to lunch’? Or what about a subtle hint to others that your current thought process is more important than whatever they are saying? [Caleb Kraft] — who earlier this year bid farewell to Hackaday for a position with EETimes — is heading to the World Maker Faire in New York this weekend, and he decided to build just that device. If you’re heading to Maker Faire too, keep an eye out for his eye-catching Spinning Beachball of Doom. He was inspired by iCufflinks from Adafruit, and ended up with a great little device that is small enough to be worn, or just thrown around for fun.

A couple of weeks ago, we linked you to the Adafruit announcement of their new Trinket product line. [Caleb] wasted no time in finding a use for the tiny microcontroller board. He paired it with the Neopixel LED ring, and had it working with just a tiny tweak to the test code. He then used DesignSpark Mechanical to design a 3D-printed case… the most complicated part of the project. It’s too bad his original plan to power the whole thing with button cells didn’t work out, because it could have been a neat (albeit expensive) upgrade to LED throwies. That said, [Caleb] mentions that a small LiPo battery would be a good alternative.

This is a fun little project that most anyone could throw together in an afternoon. Don’t be surprised if we start seeing these show up more and more.

To see what it looks like in action, check out the video after the break.

11 thoughts on “A Spinning Beachball Of Doom That You Can Carry In Your Pocket

      1. I was referring to the spiral parts on the front of the cap. Why would you just take them all the way to the edges? it makes it look like the quality of one of those iron-man arc reactor knockoffs that doesn’t even look vaguely like a real one.

    1. Wow….you have an eye for detail, I couldn’t even see what you were looking for until I got right up in the screen. What are you some kind of freak? You’re a freak! With incredibly good vision. ^_^

      On a different note, I kinda like the tape not going all the way. Gives kind of a bordered edge look. Great Job Caleb

  1. There are some great little LIPO batteries around. I am using a Lilypad and the NeoPixel Ring, the Lilypad has a built-in LIPO charger, and a 110mAh battery (which is VERY tiny, rivals two coin cells) will power it for at least 45 minutes on full brightness. Judicious use of PWM dimming would probably double that.

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