Count YouTube Subscribers With This Red Play Button Award

Professional YouTubers live and die by the number of subscribers they have. It seems like a brutal way to make a living to us, but to each his own. Still, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right, and keeping track of how you’re doing with this Play Button Award subscriber counter might make sense. Or it might drive you nuts.

YouTuber [ibuynewstuff] has reached the vaunted 100,000 subscriber mark, the number required to earn the Silver Play Button award. Sadly, 100k is the bare minimum needed to get YouTube’s attention, and tales of waiting for months for the award to arrive are not uncommon. [ibuynewstuff] worked around the issue by 3D-printing his own temporary play button badge. Mounted to a picture frame with an ESP8266 and an 8 x 80 LED display behind a diffuser, [ibuynewstuff] can keep track of his progress toward the Gold Play Button award at 1,000,000 subs. Hopefully, his Silver award will arrive before then.

Want to replicate this but would rather have something a little more permanent than a plastic play button? Try casting your own Copper Play Button award.

5 thoughts on “Count YouTube Subscribers With This Red Play Button Award

    1. Hey there I’m OP. There are a few floating around on YouTube with varying degrees of originality and idea.

      I’ve seen some with 7 segs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PheHlYwUS_w

      I’ve seen LCD ones integrated on the circuit: https://youtu.be/IK88ALh8d5w

      I’ve seen plain ones just to have for the coolness. So I sort of wanted to merge all of them into a realistic sort of dynamic play button. But I hadn’t seen EEVblog’s one. That’s neat, a modification of the actual one he received.

  1. More likely the professional youtuber lives and dies by the whims of Alphabet, the mood of the advertisers and the demeanor of the media companies that flag everyone and their mother for copyright infringement, less they can monetize.

    It really isn’t a fun or useful place anymore if you do not cater for flaccid mediocrity.

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