Spinning poi is an entertaining pastime, and LEDs can make a great addition to the experience. [MilanDer] built some LED poi of their very own, using a few maker staples along the way.
A 3D printed enclosure is first created, using “clear” PLA that in practice produces translucent white parts. This acts as a great diffuser for the APA102 LEDs inside. The LEDs are driven by an Arduino Pro Mini, which is fitted inside the enclosure along with a buck-boost converter, lithium battery and charge board. Finally, a strap is added to allow the poi to be spun easily by the user.
The visual effect is great, and through the use of an infrared receiver, the poi can be remotely controlled to deliver different RGB animations at the touch of a button. We’d love to see a group of spinners with synchronized colored poi thanks to a master controller, and this hardware would be more than capable of the task.
We’ve seen some advanced networked Poi before, too. If you’ve got a great LED build, be sure to let us know.
At first I thought it was some form of a Hula Hoop with LEDs inside but reading the Instructable it seems to be more like (2) balls, with a ring of LEDs inside, swinging about at the end of strings.
Well, I was wondering how he put LEDs into a Hawaiian food item.
You learn something new (and useless) every day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poi_(performance_art)
Glad I’m not the only person who was a bit confused about the definition of “poi”.
Please define (poi). Position operational interface?
A staple Hawaiian food made mostly of ground taro root