We’re not sure what is more amazing here: the glow of the blinkenlights themselves, the tedium involved in creating it, or the fact that [makeTVee] soldered 280 microscopic WS2812 LEDs while at Supercon.
This hack began before the con when [makeTVee] designed the LED-diffusing frame in Fusion 360 and printed it in clear resin. Rather than solder the LEDs straight, the frame has 280 teeth that support each one at a 55° angle.
Not only does this look cool, it makes the bridging of DOUT to DIN much easier. That leaves GND and VCC to be painstakingly connected with 30 AWG wire. How, you might ask? With a little help from 3.5x magnifying glasses and the smallest soldering iron tip available, of course.
But that’s not all. Since 280 addressable LEDs need a lot of power, [makeTVee] also designed a holder for the LiPo battery pack that fits into the existing AA holders.
Want to see more awesome badge hacks? Check out the compendium.
We had so much fun at SuperCon! I feel very fortunate to be able to call makeTVee my friend. On top of his awesome badge, he also made another for me!
Hi – hopefully this is a good place to ask this question: can unexceptional, non-convention-going people buy convention badges like these somewhere? It’s cool to read about these neat creations and all the things people do with them… but not all of us can attend all (or any) of the associated conferences.
Do communities form around the use/abuse of these badges after the event, like with non-convention dev boards?
Thanks.
Event badges can be a lot of fun, but you arent required to use an event badge. You could do what makeTVee did with our Badger2040s. First you flash the e-ink, get it to display what you want, then reflash the badger to control the LED lights. I am sure there are more elegant ways to pull it off, but we were able to get both of em working no problem. If you cant get an event badge, try a Badger2040 they are great! Not an ad, just a fan of the product!
https://www.makerbizwiki.com/images/c/ca/IMG_20231107_120406700_HDR.jpg
Thanks much!
This badge is open source hardware. The PCB, BOM, firmware, etc are all available: https://github.com/Hack-a-Day/Vectorscope
Appreciated. But that’s a steep path to knock out just one… something that might provide a few weekends of fun, then banished to a desk drawer.
So, after producing a whack of these for the conference, there aren’t a few that get sold off somewhere, afterwards?
Just curious. And it’s not like I don’t already have desk drawers full of SBCs and dev boards to play with. ;-).
There is a comment in the Discord channel from someone who is setting up an order for some boards and inquiring if anyone is interested.
Thanks
A comment on Discord? Why make it so hard? Surely Supplyframe know how to source parts, put them on a PCB, then ship them to customers.
I can only conclude that someone _wants_ to make these things hard to get for people who can’t attend in person. And that’s OK, some “exclusivity” is potentially a good thing for selling conference tickets. But let’s not pretend the organisers can’t facilitate more production after the event.
That is nothing short of insanely spectacular.
Go makeTVee! I sat nearby and got to witness the labor first hand. Many hours of intense, tedious work. Major props!
every time I hand solder those leds I end up toasting the package
WS2812 in a 1010 package (1 by 1mm) That is a nice small package for those LEDS. Turns out SK6805 can be bought in the same size factor. That would be nice for that LED ring around a potentiometer or encoder we saw here recently.
I also like the way the thing is put together. Just two straight wires (except for the corners) and the data pins daisy chained and all without PCB and a 3D printed thing to keep everything in it’s place. The only thing missing are a few decoupling capacitors sprinkled around.
I wish you would’ve posted the diagram of he placed the LEDs, it made sense when I viewed it.