A cuboctahedron (a kind of polyhedron) made out of LED filaments is being held above a man's hand in front a computer screen.

The Graph Theory Of Circuit Sculptures

February 3, 2026 by 6 Comments

Like many of us, [Tim]’s seen online videos of circuit sculptures containing illuminated LED filaments. Unlike most of us, however, he went a step further by using graph theory to design glowing structures made entirely of filaments.

The problem isn’t as straightforward as it might first appear: all the segments need to be illuminated, there should be as few powered junctions as possible, and to allow a single power supply voltage, all paths between powered junctions should have the same length. Ideally, all filaments would carry the same amount of current, but even if they don’t, the difference in brightness isn’t always noticeable. [Tim] found three ways to power these structures: direct current between fixed points, current supplied between alternating points so as to take different paths through the structure, and alternating current supplied between two fixed points (essentially, a glowing full-bridge rectifier).

To find workable structures, [Tim] represented circuits as directed graphs, with each junction being a vertex and each filament a directed edge, then developed filter criteria to find graphs corresponding to working circuits. In the case of power supplied from fixed points, the problem turned out to be equivalent to the edge-geodesic cover problem. Graphs that solve this problem are bipartite, which provided an effective filter criterion. The solutions this method found often had uneven brightness, so he also screened for circuits that could be decomposed into a set of paths that visit each edge exactly once – ensuring that each filament would receive the same current. He also found a set of conditions to identify circuits using rectifier-type alternating current driving, which you can see on the webpage he created to visualize the different possible structures.

We’ve seen some artistic illuminated circuit art before, some using LED filaments. This project doesn’t take exactly the same approach, but if you’re interested in more about graph theory and route planning, check out this article.

Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Circuit Sculpture Keyboard

January 7, 2025 by 2 Comments

The left half of GEMK-47, a mechanical keyboard with a round screen.
Image by [New-Concentrate6308] via reddit
Don’t worry, [New-Concentrate6308] is working on the GitHub for this final build of 2024, dubbed the GEMK_47. That stands for Grid Ergo Magnetic Keyboard, but I swear there are 48 keys.

What we’ve got here is a split ergo with an ortholinear layout. There’s a round screen and encoder on the left side, and a 35 mm trackpad on the right. There’s also space for some other round thing on this side, should you want another rotary encoder or whatever fits in place of the spacer.

Internally, there’s a Waveshare RP2040 Tiny and a mixture of Gateron Oil Kings and Gateron Yellow V3 switches. That lovely case is printed in silk silver PLA, but [New-Concentrate6308] wants to try metal-filled PLA for the next version. Although the original idea was to go wireless, ZMK didn’t play nicely with that round display, which of course is non-negotiable.

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Build A Circuit Sculpture-Style VU Meter For Music

February 2, 2023 by 19 Comments

One of the coolest things any sound system can have is some kind of musical visualization. Thumping level meters that pump with the volume are a great example, and were particularly popular in the 1980s. Now, you can build a rainbow set with great response, thanks to this guide from [Invexlab World].

The build relies on a very simple circuit that relies entirely on analog electronics in lieu of the usual digital signal analysis usually employed for the job. It’s a barebones design that’s assembled using a jig to create the attractive circuit sculpture structure. It uses simple colored LEDs, assembled in a line with red at the bottom, stepping through yellow and green, to blue and white at the top. A series of diodes is placed in series, with the sound level having to exceed the voltage drop of successive diodes to light the higher LEDs. It’s intended to be directly connected to a speaker’s audio input, and thus likely does load down the amplifier output slightly.

The result is an attractive rainbow VU meter display that would look great as a part of any old-school stereo setup. We can imagine it would look even better if it was cast in clear resin. Video after the break.

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Test Your Capacity For Circuit Sculpture With Flashing Lights

December 30, 2022 by 15 Comments

Have you tried your hand at circuit sculpture yet? Well, if you were waiting for the ideal first project with a great build video to go along with it, keep reading. [4dcircuitry]’s 555-based flashing circuit sculpture ticks all the go-for-it boxen for us — the component list is short, the final circuit looks cool, and well, there are blinkenlights.

Of course, it’s not quite a zero-entry project. Although [4dcircuitry] makes it look oh-so easy build it in the video below, they are using 1206 components and an SOIC-packaged 555 timer here. On the other hand, they start by smartly laying everything out on double-stick tape before applying flux and soldering. Then when it’s time to run the wires that no one wants to see, [4dcircuitry] carefully tweezers it from the tape and flips it over, re-using the tape do solder up the back side.

Don’t have the patience to solder 1206? All component sizes are beautiful, as evidenced by this amazing circuit sculpture clock.

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A wall clock made from wires and electronic components

Form Follows Function In This Circuit Sculpture Clock

December 29, 2022 by 5 Comments

Electronic components are strictly functional objects: their appearance is determined by the function they’re meant to fulfil. But that doesn’t mean there’s no beauty in them. In fact, a whole discipline called circuit sculpture exists that aims to make beautiful shapes out of nothing more than electronic components and wires. Today we can show you [Maarten Tromp]’s latest work in this field: a wall-mounted clock that he’s christened the Clock Sculpture.

The clock’s main structure consists of two concentric rings made from galvanized steel wire, held together by twelve spokes. All components are soldered directly onto those two rings, with no additional mechanical support. Steel isn’t the greatest material for soldering to, but [Maarten] managed to make it work with a high-wattage soldering iron and a bit of plumbers’ flux.

The overall design is simple but clever: the outer ring holds 60 LEDs to indicate the minutes, with every fifth LED always illuminated dimly in order to provide a background reference in dark conditions. There are 24 LEDs on the inner ring to indicate the twelve hours as well as the “half-hours” in between. Without these, the dial would look a bit odd at 30 minutes past the hour.

Detail of a circuit sculpture clockA mains transformer, plus a single diode, a buffer capacitor and a 7805 regulator form a simple DC power supply, with its negative terminal connected to the steel frame. Time is kept by an ATtiny13A that counts mains frequency pulses. There’s no way to adjust the time: you’ll have to plug in the clock exactly at noon or midnight in order to synchronize it with the outside world. A crude method perhaps, but one that fits well with the clock’s bare-bones aesthetic.

The individual LEDs are driven by a set of twelve 74HC595 shift registers, all mounted dead-bug style between the two rings. Signals and power are carried between the chips by inconspicuous grey wires taken from old IDE cables; this gives the clock a clean, uncluttered appearance. [Maarten] has had the sculpture clock in his office for several months and while it apparently took some time to get used to, he claims it’s easy to read in bright and dark conditions.

Circuit sculpture has formed the basis for several stunning clock projects: this Tie Fighter-shaped clock for instance, or this insanely complex LED clock. Our 2020 Circuit Sculpture contest yielded many breathtaking designs, too.

Sound And Light Play Off Acrylic And Wire In This Engaging Circuit Sculpture

February 18, 2022 by 3 Comments

It’s no secret that we really like circuit sculptures around here, and we never tire of seeing what creative ways people come up with to celebrate the components used to make a project, rather than locking them away in an enclosure. And a circuit sculpture that incorporates sound and light in its design is always a real treat to discover.

Called “cwymriad” by its designer, [Eirik Brandal], this sound sculpture incorporates all kinds of beautiful elements. The framework is made from thick pieces of acrylic, set at interesting angles to each other and in contrasting colors. The sound-generating circuit, which uses square wave outputs from an ESP32 to provide carrier and modulation signals for a dual ring modulator, is built on a framework of tinned wires. The sounds the sculpture makes have a lovely resonance to them, like random bells and chimes that fade and mix together. There’s also a matrix of white LEDs that form a sort of digital oscilloscope that displays shifting waveforms in time with the music.

While we like the way this looks and sounds, the real bonus here is the details of construction in the video below. [Eirik]’s careful craftsmanship working with multiple materials is evident throughout; we were especially impressed by the work needed to drill holes for the LED matrix, any one of which slightly out of place would have been painfully obvious in the finished product.

This is far from [Eirik]’s first appearance on these pages. His vacuum tube and silicon “ioalieia” was featured just a few weeks back, and “ddrysfeöd” used the acrylic parts as light pipes in a lovely way.

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The Eerie Sounds Of Ioalieia: An ESP32/Valve/Analog Hybrid Circuit Sculpture

January 15, 2022 by 18 Comments

We’ve not had a circuit sculpture piece for a while, so here’s “ioalieia” a lovely hybrid digital-analog sound sculpture by [Eirik Brandal] to dig into.

Tidy straight lines. Nice job!

The host of the show is the ESP32 module, which generates audio frequency square waves, which are fed into a MCP4251 digital potentiometer. From there, it is fed into a AS3320 Voltage controlled filter (VCF), from Latvia-based ALFA (which is new to us, despite them being manufacturing electronics for sixty years!) This is an interesting device that has a four independently configurable filter elements with voltage controlled inputs for frequency control and resonance. The output from the VCF is then fed into a 6n2p (Soviet equivalent to the 12ax7) twin-triode vacuum tube, which is specifically aimed at audio applications.

The suitably distorted filtered square waves then pass into a Princeton Tech Corp PT2399 echo processor chip, which being digitally constructed, uses the expected ADC/RAM/DAC signal chain to implement an audio echo effect. As with the VCF, the echo depth can be modulated via the digipot, under the ESP32’s command. For a bit of added bling, the vacuum tube output feeds back into the ESP32, to be consumed by the internal ADC and turned into a light show via some PWM controlled LEDs. Lovely.

The final audio output from the echo chip is then fed into a speaker via a pair of LM380 amplifiers giving a power of about 5 W. It sounds pretty good if you ask us, and software configurable via Wi-Fi, giving this sculpture plenty of tweakabilty.

Of course circuit sculpture come in all shapes and sizes, and it wouldn’t do to not mention at least one sculpture clock project, and while we’re on it, here’s last year’s Remoticon circuit sculpture workshop.

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