Shapeshifting Streetlights Are The Future We Want To Live In

Regular streetlights are all well and good, bathing us in the glow of their sodium, or more increasingly LED, lamps. They’re mostly rigid metal contraptions installed primarily for public safety purposes. They could be so much more, however, as the Bloomlight demonstrates.

The light consists of a flexible main stem, which can be pulled in different directions by six steel cables controlled by stepper motors. At the top, it has a shroud made of wooden slats and fabric that can bloom like a flower around its central lamp, thanks to a 3D printed mechanism. LIDAR is used to detect approaching humans, at which point the Bloomlight leans over towards them and begins to bloom open, showering them with light.

It’s a beautiful art piece from the Dutch design firm [Vouw], and one we’d love to see in person. The design reminds of this useful tentacle design. With that said, it could grow emotionally exhausting having to repeatedly ignore plaintively waving streetlights that crave human attention as you walk on through the night. Anthropomorphizing anything is usually a double edged sword.

Perhaps the neatest streetlight hack we’ve seen is way back from 2013 – using a laser diode to shut off a streetlight from a distance. Video after the break.

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This Pineapple Keyboard Is The Bomb

Now why didn’t we think of this? While building a dactyl manuform — a semi-ergonomic split keyboard — [dapperrogue] had the life-changing epiphany that keyboards can be any shape or size, as long as there is room for wiring and a microcontroller inside. [dapperrogue]’s first foray into the world of fictional ordnance came in the form of an F-bomb — a round macro keeb made in the classic round explosive shape and covered with function keys. Building on the explosive feedback from that, [dapperrogue] built this bomb of a pineapple keeb, the only anti-personnel factor being the clickiness of the key switches.

This groovy grenade has 25 keys total, 24 of which are in a 4×6 grid around the body. The 25th key, the best one, is hiding under the lever and you bet it can only be actuated by pulling the pin first. We love the use of the lever because it makes us think of Morse code keyers, which might be what we would use that switch for.

Inside is an Arduino Pro Micro running QMK and some skillful wiring. The entirely 3D-printed enclosure is in two main pieces that are connected with M3 screws, plus the top. If you want to pack one of your own, the STLs and firmware are out on GitHub. Just don’t take it to the airport.

Be sure to check out the demos after the break — in the stock firmware, every key types out a different onomatopoeic boom-type sound. Are you more of a pacifist when it comes to macro pad design? That’s understandable. We have plenty of different builds to admire.

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Bridging The PC And Embedded Worlds With Pico And Python

Although protocols like I2C and SPI are great for communicating between embedded devices and their peripherals, it can be a pain to interface these low-level digital interfaces to a PC. [Alexandre] typically used an Arduino to bridge between the PC and embedded worlds, but he got tired of defining a custom serial protocol for each project. Inspired by MicroPython’s machine module, [Alexandre] has developed u2if—an implementation of some of MicroPython’s machine module for PC—using a USB-connected Raspberry Pi Pico to bridge between a PC and low-level digital interfaces.

u2if consists of two parts: the PC portion is a Python implementation of a portion of the MicroPython machine module, and the Raspberry Pi Pico receives some custom C++ firmware. Thus far, [Alexandre] has implemented functionality for the onboard ADCs, I2C, SPI, UART, and GPIO lines as well as additional support for I2S sound and the WS2812B addressable LED.

Development board for Raspberry Pi Pico.

In addition to the u2if package, [Alexandre] has designed a PCB to break out all of the Raspberry Pi Pico’s interfaces in a handy 3×3.9″ board. We especially like that multiple headers are supplied for I2C, including one with enough space to mount an SSD1306 OLED display.

We think this could be an incredibly useful tool, and what makes it even more impressive is that it uses a board many of us already have laying around. If you want a dedicated device for interfacing with low-level digital buses, you may want to check out the GreatFET.

Toggle Switch Puzzle Boggles The Mind, Opens The Box

We all have too much stock of one component or another. Maybe you have more audio pots than you know what to do with, or maybe it’s zener diodes. For [technologyguy], that thing is a pile of toggle switches.  Fortunately he’s always wanted to build a locking box with a binary code that’s laid out in switches — as in, find the right code, and a solenoid unlatches the box. This lovely parts bin special only responds to two combinations out of a possible 4,000+, so anyone who tries to open it should probably block out the afternoon.

Inside you’ll find two 9 V batteries, a home-brew metal latch, a solenoid, and the undersides of four DPDT and eight SPDT toggle switches. If you just picked this thing up and had no idea what was going on, you’d be so screwed as to what to do first. The box needs power, so you’d have to figure out which switch is which. But it’s so much harder than that, because the bottom left switch selects between the two paths that result in an unlocked book-box.

The next two toggles in from the left are on/off selectors for code A and code B, so not only do you have to have the right path chosen, you have to power it, too. The only progress indicators are the LEDs — there’s one for main power, and the other lets you know that the box is unlatched. What a fun conversation piece for the coffee table Zoom-viewable area!

Want to do something far less useful with your throng of toggles? How about a complicated useless machine?

Heads Up: Smart Glass Multimeter

Sometimes it is hard to probe a circuit and then look over at the meter. [Electronoobs] decided to fix that problem by making a Google Glass-like multimeter using an OLED screen and Bluetooth module.

The custom PCB doesn’t have many surprises. A small board has a controller, a battery charger, a display, and a Bluetooth module. One thing he did forget is a switch, though, so the board is always on unless you arrange an external switch.

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DOS Gaming PC Gets Necessary Updates

PC-104 is a standard computer form factor that most people outside of industrial settings probably haven’t seen before. It’s essentially an Intel 486 processor with lots of support for standards that have long since disappeared from most computers, but this makes it great for two things: controlling old industrial equipment and running classic DOS games on native hardware. For the latter, we turn once again to [The Rasteri] who is improving on his previous build with an even smaller DOS gaming rig, this time based on a platform even more diminutive than PC-104.

The key of a build like this is that it needs native support for the long-obsolete ISA bus to be able to interface with a SoundBlaster card, a gold standard for video games of the era. This smaller computer still has this functionality in a smaller package, but with some major improvements. First, it has a floating point unit so it can run games like Quake. It’s also much faster than the PC-104 system and uses less power. Finally, it fits in an even smaller case.

The build goes well beyond simply running software on a SoM computer. [The Rasteri] also custom built an interface board for this project, complete with all of the necessary ports and an ISA sound chip, all while keeping size down to a minimum. The new build also lets him give the build a better name than the old one (although he phrases this upgrade slightly differently), and will also let him expand some features in the future as well. Be sure to check out that first build if you’re new to this saga, too.

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Guide To Mastering OpenSCAD Costs Roughly The Same As OpenSCAD

OpenSCAD is a fantastic free tool for 3D modeling, but it’s far less intuitive to use for non-programmers than mouse-driven programs such as Tinkercad. Powerful as it may be, the learning curve is pretty steep. OpenSCAD’s own clickable cheat sheet and manual comes in handy all the time, but those are really more of a reference than anything else. Never fear, because [Jochen Kerdels] had quite the productive lockdown and wrote a free comprehensive guide to mastering OpenSCAD.

[Jochen]’s book opens with a nice introduction to OpenSCAD and it’s user environment and quickly moves into 10 useful projects of increasing complexity that start with simple stuff like wall anchors and shelf brackets and ends with recursive trees.

There are plenty of printing tips along the way to help realize these projects with minimum frustration, and the book wraps up by covering extra functions not expressly used in the projects.

Of course, you could always support [Jochen]’s Herculean effort by buying the print edition and forcing yourself to type everything in instead of copy/pasting, or give it to someone to introduce them to all the program has to offer.

Need help mastering OpenSCAD workflow? We’ve got that. Just want to make some boxes or airfoils? We have those in stock, too.

Main and thumbnail images via [Devlin Thyne]