112-LED Coffee Table

February 28, 2010 by 30 Comments

[Joe] tipped us off about his 112 LED coffee table. This 12-ups the LED matrix from Friday and 31-ups the Shiftbrite table. Driving this grid is an ATmega328 in i2c slave mode. It listens for display data from a second ATmega328 and uses that to set the array of TLC5940 driven LEDs appropriately. Separating the processing microcontroller from the display microcontroller allows for fast and smooth display changes that can be seen after the break. [Joe’s] table exhibits exquisite cable management, clean code, and an amazing amount of flexibility. Maybe [Caleb Kraft] will finally pony up the dough and make this project for his own home.

[Joe] waited until he saw some other LED tables to send us a link to his hack. This is obviously an awesome project, one that we want to see just as much as our readers do.  So please, don’t wait for someone else to stumble upon your project, send us a tip once you’re done sharing the details.

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10×10 LED Matrix

February 26, 2010 by 33 Comments

[KopfKopfKopfAffe] just finished a 3-year labor of love resulting in this 10 by 10 LED Matrix. This trumps the Shiftbrite table from earlier today by bringing an actual 100 LEDs to the display. These LEDs cost much less than the Shiftbrites, but since they don’t have their own on-board controller this project requires much more back end work. A total of 25 ATmega8 microcontrollers drive this display, in turn controlled via an RS-232 connection to a computer.

We love the Lemmings animations. It made us realize that this would be a great candidate to play Super Pixel Bros on. Check out the video after the break for snapshots of the hardware as well as videos of the matrix at play. You may also want to peruse the translated work log.

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Shift Powered Pumpkins

October 19, 2009 by 15 Comments

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[Garret] and a couple of friends totally stole our idea wanted to light up their pumpkins a bit differently this year. They used some ShiftBrites and all the corresponding shift hardware (who knew there was so much shift out there) to bring their carved orange minions to life. Yes, this could be done a lot less modulated by using a regular LED and perhaps a PIC. Maybe it’s not the most technically challenging, but hey its in the spirit of Halloween – one of our favorite holidays. Speaking of which, doesn’t that fence look familiar? Check out a video after the break. Seriously, Mutton Chops? Continue reading “Shift Powered Pumpkins” →

Web Controlled Dark Crystal

September 19, 2009 by 11 Comments

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[Reza] sent in his mood rock. Unlike other “mood” devices, instead of showing what mood you’re in, it shows what mood the internets are in. Two ShiftBrite modules are controlled by an AVR ATmega8 which then connects to a computer via USB. The assembly is placed inside of a piece of alabaster.

USB communications are controlled by the ATmega8 running V-USB (formerly AVR-USB) firmware. [Reza] wrote some code to control the colors from the web using Perl and AJAX. Head over to the web interface to set the colors yourself. We’d love it if a live webcam was added so we could see our mood on the rock itself. Continue reading “Web Controlled Dark Crystal” →

4 LED RGB Controller

July 13, 2009 by 2 Comments

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[Steven] was inspired by the BlinkM and Shiftbrite modules, but really wanted something that could be controlled via RS232. He decided to build his own RGB LED module capable of PWM that fit his needs. He’s using a PIC16F628 microcontroller as the base. Each module has 4 individually addressable LEDs with multiple intensities for each color. The units can be daisy chained as well. The schematics and PCB files are available on his site for download.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

How-to: Bus Pirate Probe Cable

July 2, 2009 by 24 Comments

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Update, Saturday July 4th, 2009: All preorders are closed.

A probe cable makes it easy to connect the Bus Pirate to a circuit and get hacking. Good test clips make quick connections on cramped PCBs without causing short circuits. We made two cables for the Bus Pirate v2, keep reading for an overview of our designs and list of part suppliers.

Friday, July 3, 2009 is the last day to pre-order a Bus Pirate. There’s only two days left to get your own Bus Pirate, fully assembled and shipped worldwide, for only $30.

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Colorize Your Election Party

November 3, 2008 by 19 Comments

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[Eric] has put together a simple python script to scrape election results from CNN.com. It uses urllib2 to return the popular and electoral votes for each party and throws an ElectionWon exception when CNN calls the race. He’s planning on hooking this to DMX controlled RGB LED lighting that will shift to either blue or red as the night progresses. It’s a great starting point if you want to pull off something similar.

You may remember [Eric] for building the IKEA MAME table and the TRS-80 wireless terminal.

[photo: skenmy]

UPDATE: [Garrett] of macetech is putting the finishing touches on his version which uses 32 ShiftBrite modules and 2 4-digit displays controlled by a CuBLOC.