Is That A Coaster? No, It’s An LED Matrix!

September 19, 2024 by Julian Scheffers 4 Comments

I’m sure you all love to see some colorful blinkenlights every now and then, and we are of course no exception. While these might look like coasters at a distance, do not be deceived! They’re actually [bitluni]’s latest project!

[bitluni]’s high-fidelity LED matrix started life as some 8×8 LED matrices lying on the shelf for 10 years taunting him – admit it, we’re all guilty of this – before he finally decided to make something with them. That idea took the form of a tileable display with the help of some magnets and pogo pins, which is certainly a very satisfying way to connect these oddly futuristic blinky coasters together.

It all starts with some schematics and a PCB. Because the CH32V208 has an annoying package to solder, [bitluni] opted to have the PCB fab do placement for him. Unfortunately, though, and like any good prototype, it needed a bodge! [bitluni] had accidentally mirrored a chip in the schematic, meaning he had to solder one of the SMD chips on upside-down, “dead bug mode”. Fortunately, the rest was seemingly more successful, because with a little 3D-printed case and some fancy programming, the tiny tiles came to life in all of their rainbow-barfing glory. Sure, the pogo pins were less reliable than desired, but [bitluni] has some ideas for a future version we’re very much looking forward to.

Video after the break.
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Creating A Twisted Grid Image Illusion With A Diffusion Model

September 18, 2024 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

Images that can be interpreted in a variety of ways have existed for many decades, with the classical example being Rubin’s vase — which some viewers see as a vase, and others a pair of human faces.

Where things get trickier is if you want to create an image that changes into something else that looks realistic when you rotate each section of it within a 3×3 grid. In a video by [Steve Mould], he explains how this can be accomplished, by using a diffusion model to identify similar characteristics of two images and to create an output image that effectively contains essential features of both images.

Naturally, this process can be done by hand too, with the goal always being to create a plausible image in either orientation that has enough detail to trick the brain into filling in the details. To head down the path of interpreting what the eye sees as a duck, a bunny, a vase or the outline of faces.

Using a diffusion model to create such illusions is quite a natural fit, as it works with filling in noise until a plausible enough image begins to appear. Of course, whether it is a viable image is ultimately not determined by the model, but by the viewer, as humans are susceptible to such illusions while machine vision still struggles to distinguish a cat from a loaf and a raisin bun from a spotted dog. The imperfections of diffusion models would seem to be a benefit here, as it will happily churn through abstractions and iterations with no understanding or interpretive bias, while the human can steer it towards a viable interpretation.

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Shedding New Light On The Voynich Manuscript With Multispectral Imaging

September 10, 2024 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

The Voynich Manuscript is a medieval codex written in an unknown alphabet and is replete with fantastic illustrations as unusual and bizarre as they are esoteric. It has captured interest for hundreds of years, and expert [Lisa Fagin Davis] shared interesting results from using multispectral imaging on some pages of this highly unusual document.

We should make it clear up front that the imaging results have not yielded a decryption key (nor a secret map or anything of the sort) but the detailed write-up and freely-downloadable imaging results are fascinating reading for anyone interested in either the manuscript itself, or just how exactly multispectral imaging is applied to rare documents. Modern imaging techniques might get leveraged into things like authenticating sealed packs of Pokémon cards, but that’s not all it can do.

Because multispectral imaging involves things outside our normal perception, the results require careful analysis rather than intuitive interpretation. Here is one example: multispectral imaging may yield faded text visible “between the lines” of other text and invite leaping to conclusions about hidden or erased content. But the faded text could be the result of show-through (content from the opposite side of the page is being picked up) or an offset (when a page picks up ink and pigment from its opposing page after being closed for centuries.)

[Lisa] provides a highly detailed analysis of specific pages, and explains the kind of historical context and evidence this approach yields. Make some time to give it a read if you’re at all interested, we promise it’s worth your while.

Ultra-Black Material, Sustainably Made From Wood

September 2, 2024 by Donald Papp 40 Comments

Researchers at the University of British Columbia leveraged an unusual discovery into ultra-black material made from wood. The deep, dark black is not the result of any sort of dye or surface coating; it’s structural change to the wood itself that causes it to swallow up at least 99% of incoming light.

One of a number of prototypes for watch faces and jewelry.

The discovery was partially accidental, as researchers happened upon it while looking at using high-energy plasma etching to machine the surface of wood in order to improve it’s water resistance. In the process of doing so, they discovered that with the right process applied to the right thickness and orientation of wood grain, the plasma treatment resulted in a surprisingly dark end result. Fresh from the plasma chamber, a wood sample has a thin coating of white powder that, once removed, reveals an ultra-black surface.

The resulting material has been dubbed Nxylon (the name comes from mashing together Nyx, the Greek goddess of darkness, with xylon the Greek word for wood) and has been prototyped into watch faces and jewelry. It’s made from natural materials, the treatment doesn’t create or involve nasty waste, and it’s an economical process. For more information, check out UBC’s press release.

You have probably heard about Vantablack (and how you can’t buy any) and artist Stuart Semple’s ongoing efforts at making ever-darker and accessible black paint. Blacker than black has applications in optical instruments and is a compelling thing in the art world. It’s also very unusual to see an ultra-black anything that isn’t the result of a pigment or surface coating.

Boss Byproducts: Fordites Are Pieces Of American History

August 28, 2024 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

Some of the neatest products are made from the byproducts of other industries. Take petroleum jelly, for example. Its inventor, Robert Chesebrough, a chemist from New York, came upon his idea while visiting the oil fields of Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. It took him ten years to perfect his formula, but the product has been a household staple ever since. Chesebrough so believed in Vaseline that he ingested a spoonful of it every day, and attributed his 96-year longevity to doing so.

Well, some byproducts can simply be beautiful, or at least interesting. On that note, welcome to a new series called Boss Byproducts. We recently ran an article about a laser-engraved painting technique that is similar to the production of Fordite. I had never heard of Fordite, but as soon as I found out what it was, I had to have some. So, here we go!

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It Turns Out, A PCB Makes A Nice Watch Dial

August 26, 2024 by Lewin Day 19 Comments

Printed circuit boards are typically only something you’d find in a digital watch. However, as [IndoorGeek] demonstrates, you can put them to wonderful use in a classical analog watch, too. They can make the perfect watch dial!

Here’s the thing. A printed circuit board is fundamentally some fiberglass coated in soldermask, some copper, maybe a layer of gold plating, and with some silk screen on top of that. As we’ve seen a million times, it’s possible to do all kinds of artistic things with PCBs; a watch dial seems almost obvious in retrospect!

[IndoorGeek] steps through using Altium Designer and AutoCAD to layout the watch face. The guide also covers the assembly of the watch face into an actual wrist watch, including the delicate placement of the movement and hands. They note that there are also opportunities to go further—such as introducing LEDs into the watch face given that it is a PCB, after all!

It’s a creative way to make a hardy and accurate watch face, and we’re surprised we haven’t seen more of this sort of thing before. That’s not to say we haven’t seen other kinds of watch hacks, though; for those, there have been many. Video after the break.

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How Jurassic Park’s Dinosaur Input Device Bridged The Stop-Motion And CGI Worlds

August 21, 2024 by Maya Posch 8 Comments

In a double-blast from the past, [Ian Failes]’ 2018 interview with [Phil Tippett] and others who worked on Jurassic Park is a great look at how the dinosaurs in this 1993 blockbuster movie came to be. Originally conceived as stop-motion animatronics with some motion blurring applied using a method called go-motion, a large team of puppeteers was actively working to make turning the book into a movie when [Steven Spielberg] decided to go in a different direction after seeing a computer-generated Tyrannosaurus rex test made by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM).

Naturally, this left [Phil Tippett] and his crew rather flabbergasted, leading to a range of puppeteering-related extinction jokes. Of course, it was the early 90s, with computer-generated imagery (CGI) animators being still very scarce. This led to an interesting hybrid solution where [Tippett]’s team were put in charge of the dinosaur motion using a custom gadget called the Dinosaur Input Device (DID). This effectively was like a stop-motion puppet, but tricked out with motion capture sensors.

This way the puppeteers could provide motion data for the CG dinosaur using their stop-motion skills, albeit with the computer handling a lot of interpolation. Meanwhile ILM could handle the integration and sprucing up of the final result using their existing pool of artists. As a bridge between the old and new, DIDs provided the means for both puppeteers and CGI artists to cooperate, creating the first major CGI production that holds up to today.

Even if DIDs went the way of the non-avian dinosaurs, their legacy will forever leave their dino-sized footprints on the movie industry.

Thanks to [Aaron] for the tip.

Top image: Raptor DID. Photo by Matt Mechtley.