Perlin Noise Helps Make Trippy Typographic Art

March 10, 2021 by Donald Papp 8 Comments

Perlin noise is best explained in visual terms: if a 2D slice of truly random noise looks like even and harsh static, then a random 2D slice of Perlin noise will have a natural-looking blotchy structure, with smooth gradients. [Jacob Stanton] used Perlin noise as the starting point for creating some interesting generative vector art that shows off all kinds of different visuals. [Jacob] found that his results often exhibited a natural quality, with the visuals evoking a sense of things like moss, scales, hills, fur, and “other things too strange to describe.”

The art project [Jacob] created from it all is a series of posters showcasing some of the more striking examples, each of which displays an “A” modified in a different way. A few are shown here, and a collection of other results is also available.

Perlin noise was created by Ken Perlin while working on the original Tron movie in the early 80s, and came from a frustration with the look of computer generated imagery of the time. His work had a tremendous and lasting impact, and was instrumental to artists creating more natural-looking textures. Processing has a Perlin noise function, which was in fact [Jacob]’s starting point for this whole project.

Noise, after all, is a wide and varied term. From making generative art to a cone of silence for smart speakers, it has many practical and artistic applications.

Head Lamp Gives Glowing Creature Comforts

March 7, 2021 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

What can we say? It’s 2021, and we could probably all use a psychotic glow worm lamp in our lives about now to lighten the mood and/or provide a new focal point for sitting and staring. Tired of dragging out that creepy little Elf on the Shelf every holiday season? [LiabilityLabs]’ Head Lamp is slightly less terrifying and far more functional. Really, the options are limitless.

The brain of this scare snake is an Electromage Pixelblaze LED controller, a powerful Wi-Fi enabled little board with a live web editor. [LiabilityLabs] recycled 20 milky plastic containers and their lids to help diffuse the light and avoid hot spots by holding the LED strip in the center of the tube. There’s a momentary button on the glowy guy’s tail that lets [LiabilityLabs] cycle through different color patterns with ease.

Whether you need a mascot for your stream channel, a confidant, or a refreshing rainbow rubber ducky of problem solving, Head Lamp is flexible. Feast your eyes on some brief animations after the break.

Want the glowies without the willies? This mesmerizing fiber optic lamp is an easy build.

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A Sympathetic Nail Violin

March 3, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 5 Comments

As a hacker community, we are no strangers to beautiful and unique musical instruments. A sympathetic nail violin built by [Nicolas Bras] is a welcome addition to the eclectic family. Working up from the simple idea of a nail in a piece of wood and adjusting the pitch by hammering the nail farther into the wood, [Nicolas] expanded the idea. With careful planning and tuning, the nails can have sympathetic properties. These properties mean that when one nail is played via a bow, it causes other nails to sound, creating harmonies and sustains.

With a bit of careful woodworking and a scant touch of metalwork, an instrument was crafted. It offers vast flexibility as it can be played by bow, by plucking with your finger, or by strumming. There are several levels of nails, each level having a paired sympathetic nail. This allows for a diverse and versatile instrument.

Here at Hackaday, we seem to have a thing for tiny violins, whether physical or virtual. While the nail violin may not look like your traditional violin, we can certainly appreciate the wonderful music it creates.

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Liquid Lite Brite Robot

March 3, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 2 Comments

Liquid handling workstations are commonly used in drug development, and look like small CNC machines with droppers on the ends which can dispense liquid into any container in a grid array. They are also extraordinarily expensive, as is most specialty medical research equipment. This liquid handling workstation doesn’t create novel drugs, though, it creates art, and performs similar functions to its professional counterparts at a much lower cost in exchange for a lot of calibration and math.

The art is created by pumping a small amount of CMYK-colored liquids into a 24×16 grid, with each space in the grid able to hold a small amount of the colored liquid. The result looks similar to a Lite-Brite using liquids instead of small pieces of plastic. The creator [Zach Frew] created the robot essentially from scratch using an array of 3D printers, waterjets, and CNC machines. He was able to use less expensive parts, compared to medical-grade equipment, by using servo-controlled valves and peristaltic pumps, but makes up for their inaccuracies with some detailed math and calibration.

The results of the project are striking, especially when considering that a lot of hurdles needed to be cleared to get this kind of quality, including some physical limitations on the way that the liquids behave in the first place. It’s worth checking out not just for the art but for the amount of detail involved as well. And, for those still looking to scratch the 90s nostalgia itch, there are plenty of other projects using the Lite Brite as inspiration.

Thanks to [Thane Hunt] for the tip!

Sounding The Humble LED

February 27, 2021 by Kerry Scharfglass 22 Comments

Here at Hackaday we’re no strangers to the colorful glow of LEDs. But what if there was more to appreciate beneath the surface? Back in 2011 [Windell] over at Evil Mad Scientist dug into a certain variety of LED and discovered they had a song to sing.

Over the last couple decades, you’ve likely encountered the flickering “candle flame” variety of LED. Often found embedded in small plastic candle simulacra they are shaped like typical through hole “gumdrop” style LEDs, but pack some extra magic which causes them to flicker erratically. Coupled with a warm white color temperature the effect isn’t entirely dissimilar to the flickering of a candle flame.

To the Hackaday reader (and [Windell]) the cause of the flickering may be fairly clear, there is an IC embedded in the lens of the LED. See photo at top for an example of how this might look, helpfully magnified by the lens of the LED itself. Looking through the lens the captive die is visible, as well as the bond wires connecting it to the legs and light emitting diode itself. [Windell]’s observation is that together this assembly makes for a somewhat strange electrical component; from the perspective of the circuit it appears to randomly vary the current flowing through the LED.

He includes two interesting demos. One is that by attaching the flickering LED to a BJT he can turn it into a current amplifier and successfully drive a much more powerful 1W LED with the same effect. The other is that with the power of the amplifier the same flickering LED can drive a buzzer as well. The effect is surprisingly pleasant, though we’d hesitate to call it musical.

For a more recent example of a similar phenomenon with a very different sound, check out out [Emily Velasco]’s playback of a similarly constructed RGB color changing LED, embedded below. We’ve seen optical tools used to decode LED flickers into data streams, but not for audio playback! We have also covered some LED flicker reverse engineering that spills more of the mystery sealed up in these specialized diodes.

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“MORPH” LED Ball Is A There-Is-No-Spoon, Reality-Bending Art Installation

February 25, 2021 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

Marvelously conceived and exquisitely executed, this huge ball made up of hexagon tiles combines the best of blinky LEDs and animatronics into one amorphic ball.

The creation of [Nicholas Perillo] of Augmentl along with [MindBuffer], full details of the “morph v2” project have not yet been published. However, some tantilizing build progress is documented on [Nicholas’] Insta — most especially through the snapshots in the story thread spanning the last seven months. The scope of the project is brought into focus with time lapse video of hundreds of heat-set inserts, bundles of twisted wire, a pile of 1500 sliding rails, cases full of custom-order stepper motors, and thick cuts of copper bus bars to feed power up the shaft and out to the panels.

The demo video after the break is mesmerizing, shot by [nburdy] during a demo at MotionLab Berlin where it was built. Each hex tile is backed by numerous LEDs and a stepper motor assembly that lets it move in and out from the center of the ball. Somehow it manages to look as though it’s flowing, as they eye doesn’t pick up spaces opening between tiles as they are extended.

The Twitter thread fills in some of the juicy details: “486 stepper motors, 86,000 LEDs and a 5 channel granular synth engine (written by @_hobson_ no less, in @rustlang of course).” The build also includes speakers mounted in the core of the ball, hidden behind the moving LED hexes. The result is an artistic assault on reality, as the highly coordinated combinations of light, sound, and motion make this feel alive, otherwordly, or simply a glitch in the matrix. Watching the renders of what animations will look like, then seeing it on the real thing drives home the point that practical effects can still snap us out of our 21st-century computer-generated graphics trance.

It’s relatively easy to throw thousands of LEDs into a project these days, as PCBA just applies robots to the manufacturing problem. But motion remains a huge challenge beyond a handful of moving parts. But the Times Square billboard from a few years ago and the Morph ball both show it’s worth it.

As you’ve guessed from the name, this is the second Morph ball the team has collaborated on. Check out details of v1, a beach ball sized moving LED ball.

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Oscilloscope Learns How To Speak Japanese, And VGA

January 20, 2021 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

Nostalgia aside, there are a few things an analog scope can still do better than a digital, with oscilloscope art being a prime example. The blue-green glow of phosphors in a real CRT just add something special to such builds, and as a practitioner of this craft, [Aaron] decided to paint a New Year’s affirmation on his oscilloscope screen, in Japanese calligraphy of all things.

When used in X-Y mode, analog oscilloscopes lend themselves nicely to vector-based graphics, which is the approach [Aaron] has taken with previous “Oscilloclock” builds, like the Metropolis Clock. The current work, however, doesn’t use vector graphics, opting instead to turn the scope into the business end of a VGA display. He had previously developed the hardware needed to convert a VGA signal into X- and Y-axis analog outputs, so the bulk of the work was rendering the calligraphy, first in ink and then scanning and processing the results into a file. In keeping with the Japanese theme, [Aaron] chose a rare scope from Nihon Tsushinki Co., Ltd., from 1963. It’s a beautiful piece of equipment and obviously lovingly restored, and with the VGA adapter temporarily connected, the four Japanese characters scroll gracefully up the screen, delivering the uplifting message: “Steady progress, day by day.”

[Aaron] sure puts a lot of work into his analog scope builds, which we’ve featured a few times. Check out the clock he made from Grandpa’s old Heathkit scope, or his Tektronic vectorscope clock. And don’t forget about other forms of oscilloscope art — they can make music too, after all.