MagicShifter 3000: An Over-Engineered POV Stick With A 15-Year Journey

August 22, 2016 by Moritz Walter 64 Comments

3 hackers, 16 LEDs, 15 years of development, one goal: A persistence of vision display stick that fits into your pocket. That’s the magicShifter 3000. When waved, the little, 10 cm (4 inches) long handheld device draws stable images in midair using the persistence of vision effect. Now, the project has reached another milestone: production.

The design has evolved since it started with a green LED bargraph around 2002. The current version features 16 APA102 (aka DotStar) RGB LEDs, an ESP-12E WiFi module, an NXP accelerometer/magnetometer, the mandatory Silabs USB interface, as well as a LiPo battery and charger with an impressive portion of power management. An Arduino-friendly firmware implements image stabilization as well as a React-based web interface for uploading and drawing images.

After experimenting with Seeedstudio for their previous prototypes, the team manufactured 500 units in Bulgaria. Their project took them on a roundtrip through hardware manufacturing. From ironing out minuscule flaws for a rock-solid design, over building test rigs and writing test procedures, to yield management. All magicShifter enclosures are — traditionally — 3D printed, so [Overflo] and [Martin] are working in shifts to start the 500 prints, which take about 50 minutes each to complete. The printers are still buzzing, but assembled units can be obtained in their shop.

Over all the years, the magicShifter has earned fame and funding as the over-engineered open hardware pocket POV stick. If you’re living in Europe, chances are that you either already saw one of the numerous prototype units or ran into [Phillip Tiefenbacher] aka [wizard23] on a random hacker event to be given a brief demo of the magicShifter. The project always documented the status quo of hardware hacking: Every year, it got a bit smaller, better, and reflected what parts happened to be en vogue.

The firmware and 3D-printable enclosure are still open source and the schematics for the latest design can be found on GitHub. Although, you will search in vain for layout or Gerber files. The risk of manufacturing large batches and then being put out of business by cheap clones put its mark on the project, letting the magicShifter reflect the current, globalized status of hardware hacking once more. Nevertheless, we’re glad the bedrock of POV projects still persists. Check out the catchy explanatory video below.

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Cyclist’s LED Pixel Clock Has No Fat Around The Middle

July 27, 2016 by Moritz Walter 9 Comments

If you like LED clocks and illuminated bicycle wheels, [Harald Coeleveld] has just the right weekend project for you. His RGB pixel LED clock is as simple as it is beautiful, and it can be built in no time: The minimalist and sporty design consist of not much more than a LED strip wrapped around a bicycle wheel rim.

[Harald] took 2 meters of addressable WS2812 LED strip (with 30 LEDs per meter, we assume), wrapped it around a 27″ bicycle rim padded with a foam strip, and obtained 60 equally spaced RGB LEDs on a ring, ideal for displaying time. Apparently, the rim-tape circumference of this particular 27″ bicycle wheel is close enough to 2 meters, so it lines up perfectly.

On the electronics side, the project employs an Arduino Nano and a DS3231 precision RTC module. For switching between two illumination modes for day and night, [Harald] also added a photoresistor. During the day, colored dots around the ring display the time: A red dot for the seconds, a blue one for the minutes, and a group of 3 green LEDs for the hours. At night, the entire ring shimmers with an effective red glow for easier readability.

The Arduino code for this build can be downloaded from the project page, enabling anyone to effortlessly replicate this design-hack in under an hour!

TritiLED Lights Up The Night, Doesn’t Make You Glow

July 11, 2016 by Adam Fabio 58 Comments

Tritium, or ³H is an isotope of hydrogen which has been used as everything from radiolabel in analytical chemistry to a booster to kickstart the chain reaction of nuclear weapons. Lately tritium’s most common use has been in key chains and jewelry. A small amount of tritium is stored in a phosphor coated glass tube. The beta decay of the tritium causes the phosphor to glow. The entire device is called a Gaseous Tritium Light Source (GTLS).

In the USA, GTLS devices are only allowed to be used in specific cases such as watches, compasses, and gun sights (MURICA!). Key chains and jewelry are considered frivolous uses and are prohibited by the nuclear regulatory commission. Of course, you can still order them from overseas websites.

The safety of GLTS devices have been hotly debated on the internet for years. They’re generally safe, unless you break the glass. That said, we’re happy getting our radiation exposure through cool hacks, rather than carrying a low-level source around in our pockets.

Enter [Ted Yapo], an amateur astronomer. After tripping over his telescope tripod one time too many, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He’s designing TritiLED, a dim LED light source which can last for years. [Ted] is using a Luxeon Z LED, driven with PWM by a PIC 12F508 8 bit microcontroller. Running at 26.3 μA, he estimates about a year of run time on a CR2032 watch battery, or a whopping 15 years on a pair of lithium AA cells. Sure he could have done it with a 555 timer, but using a micro means more features are just a few lines of code away. [Ted] took advantage of this by adding a high brightness mode, blink modes, and an exponential decay mode, which emulates the decay of GLTSs.

Best of all it’s all open source. [Ted] is publishing under the (CC-BY-SA) license on Hackaday.io.

Incredible Luminosity In A Portable Package

July 7, 2016 by James Hobson 25 Comments

If you’ve ever wanted to bring the brightest day into the blackest night, this flashlight shall give you sight. With a 100W LED array powered by up to 32V, this thing is exceedingly bright — it clocks in at about 9000 lumens! But the best part is that all every little detail of the build was documented along the way so that we can tag along for the ride.

The all-aluminium case houses the LEDs and their heat sink, voltage regulator and display, the AD and DC adapter and converter boards and their connectors, and fans to ensure adequate ventilation. It’s powered by a custom-assembled 6400 mAh 11.1V lipo battery or DC 20V 10Amp power supply via XLR for rugged, locking connection. The battery pack connection was vacuum formed for quick-swapping, and the pack itself will sound off an alert if any of the three batteries inside the pack run out of power. A nifty added feature is the ability to check the remaining charge — especially useful if you’re looking to bring this uncommonly powerful flashlight along on camping trips or other excursions.

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Making A Networked 32X32 LED Panel Case

July 6, 2016 by Richard Baguley 1 Comment

[Adam Haile] of [Maniacal Labs] is at it again, whipping up some LED weirdness. This project is smaller than most of his work, though: he has made a nice case that holds a 32X32 LED matrix screen, the controller, and a Raspberry Pi. Check out the build and a brief demo in the video below.

This nice 3D printable design, called the Jumbo1K, would be a good starting point if you are looking to make something with one of these screens, as it provides easy access to all of the ports on the Pi for programming, debugging and networking the device without ruining the look. It does this with a neat trick, using the keystone jacks that you put in your wall when you are rewiring your house.
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Blinktronicator’s POV Sends Our Eyebrows Rocketing Skyward

July 1, 2016 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

You think you’ve seen everything that there is to see regarding blinking LEDs and then a simple little trick proves you wrong. Our friend [Zach Fredin], aka [Zakqwy], added a pander mode to his blinky board which shows the Hackaday Jolly Wrencher in a Persistence of Vision mode. We love pandering, and obviously you just need to start the mode and wave the board back and forth. But in thinking the obvious you’d be wrong.

blinktronicator-board — Badass deadbug soldering to “fix” a mirrored shift register footprint

In the video after the break [Zach] demonstrates all the features of the blinktronicator and it’s recently finalized firmware. The tiny little board is a USB dongle featuring two buttons and an arc of sixteen LEDs in a rainbow of colors. When we say tiny, we mean it. Those LEDs are 0402 components and the board was small enough (and interesting enough) to receive an honorable mention in the Square Inch Project.

You would think that soldering all those LEDs by hand would be the trick, but [Zach] pulled off a much more difficult feat. Look closely at the image here (or click to embiggen). The two shift register footprints on the prototype were mirrored. He deadbug soldered each of them using — get this — the individual strands from some 28 AWG stranded wire. You sir, get the hardcore hand soldering badge and then some.

Okay, we’ll stop beating around the bush. The ATtiny45 on this board isn’t connected to the USB data lines, they’re only for power. That means, at its heart this is purely a blinking LED project, albeit one that uses the huge range of colors of the PICOLED family of parts. [Zach] did well with just two user inputs, but it’s the very simple POV party trick that really sucked us in. Instead of waving the board around, [Zach] uses a metal offset spatula as a mirror. Moving it back and forth unfolds the carefully timed flashes to draw your message in the air. Such a simple concept, but so satisfying to see it applied in a slightly different way.

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Bright Idea For A Name Tag

June 27, 2016 by James Hobson 16 Comments

Looking for a quick DIY project to separate yourself from the crowd at your next business function or maker expo? Take a leaf out of [Pete Prodoehl’s] book and make your own name tag complete with blinking LED!

Minimalist, yet flashy (sorry!), this quick project can be completed inside a few hours with few resources, and is a great way to display your DIY handiwork. Continue reading “Bright Idea For A Name Tag” →