Turn A Free Flashlight Into LED Strips

March 8, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 34 Comments

Harbor Freight is always trying to sweeten the deal by throwing in a free flashlight, or a multimeter with a CAT III rating so poorly-met it might as well be a hand grenade. We usually donate the meters to our local hackerspace, but the flashlights tend to accumulate around the shop. Aside from borrowing the occasional magnet, we’ve not found a good use for them till now.

[Ben Brandt] realized that a ultra-low cost board such as the one likely to be in a free flashlight is probably going to contain a very easily hackable single-sided board. Which is exactly the case here. Once the plastic casing is removed it’s only a quick trip to the saw until you have four fresh mini LED strips.

[Ben] uses his hacked loot to build a neat little, “Thanks For Watching,” sign. We can picture lots of places these could fit in the occasional project, and the work to break these up into parts is less than making equivalent boards with any proto technique. We love his wooden battery compartment. Video after the break.

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Faking A Hollow State Device

March 6, 2016 by Al Williams 30 Comments

There’s been a resurgence of interest in vacuum tubes. Even if you do think audio sounds better through a tube, you have to admit the care and feeding of filaments and plate voltages isn’t trivial. [Ed Nisley] decided to sidestep all that and just build an objet d’art that looks like a tube.

A burned out halogen bulb stands in for the tube, and a ceramic base holds the bulb. It also conceals–what else–an Arduino. The Arduino drives a knock-off Neopixel LED hidden in a faux plate cap. The result is a glass envelope bathed in a cold blue and purple glow that changes under software control.

We’d really like to see this kind of tube inside some rebuilt piece of tube gear. Or maybe Korg should offer LED lighting options for their recent tube in a chip form factor. If you really want to be a top-tier tube hacker, you can always try your hand at repair.

Polyhedrone

March 4, 2016 by Jenny List 6 Comments

[Brainsmoke] had a simple plan. Make a quadcopter with lots of addressable LEDs.

Not just a normal quadcopter with ugly festoons of LED tape though. [Brainsmoke] wanted to put his LEDs in a ball. Thus was born the polyhedrone, the idea of a flying deltoidal hexecontahedron covered as you might expect with all those addressable LEDs.

A Catalan solid makes a good choice for the homebrew polyhedron builder because its faces are all identical. Thus if you are making PCBs to carry LEDs, for example, you need only create a single PCB design to use on all faces. A bit of work in KiCAD, and a single face design with interlocking edges was ready. The boards were tested, a wiring layout was worked out, and the polyhedron was assembled.

But [Brainsmoke] didn’t stop there. He produced a flight case for the polyhedron, in the form of a larger polyhedron from what looks like lasercut thin ply.

Having a finished polyhedron, the next thing was to hook up a Raspberry Pi and write some software. First in Python, then in Go.

The results are simply stunning. If the mathematics and construction of a polyhedron were not enough to make this project worth a second look, then the gallery of images should be enough. You’ll notice that this is ostensibly a quadcopter project, yet no mention of flying has been made on this page. That’s because this is still a work in progress at Tech Inc Amsterdam, and there is more to come. But it honestly doesn’t matter if this project never moves a millimeter off the ground, as far as we are concerned [Brainsmoke] has created a superbly built thing of beauty in its own right, and we like that.

As you might expect, this is just the latest of many projects featured here that have involved addressable LEDs or quadcopters. Of note among them is this LED polyhedron that cleverly closes in all its bits, and this LED-equipped quadcopter that generates very pleasing patterns with a hi-res cross of pixels.

Building An Interactive LED Lamp To Annoy Yourself

March 1, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 12 Comments

[Norwegian Creations] makes things as a business model. Tired of the mundane lamp above their heads, they decided to put their skills to use. The basic idea was simple, plot out a cool 3D function, put some RGB LEDs behind it, make it an awesome mathematical rainbow light display, hang it right above their desks, and then ignore it for their monitors while they worked.

The brains of the project is a Raspberry Pi B+, WS2812 LED strips, and a Fadecandy controller from Adafruit. They 3D printed hexagonal towers out of clear plastic and labeled each carefully. Then they attached the strips to the board, glued on the hexagons, and covered the remaining surface in cotton balls to give it a cloud-like appearance.

The lamp normally plays patterns or maintains a steady light. As the day turns to night it reflects the world outside. However, if someone likes their Facebook page the light has a little one robot strobe party, which we imagine can get annoying over time. Video after the break.

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Fake Window Brings Natural Light Into Basement

February 29, 2016 by James Hobson 27 Comments

Do you have a depressing basement? Maybe you still live with the parents? You need a fake window to cheer things up! As it turns out, it’s pretty easy to make a convincingly real-looking day-light window — plus you could totally mess with your circadian rhythm!

[thatdbeagoodbandname] has an office in his basement with no windows, which is why he set out to brighten up the room with this project. Apparently you can buy fake LED windows, but they’re expensive and don’t look that good. His goal was to build a cartoony “classic” window that would feel bright and uplifting — and to keep it well under $200.

In the end he ended up buying everything he needed from Home Depot for his project; some 2 x 4’s for the frame, a sheet of acrylic, and a set of LED plant grow-lights. Continue reading “Fake Window Brings Natural Light Into Basement” →

Directional Booklight Invisible To Everyone But You

February 27, 2016 by Bob Baddeley 15 Comments

Consistent contributor [Ken] has cooked up another contraption with his directional booklight. Combining an LED strip and privacy screen filter inside a wooden enclosure, this handy tool is made for someone who wants to read in bed without disturbing anyone else. The booklight sits on top of the page, the LEDs light up just the given area, and because the privacy screen only allows light to come straight off the page, only the reader can see any light and any other viewing angle is obscured.

[Ken] thought of everything. Rather than have the light stay on while the booklight is lifted to turn the page and possibly flash an unsuspecting slumberer, a tactile switch on the underside turns the light on only when it is pressed against the page, allowing very little light to escape.

Future upgrades include another switch on top to detect when the book is closed, and an accelerometer to detect when the reader may have fallen asleep.

We’ve reported a few of [Ken]’s projects before, like his 3D popup cards, unique weather display, and semi-real-life Mario Kart

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Oak Lamp Glows Bright

February 25, 2016 by James Hobson 29 Comments

Looking for a way to spruce up your place with a touch of rustic-future-deco? Why not embed LEDs somewhere they were never designed for? [Callosciurini] had a nice chunk of oak and decided to turn it into a lamp.

He was inspired by a similar lamp that retails for over $1,000, so he figured he would make his own instead (business idea people?). The oak is a solid chunk measuring 40x40x45cm and what he did was route out an angled channel across all faces of the cube. This allowed him to installed a simple LED strip inside the groove — then he filled it with an epoxy/paint mix to give it that milky glow.

To finish it off he sanded the entire thing multiple times, oiled the wood, and sanded it again with a very fine grit. The result is pretty awesome.

Now imagine what you could do design-wise if you could fold wood to make a lamp? Well with this custom wood-folding saw-blade, the sky is the limit!

[via r/DIY]