LED Hacks

1851 Articles

A Watercooled Headlamp, Because Why Not?

November 2, 2014 by 29 Comments

There are extremely high powered LEDs out there, and most of the ‘creative’ uses of these are extremely high-powered flashlights, complete with heatsinks, forced air cooling, and beefy power supplies. [Christian] wanted to play around with one of these LEDs, but he wanted something a little more unique. He chose a headlamp, a build that is made even more impressive by the fact it is watercooled.

The body of the headlamp was milled out of aluminum, with a space for the LED in the front and channels in the back for coolant. Also in this enclosure are two buttons, a temperature sensor, and a port for the hose that carries the tubes and wires.

This hose connects to a large battery pack that houses four large lithium phosphate batteries and a boost converter built around an Arduino. The pack also houses a pump and reservoir that is able to keep the LED cool even at 130W.

Arduino Pumpkin

8×8 LED Arrays Make For One Creepy Animated Pumpkin

October 27, 2014 by 15 Comments

[Michal Janyst] wrote in to tell us about a little project he made for his nephew in preparation for Halloween – a jack-o-lantern with facial expressions.

Pumpkin Eyes uses two MAX7219 LED arrays, an Arduino nano, and a USB power supply. Yeah, it’s pretty simple — but after watching the video you’ll probably want to make one too. It’s just so cute! Or creepy. We can’t decide. He’s also thrown up the code on GitHub for those interested.

Of course, if you want a bit more of an advanced project you could make a Tetris jack-o-lantern, featuring a whopping 8×16 array of LEDs embedded directly into the pumpkin… or if you’re a Halloween purist and believe electronics have no place in a pumpkin, the least you could do is make your jack-o-lantern breath fire.

Continue reading “8×8 LED Arrays Make For One Creepy Animated Pumpkin” →

Bike Persistance of Vision

Simple POV Bike Effects With WS2811 Strips

October 27, 2014 by 24 Comments

[Andrew] wrote in with a new take on the classic persistence of vision bike spoke hack. While many of these POV setups use custom PCBs and discrete LEDs, [Andrew]’s design uses readily available off-the-shelf components: WS2811 LED strips, an Arduino, an Invensense IMU breakout board, and some small LiPo batteries.

[Andrew] also implemented a clever method of controlling his lights. His code detects when the rider taps the brakes in certain patterns, which allows changing between different light patterns. He does note that this method isn’t incredibly reliable due to some issues with his IMU, so now he senses when the rider taps on the handlebars as well.

If you want to build your own bike POV setup, you’re in luck. [Andrew] wrote up detailed instructions that outline the entire build process. He also provides links to sources for each part to make building your own setup even easier. His design is pretty affordable too, coming in at just under $50 per wheel. Check out a video of [Andrew]’s setup in action after the break.

Continue reading “Simple POV Bike Effects With WS2811 Strips” →

jackolantern

Simple LED Project To Spice Up Your Halloween Party

October 26, 2014 by 3 Comments

[Paul’s] project is a great example of how you can take a simple project and turn it into something more interesting. He built himself a jack-o-lantern with an Internet controlled RGB LED embedded inside.

[Paul] first wired up an RGB LED to a Raspberry Pi. He was sure to wire up each color using a 100ohm resistor to prevent the LED from burning out. The web interface was written in Python. The interface is pretty simple. It consists of three text fields. The user enters a value between 0 and 255 for each of the three LED colors. The program then lights up the LED accordingly.

[Paul] realized he would need a diffuser for the LED in order to really see the blended colors properly. Instead of using a common solution like a ping-pong ball, he opted to get festive and use a plastic jack-o-lantern. [Paul] removed the original incandescent bulb from the lantern and mounted the LED inside instead. The inside of the pumpkin is painted white, so it easily diffuses the light. The result is a jack-o-lantern that glows different colors as defined by his party guests. Be sure to check out the demonstration video below.

Power Glove LED Suit

Prototype LED Light Suit Runs Off Of A NES Power Glove

September 28, 2014 by 12 Comments

[Greg’s] been playing around with wearable hacks for quite some time now, and he’s decided to add a new twist for his latest LED light suit (Mk 4) — An ancient NES Power Glove to control it.

He was inspired by the band Hypercrush who had a music video where one of the guys was wearing a laser-shooting power glove — awesome. Having already made light suits before, he thought it’d be fun to do something similar.

The suit is controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini which has been hacked into the Power Glove for ultimate button pushing capabilities. He’s using 5 meter LED strips of the classic WS2812  RGB variety, which allow for individual LEDs to be addressed using a single pin. It’s powered by a 5V 2A USB battery pack, and he’s made all the components very modular, you could even say it’s “plug and play”!

Continue reading “Prototype LED Light Suit Runs Off Of A NES Power Glove” →

A collection of boards that make up the LED Jacket

A Very Bright LED Jacket

September 26, 2014 by 6 Comments

Last year, [Ytai] went to Burning Man for the first time. He was a bit inexperienced, and lacked the lumens to make him visible on the Playa. This year, he made up for it by building an extra bright LED Jacket.

The jacket consists of 48 LEDs, at 150 lumens each. Each RGB LED module was placed on its own PCB, and controlled by the tiny PIC12F1571 microcontroller. This microcontroller was a great fit since it has three PWM channels (one for each color) and costs 50 cents. Firmware on the PIC allows the boards to be daisy-chained together to reduce wiring. This was done by using a protocol similar to the popular WS2811 LEDs.

Assembling 50 of the boards presented a challenge. This was addressed by using surface mount components, a solder stencil from OSH Stencils, an electric skillet, and a good amount of patience. The final cost of each module was about $3.

With 50 of the boards assembled, a two layer jacket was sewn up. The electronics were sandwiched between these two fabric layers, which gave the jacket a clean look. A wrist mounted controller allows the wearer to select different patterns.

For a full rundown of the jacket, check out the video after the break.

Continue reading “A Very Bright LED Jacket” →

Water powered flash light

A Water Activated Flashlight?

September 22, 2014 by 34 Comments

We’ve all seen lemon batteries or potato clocks, but have you ever seen a water activated battery?

[Nathan Stubblefield] was an American inventor (born 1860) who never got quite as much recognition as some of the other great inventors of the time, [Tesla, Bell, Edison etc] — though he did demonstrate some very interesting wireless telephony technology. In addition to dabbling with invisible radio waves, [Stubblefield] filed a patent for something called an Earth Battery, which makes use of two coils of dissimilar materials (a voltaic couple) submerged in water (or moist earth). As you can imagine, it wasn’t overly effective, nor efficient by any means — but it worked.

[Lasersaber] has been playing around with the “Stubblefield Coil” recently, and designed a working flashlight using the theory. He designed a 3D printed coil holder which allows you to easily wrap copper and magnesium strips around it to create the coil. Three of these cells go together in series to produce your water battery (and handle of the flashlight).

Continue reading “A Water Activated Flashlight?” →