Centerpieces For A Geeky Wedding

March 28, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

[Bill Porter] is a married man now, and evidently his new wife, [Mara], is awesome. They put together one of the geekiest weddings that included custom side-lit LED centerpieces.

Instead of laser engraving the dozens of plastic panels for each centerpiece, [Bill] tricked [Mara]’s Silhouette Cameo home vinyl cutter – the same one they made their invitations with – into engraving acrylic panels. They’re made out of very thin plastic, but the fact that the couple were able to snap apart the engraved plasic after putting sheets though the machine is very impressive for something that’s generally used for scrapbooking.

As for the base of each centerpiece, [Bill] whipped up a few enclosures on his 3D printer and built a few battery packs out of 18650 lithium ion cells. The nine LEDs in each base were leftovers from a previous project involving LED strips, perfectly suited to run for a few hours in a reception hall.

It’s a great build for a wonderful occasion, and we’re really impressed with the plastic cutting ability of the Sihouette Cameo. Very nice work there.

Making A 12V Bulb Work In A 6V Socket

March 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

12v-led-in-6v-socket

This is something of a square peg in a round hole type of problem. [Kiel Lydestad] has been riding a vintage Moped around. You know, a motorcycle that can be pedaled like a bike. He of course wants to keep the thing looking stock, but also needs it to be fully functional. Enter this light bulb replacement project. His brake light needed a new bulb, and he managed to make this 12V LED bulb work in the 6V socket.

An LED is a really great choice for this application since the Motobécane Moped uses a magneto generator to power the lights. It won’t pull much current, but it did need modification to run from half as much voltage. [Kiel] mentions that it may have been possible to crack open the LED tower and adjust the current limiting circuit inside, but he felt it was easier to just add this voltage doubling circuit. He assembled the components in a way that still allows them to fit in the metal base of the bulb.

Android Controlled Minecraft Ores

March 27, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 8 Comments

[Ryan] has a friend with a birthday coming up, and being inspired by ever 12-year-olds favorite game, he decided to make a Minecraft ore block with RGB LEDs. The block can change from diamonds to emeralds via commands send from an Android phone.

After a few false starts, [Ryan] eventually had his ore cube laser cut at Acess Space, a hackerspace-ish group in Sheffield. The box was constructed out of 3mm MDF, while the windows were laser cut out of frosted acrylic, while the stone pattern on the cube is one giant custom-made sticker.

With the tedious part of the build out of the way, [Ryan] set to work on the electronics. He used a PIC attached to a few very large RGB LEDs, and a Bluetooth module that allows him to connect his phone to an ore block. Dialing in the right colors took some work, but eventually, [Ryan] had an Android-controlled Minecraft ore block, able to transmutate between gold, iron, diamond, emerald, lapis, and redstone.

You can check out a video of [Ryan]’s ore block in action after the break.

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Prototyping A Modular LED Matrix

March 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

led-matrix-modular-prototype

[Will] was toying with the idea of creating a scrolling LED marquee to display messages as his wedding in May. But you’ve got to crawl before you can walk so he decided to see what he could do with the MAX7219 LED driver chips. They do come in a DIP package, but the 24-pin 0.1″ pitch chip will end up being larger than the 8×8 LED modules he wanted to use. So he opted to go with a surface mount part and spun a PCB which makes the LEDs modular.

These drivers are great when you’re dealing with a lot of LEDs (like the motorcycle helmet of many blinking colors). Since they use SPI for communications it’s possible to chain the chips with a minimum of connections. [Will] designed his board to have a male header on one side and a female socket on the other. Not only does it make aligning and connecting each block simple, but it allows you to change your mind at any time about which microcontroller to use to command them. For his first set of tests he plugged the male header into a breadboard and drove it with an Arduino. We hope to hear back from him with an update when gets the final device assembled in time for the big day.

Lighting Up A Workspace Twofer

March 14, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

desks

Sometimes a pair of extremely similar builds hit the Hackaday tip line within hours of each other. We’re not one to play favorites, so here’s two projects that put RGB LED strips in a desk and workbench.

[Charles] over at The Makers Workbench has long needed a lighting solution for his workspace. Flourescent lights are alright, but for real geek cred nothing but LED strips will do. He picked up an RGB strip on Amazon for $20 and now has a lighting solution that’s able to change colors above his workstation. Check out the video of his RGB workbench rave.

A computer desk is a workbench too, right? [Will] had the idea of letting people on the Internet control the lighting color of his desk. He’s asking people to head over to this site and asking people to schedule the color of his desk for an entire day. A Raspi pulls each day’s color off the server. With a few transistors, an RGB strip, a custom shield, and faking three PWM channels, [Will] has a new color at his desk every day.

DIY Lighting Solutions

March 10, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 14 Comments

With daylight savings time starting up, you might not have quite as much need for lighting, but this pair of hacks should keep everything well lit whether outside or indoors. Check out the videos of both in action after the break.

The first lighting solution comes to us from [Ben]’s Youtube channel. It’s a simple solution, press-fitting a clamp light into a 1 inch PVC Tee to attach the light to a pipe. The base is made with PVC shaped into three feet for a (hopefully) sturdy rest. Several lights can be used as needed, and would probably work well for making his next video.

The second light also comes to us from Youtube, and is about converting a stock LED light into one that is much brighter. Skip to around 7:00 to see the outdoor comparison. You may or may not want to do this exact hack, but you never know when you might want to swap out your blinkenlights for something that will scare the neighbors!
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Putting Yourself Inside A Display

March 8, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 3 Comments

dome

Here’s an interesting build that combines light, sound, and gesture recognition to make a 360 degree environment of light and sound. It’s called The Bit Dome, and while the pictures and video are very cool, we’re sure it’s more impressive in real life.

The dome is constructed of over a hundred triangles made of foam insulation sheet, resulting in a structure that is 10 feet in diameter and seven and a half feet tall. Every corner of these panels has an RGB LED driven by a Rainboduino, which is in turn controlled by a computer hooked up to a Kinect.

The process of interacting with the dome begins by stepping inside and activating the calibration process. By having the user point their arms at different points inside the dome, the computer can reliably tell where the user is pointing, and respond when the user cycles through the dome’s functions.

There are bunch of things this dome can do, such as allowing the user to conduct an audio-visual light show, run a meditation program, or even play Snake and Pac-Man. You can check out these games and more in the videos after the break.

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