Turning LEDs Into A Camera

November 1, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

[Udo] figured out how to turn a bunch of LEDs into a very low resolution camera.

The build is based around [Udo]’s Blinkenlight shield he’s been developing over the past year. The camera operates under the idea that there’s really not much difference between a LED and a photodiode; LEDs can do light emission and detection. In actuality, the LED ‘camera’ isn’t all that different from a linear CCD array, the type of image sensor in flatbed scanners.

After connecting his Blinkenlight shield to his Arduino and computer, [Udo] wrote a sketch that would capture 17 values from his LED camera. These values are shot over the serial connection where high levels of light show up as smaller numbers and low light levels are understood as larger numbers.

[Udo] has been doing a lot of other cool stuff with his Blinkenlight shield, like a persistence of vision experiment and pretending to be [Michael Knight]. Check out the video after the break for a demo of [Udo]’s linear LED camera.

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Wine-o-Meter Quantifies Your Bachelor Party Bad Behavior

October 31, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

wine_o_meter

[Phil] had a bunch of Shiftbrite modules set aside for an LED table project, but before he could get around to it, he decided to use them to build a prop for his friend’s bachelor party. Expecting plenty of drunken revelry, he constructed the Arduino Wine-o-Meter – a carnival “Test your strength” style breathalyzer.

The 25 Shiftbrite modules are lined up in a column, which is connected to an Arduino tucked away in a cardboard box. The Arduino takes readings from an MQ-3 Gas/Alcohol sensor was salvaged from another breathalyzer build [Phil] put together. While it has been noted in the past that this sensor is pretty inaccurate, it seems to serve his purposes quite well. Since his game is based on measuring the players’ blood alcohol content in relation to one another rather than obtaining an exact BAC reading, the poor calibration of the device should affect everyone equally.

It looks pretty cool, and we imagine that it will ensure that the party stays lively throughout the wee hours of the night. Check out the video below to see [Phil] walk you through a demo of his Wine-o-Meter.

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Old-school Projector Turned Digital

October 31, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

Who hasn’t thought about turning a 1950s slide projector into a digital projector? [Matt] did, but unlike most of us, he actually did it.

[Matt]’s friend [Angus] found an old, single-slide, sans-carousel slide projector in the trash. It’s a wonderful piece of ancient technology with a fabric insulated power cord and bakelite lamp socket. This projector was upcycled to the 21st century by adding a 10 Watt LED and a Nokia 1200 LCD.

For the electronics, [Matt] used an ATmega88 microcontroller. There’s an infrared receiver so the remote from an in-car CD player can be used to advance the slides and turn the projector on and off. The LCD is controlled by a bit of bit-banging from the Mega88, using hard-coded images of Che Guevara, Hendrix, Space Invaders and some old-school Macintosh/Lisa icons. Unlike the screen printed t-shirts at American Apparel, Che is the only authentic image in this project; this projector might have been made after Guevara came to prominence.

With a 10 Watt LED, it’s not the brightest projector on the planet and the picture is a little washed out in a bright room. With dim lighting, it’s a very good project even if the images are static.

Detailed Tutorial Shows How To Unleash Your Inner [Michael Knight]

October 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

developing_a_larson_scanner

Our own [Mike Szczys] recently sat down and put together a great tutorial on building a Larson Scanner. The ubiquitous circuit is usually one of the first few projects on a budding hackers list of things to build, since they are just so darn fun.

Simple versions of the scanner sweep back and forth lighting the LEDs without any sort of transition between them. The configuration most familiar to us all as featured in Knight Rider and Battlestar Galactica are a bit more complex, and have a fading trail of light that follows behind the leading edge of the sweep. [Mike] notes that this fading is traditionally accomplished through the use of capacitors, which cause the light to gradually fade as the animation sweeps across the LED array. He decided to take a different route with his circuit, relying on PWM control of the LEDs instead.

Mike put together a simple circuit using an ATmega168, a handful of resistors, and of course, an array of LEDs. Utilizing interrupts and PWM, he was able to accurately recreate the iconic light sweep without the use of any capacitors. One big benefit to his design aside from the lower component count is the fact that he can easily adjust the speed of the sweep as well as the fading properties with a few small code tweaks.

Be sure to check out his blog at some point, where he shares his code, some circuit diagrams, and plenty more details on how his scanner was built. In the meantime, take a look at the video below to see the result of [Mike’s] work.

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Macetech Takes On Its Own Ambilight Clone Hack

October 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

[Garrett Mace] decided to beef up his 58 inches of plasma with 60 Watts of LED lighting. After seeing a ton of Ambilight clones using his LED modules, he’s built his own powerful system. Not surprisingly, it’s nothing short of professional-grade work.

Kudos to [Garrett] for showing the entire process in the video after the break. We’re talking about his planning stages, which are so often left out of build logs. He first measures the back of the television, and does some testing for distance and angle of the Satellite LED modules to establish how many should be used and to estimate the optimal spacing. From there he modelled a framing system before getting down to the actual build.

The wood frame is made up of a box with a horizontal crossbar serving as a place to mount the drivers. Around the edges, tilting rails were added to make the angle of the LED modules adjustable. As with many other Ambilight clones, [Garrett] uses the boblight software to drive his system and we appreciate it that he included his configuration file for reference. Once up and running the effect is breathtaking (and possibly blinding).

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Huge Flexible LED Matrix Can Be Worn Almost Anywhere

October 26, 2011 by Mike Nathan 24 Comments

lightbright_led_mesh

[Erik] has been keeping extremely busy with his latest project, a flexible RGB LED matrix that he calls “Project Light Bright”. The folks at BuildLounge tell us that this is the first entry they have received so far in their “Light Contest”, in which they are giving away a free laser cutter to the best entry.

[Erik] hand soldered ten 16×16 RGB LED panels together in order to build this display, and the results are awesome. The entire thing is controlled by a WiFi-enabled Beagleboard, which drives all of the panels and then some. The Beagleboard features embedded web and DNS servers, which allows it to act as a wireless AP, enabling him to control the display using any WiFi capable device. The Light Bright displays all sorts of predefined artwork, but [Erik] can also alter the display on the fly via his phone as well. The entire thing is powered by a reasonably sized LiPo battery pack that he keeps tucked away in his pocket, which allows the display to run continuously for about 20 hours.

Check out the video below to see a quick walkthrough of [Erik’s] Light Bright suit, then be sure to stop by his site for more videos, details and updates on the project.

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Singing House Lights Up Halloween Again This Year

October 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

[KJ92508] is flooding the neighborhood with light again this year. Everyone knows of that one house in town that really goes all out, but few put on a show anything like this one. The four Jack-o’-lantern faces lead the way with the opening sequence from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Each has at least four different mouth poses, and two eye orientations which are surprisingly well synchronized with the audio. The image above shows mostly orange lighting, but the home is outfitted with addressable RGB LEDs for a full color performance. In fact, it has seen an upgrade this year, increasing the channels by eight-fold to 1144! Don’t miss the performance which we’ve embedded after the break.

We had considered not featuring this, since we looked in on the same home last year. But the number of tips that rolled in made us think that a lot of you missed it, or are just delighted by the multitude of blinky lights. Either way, it’s worth the four minutes out of your day– it will either put a smile on your face, or make you glad not to live across the street from this guy.

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