Remote Controlled Glass Block LED Matrix

October 15, 2011 by Mike Nathan 19 Comments

hive13_remote_controlled_led_matrix

At Hive13, a Cincinnati-based hackerspace, they like to hack everything – even their bathroom. One of the bathroom’s walls faces the street, and is made up of thick glass privacy blocks. A few years ago, they thought it would be a cool idea to install an LED matrix to the back side of the glass wall to spruce things up a bit. After a couple of iterations, they finally had something they were happy to show off, but they wanted to make it even cooler.

While the the Arduino and ShiftBrite shield running the matrix could be controlled over a serial connection, they wanted to use the ProjectBlinkenlights tools to control things over the network. While that didn’t quite work out as planned, it wasn’t necessarily an exercise in futility. While Blinkenlights controls were out of the question, they were inspired to add OSC compatibility to the Processing sketch, which allows them to work the display with an app available for both Android and iOS devices.

The result is pretty slick, as you can see in the video below. Now all they need to do is get Tetris up and running!

Continue reading “Remote Controlled Glass Block LED Matrix” →

Halloween Hacks: A Haunted House Project For The Kids

October 15, 2011 by Mike Nathan No comments

light_up_haunted_house

If the kids have been bugging you to get started with your Halloween decorating, [Dale] from BasicMicro has a neat and interactive project that’s sure to satiate their thirst for ghoulish fun.

His wife was looking for some new decorations for this Halloween, so he took a quick trip to the craft store and found a DIY foam Haunted House kit. After convincing her to do the assembly, he outfitted the display with some Starlite RGB modules, which have all sorts of interesting lighting modes built in. When the lights are turned low, the house jumps to life, as you can see in the video below.

The construction and wiring are not an overly complex job, so it’s a great starting point for little minds and hands that are beginning to develop an interest in electronics. For those kids with a little bit of experience under their belts, the house could easily be modified to use servos to create swinging doors and shaking grave stones.

The limit is truly defined only by their imagination (and your electronics budget), so why not give it a try this weekend? We’d love to see what you and your budding hackers put together!

Continue reading “Halloween Hacks: A Haunted House Project For The Kids” →

Candied LEDs Are A Light, Tasty Treat

October 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

rock_candy_diffused_leds

[Emily Daniels] recently snagged a free iPad in the Instructables “Play with your food challenge” with an interesting way to work with LEDs. Growing up, most kids attempted to make, or at least have seen rock candy be produced. [Emily] thought it would be interesting to mix LEDs with the stuff to see what she could come up with, and her candied LEDs are the result.

The process is pretty straightforward, and involves mixing up a batch of supersaturated sugar syrup in which LEDs are suspended. The LEDs act as a nucleation point for the crystal formation, growing a nice solid coating of sugar after a couple weeks’ time. After some cleaning up, the LEDs can be connected to a coin cell battery or similar, as you would normally do. The sugar acts as a diffusing medium for the LEDs, giving them a nice soft beam pattern.

Obviously you likely wouldn’t want to use these for any long-term electronics project, but it’s a fun activity for the kids, and it could be a good way to incorporate electronics into baked goods.

Slick Music Synchronized Light Show Uses UV LEDs And Water

October 12, 2011 by Mike Nathan 20 Comments

music_synchronized_light_show

[mike6789k] wanted to spice up his dorm room, so he built a cool music synchronized light show that struck us as being very well thought out. We have seen similar music-based visualizations before, but they tend to be pretty basic, relying on volume more than actual audio frequencies to trigger the lighting.

[mike6789k] didn’t want to build “just another” synchronized light show, and his all-analog approach gives a true representation of the music being played instead of just flashing lights along with the beat. Using a trio of simple filters, he broke the audio signals down into three distinct frequency bands before being driven through a high gain transistor to power a set of LEDs.

We were pretty impressed at how bright the display was given that he is using UV LEDs, but the 1W diodes seem to have no problem lighting up the place when aimed through the UV-reactive water, as you can see in the video below.

If you’re looking to make something similar for your next party, the folks over at Buildlounge were able to wrangle a schematic out of [mike6789k], which you can find here.

Continue reading “Slick Music Synchronized Light Show Uses UV LEDs And Water” →

Animated X-mas Sign

October 10, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

Sure, it may be two and a half months until Christmas. That doesn’t mean we can’t start building a few Christmas decorations. Last year, [RB] over at Embedded Lab made an animated Christmas sign using a simple microcontroller setup. This year, [RB] is adding a blinking LED border and doing the entire project with 74xx ICs.

The letters for this year’s sign were recycled from last years’. This time, however, two strings of 12 LEDs are used for the blinking border. The blinking circuitry uses a 74hc14 Schmitt trigger to provide the clock. A pair of 74hc595 shift registers turn each letter on one at a time. The speed is controlled with a small trim pot.

Using ICs to drive a series of lights in a pattern isn’t a new thing – you’d be hard pressed to not find a similar setup in the blinking panels of sci-fi shows of the 60s and 70s. Of course this sign doesn’t compare with what can be done with a ~~microprocessor~~ a lot of patience, it’s still a very nice build. Check out the video after the break to see the X-mas sign in action.

Continue reading “Animated X-mas Sign” →

Tetris On A Building

October 5, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

Around a year ago, a bunch of blinkenlights were installed in the HCI-Building of ETH Zürich. These LED spots weren’t interactive and only showed hardcoded patterns. Of course a bunch of LEDs demand interactivity, so for the first-semester party this year a giant game of Tetris was built on the side of a building.

There’s no official build log, but from what we’ve learned, the LEDs are connected to a DMX controller that is in turn plugged into a computer and the University’s ethernet. For the command and control of the Tetris game, a USB joystick was connected to an old Dell that was pulled out of the junk pile.

The software for the project, LED side of the project was written in Visual C++ reusing old Tetris routines and example code from the DMX controller. For the controller portion, everything was written in C. The controller simply dumps chars into a TCP port on the second computer. While the Tetris board was only 3 pixels wide, there was a fairly massive queue of people wanting to play.

IPhone Controlled Daft Punk Helmet Replica A Dazzling Build

October 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

This Daft Punk helmet replica is beautiful to look at, but the deeper we delve into the build process, the more we begin to think that the entire project is a piece of artwork. [Harrison Krix] has been working on it for months, and just posted his three-part build log in September. Check out the video and the links to all three parts after the break.

Now [Harrison] isn’t new to prop replica scene. He’s the guy responsible for the other fantastic Daft Punk helmet we saw last year. He’s tapped the same fabrication skills to churn out an equally impressive chromed helmet, complete with addressable flashing LEDs. He built his own mold to create the body of the helmet, reminding us of the Storm Trooper helmet replicas we saw in July. While this was off being coated in chrome, he got down to business with the electronics.

The visor of the helmet has a red LED marquee. This, along with the multicolored visor sides and ear pucks, is controlled by an Arduino yellow jacket. The lights can be controlled by an iPhone app that connects to the helmet via WiFi, letting a user push custom messages to the display, and alter the light patterns. The build shines on the inside as well as the outside with an incredibly clean LED matrix build, and clever control placement for switching each part on or off.

Continue reading “IPhone Controlled Daft Punk Helmet Replica A Dazzling Build” →