16-pixel Handheld Gaming

July 11, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

What we need in today’s handhelds is LESS resolution. Take a look at the video after the break to see the exciting action that [Bruno Pasquini] 4×4 LED matrix handheld game delivers. The device is made up of 16 bi-color LEDs, four buttons, and a PIC 16F628. There’s no schematic yet but it looks like there’s no need for shift registers, just some transistors to handle the current load for the rows of each color. We’ve seen a 64-pixel handheld that plays Super Mario Brothers, but this portable brings a top scrolling racing game with just 25% of that display size.

Continue reading “16-pixel Handheld Gaming” →

Decatron Stand-in

July 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 66 Comments

Think the swirling glow of a Decatron is cool but don’t want to deal with the voltage issues? [Osgeld] sidestepped the problem by developing a fake Decatron. Admiral Nelson (Captain Morgan’s cheaper cousin) provided the enclosure in the form of an airplane sized liquor bottle. The LEDs are common-something (not sure if it’s anode or cathode) so they end up being individually addressable through the mess of wires coming out the end. This will greatly simplify that kitchen timer we’ve been meaning to build. See the blinking lights go around and around after the break.

Continue reading “Decatron Stand-in” →

No Touch LED Lamp

July 3, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wV2UIOV1Fk]

This elegant looking lamp uses capacitance sensing to turn on and off. [Mikey77] takes us through the process of making the curved circuits and putting it all together. The circuit is built to be modular, so he could use it elsewhere. That’s a pretty good idea for someone who is always tossing projects together. As usual, schematics are available in the instructable. We love this design and would proudly use this at our office desk.

Great Interactive LED Puzzle

July 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

The GLIP project takes the delight of blinking LEDs and combines it with the ingenuity of modular communications. This takes the Puzzlemation concept a few steps further. In that project the modules were programmed through a base station and could be removed and used as a puzzle from there. The GLIP project uses a master block that you can see tethered in the photo. But the blocks communicate with each other via an infrared protocol. This way they can be continuously updated as they are place next to each other. Each module includes an STM32F105 ARM Cortex-M3 processor, quite a punch for the little blocks. Take a look at what they can do after the break.

Continue reading “Great Interactive LED Puzzle” →

Links Expanded: Snake On LED Matrix

June 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Yosh] came through with a link to the Snake playing LED matrix that he read about in our links post from yesterday. It seems that [Arty Fart] actually built three of these in green, yellow, and red. You can see him throw one together (an 8-10 hour job) in the video after the break. In addition to playing Snake the PIC 16F877A can also scroll messages, play a mean game of Tetris, and show a Pong screen saver on the 144 LED display. We love the clean build and the urge to make another LED matrix is becoming irresistible.

Now off to eBay for a good deal on a bulk LED order. Continue reading “Links Expanded: Snake On LED Matrix” →

Giant LED Matrix

June 23, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

We all love blinky lights. What we love even more than blinky lights is a very detailed tutorial with great photos. [Richard Kline] has written this fantastic tutorial on how to build a large 5×7 LED matrix and control it with a PIC processor. The bulk of the body is a foam insulation board, covered with a diffuser. Source code and schematics are available for download from the site. If you’ve ever thought about getting into PIC processors, this would be a great beginner project.

[via MakeZine]

Swarm Light At Art Basel

June 20, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

What has 9000 LEDs, 3000 MSP430 processors, six XMOS XC-2 Ethernet modules, and goes blinkity-blink-blink? It’s Swarm Light, an art installation shown at this year’s Art Basel exhibition. [Fredrik Petrini] worked on the hardware that went into building the group of three 3D cubes of LED light modules. Unlike so many art pieces we see he shared the design details of the piece. In the image above you can tell that each cube encompasses several rods of LED modules. Each rod as three rails that provide power, ground, and serial data in addition to serving as the physical structure. Each module has three LEDs on it controlled by one MSP430 processor. The XMOS units each control half of the rods in a cube, getting their instructions over an Ethernet connection from a PC running a program on a .NET framework. It would be an understatement to say this is just a upscaled LED cube. Check out the exhibit in action after the break. It uses an algorithm to analyze the music, taking input from the ambient sound in the room, to control the light fluctuation.

Continue reading “Swarm Light At Art Basel” →