Graduation Gown VU Meter

November 21, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5mqnA3v1V8]

[ricosgoo] wanted a way to stand out at his graduation. We think he succeeded with his graduation gown VU meter. After putting the circuit together at the last minute, he made a mounting harness out of duct tape. The electronics hang like a sash, placing the bulk under his arm where it won’t show through his gown. He mounted a mike towards the neck line so it reacts best to his voice. It was a hit, apparently strangers would come up and make noise just to see the meter go off.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Ti-84 LED Mod

November 20, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 29 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSJz9-ImHo]

Add lights to your graphing calculator. Do it now. [Sil3ntP8nd8] added some, and seems to have done a decent job. They are spread around the back, supplying a nice even light on, well, on whatever is under your calculator. It may be difficult to see too much detail though on account of the water marks. You have to protect your intellectual property though. This almost compares to the DS LED monstrosity we covered recently.

Animated LED Keyboard

November 18, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

led_keyboard

[Brian] made this really cool LED keyboard. He started with a Deck Legend Fire. When he got it, he realized that every key had its own LED, but the entire unit was either on, or off. He just couldn’t live with that and decided to start hacking into it to make each light individually controlled. He found a perfect empty space in the back of the keyboard and designed custom PCBs to control his lighting. he notes that he spent 12 hours of cutting and soldering wires to each of the lights in the keyboard, that doesn’t include the PCB construction.

In the end, he had a fantastic looking keyboard that had cool effects like heat mapping and idle animations. All stock features still work and it looks almost entirely stock. The only obvious difference is the fact that it has two USB cables coming out of it due to some issues with his KVM switch not detecting it.

LED Crazy DS

November 17, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1482920&dest=-1]

Adding LEDs makes everything better. Watch this video as a regular old DS gets turned into one of the most awesome things on the planet. A ton of LEDs were added, some to the body, some to an extra cartridge, some behind buttons. Parts are wired into the speakers, so you get nice effects to your music. We’ll bet the battery life suffers, but who cares. This thing is worth it. This was originally taken from Nico Nico Douga, which overlays the comments on the video.

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Overhauling LED Marquees

November 14, 2008 by Eliot 11 Comments

led-sign

In a previous job, [sprite_tm] was responsible for wrangling many different LED text ad marquees. The hardware was fairly simple and he always figured they could be pushed much further with a little work. He recently acquired ten 32×16 LED displays a decided to see what he could do with them. By the end of the project, he had full motion video running on the display. This is a great project to read up on if you’ve ever wondered about LED matrix displays. He starts by reverse engineering the electronics on the board. He then attached an ATmega88 to drive the display module. Multiple display modules were daisy chained together over serial. The article covers PWM control and refresh timing as well. Check out one of a few demo videos below. Continue reading “Overhauling LED Marquees” →

Stribe 1 Kits Available

November 13, 2008 by Eliot 11 Comments

stribe

We first spotted the Stribe music controller at Maker Faire. [Josh Boughey] has since refined the controller’s design so that it can be constructed in a modular fashion and it’s being sold in kit form by Curious Inventor. The kit has two columns of 64 LEDs and a Spectra Symbol SoftPot for control. You can daisy chain eight modules together using a ribbon cable. It uses SPI control, with a separate wire for the data line (not in the ribbon). An Arduino is used to hook the controller to programs like Max/MSP.

Improved LED Menorah

November 13, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

Reader [Mike] was not too impressed by design in a recent post we did on an LED menorahs. Doing what any self respecting hacker would do, he designed and built a better one then sent it in to us. He just happened to have an AVR ATtiny13 sitting around, so he used that for the brains. It has single button operation, is powered by 2 AA batteries, and even simulates the candles burning out. His custom PCB turned out quite nicely as well, the power plug connects to the batteries in a way that uses them as a base. Check out his site for detailed plans and source code. Great job [Mike].