Boston LED Sweatshirt Arrestee Interviewed

September 19, 2008 by Eliot 43 Comments

In today’s episode of Boing Boing tv, [Xeni] interviews [Star Simpson]. She was arrested a year ago at Boston’s Logan airport for wearing a sweatshirt with a breadboard and some LEDs attached. With a collective groan, we watched this event unfold just months after Boston was held captive by Mooninites. After many court dates, [Star] is being forced to apologize and perform community service. She has since left MIT, disappointed with their nonexistent support, and left Boston entirely. Watch the interview for her side of the story. She’s posted how to recreate the sweatshirt.

LED Random Blinking Mood Lighting

September 15, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

What is it about pseudo random flashing LEDs that make us go gaga? We don’t know, but there’s definitely something there. [seligtobiason] has this obsession too. After seeing several more complicated projects, he created this elegant, simple, and cheap piece of art. The entire thing is pretty much just some flashing LEDs, some resistors, and a power supply. It really isn’t anything groundbreaking, but the effort and cost involved are tiny compared to some other similar projects. sure, it doesn’t synchronize over time based on input like the firefly project. But for a quick cheap project, the results are quite nice.

We would put one in our home, right next to the node blinky.

LED Coffee Table

September 13, 2008 by Eliot 7 Comments

Spark Fun’s centerpiece at Maker Faire back in May was this LED coffee table. They just recently posted about how it was constructed. The surface is made from 64 8×8 RGB LED matrix boards totaling 4096 LEDs. The eight rows are connected to a custom router board so that one SPI line can control the entire display. The main microcontroller is an Olimex LPC2106 dev board. It runs a four player cooperative pong game where multiple balls are added over time. Each player gets a classic Atari paddle for control. You can see a video of the table running a screensaver after the break. Continue reading “LED Coffee Table” →

Dot Matrix Business Card

September 5, 2008 by Joey Celis 5 Comments

In most settings business cards are given out without much thought. But what if you could make your card stand out from the rest? By using a 5×15 LED matrix screen, a single micro controller, a number of resistors, switches, and other parts, [tomward] has put together one very slick business card that’s sure to draw attention.

The included instructions go into great detail on the construction, but [tomward]admits that you will need some knowledge in electronics in order to build one yourself. After reading the instructions ourselves we would have to agree with him.

If you’re into programing micro controllers and are handy with a soldering iron you may want to give this a shot.

RGB Desktop Clock

September 1, 2008 by Eliot 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hxZRCponks&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0][Mark Roy] designed this fine RGB LED desktop clock. It uses a PIC16F877A microcontroller and a DS1307N Real Time Clock. There is a ring of 12 RGB LEDs around the perimeter. Hours are indicated in red, minutes green, and seconds blue. If the hands overlap, the colors are mixed. Three buttons are used to set the time and it can run on as little as 0.7volts. You can find out more about the project on Stellar Core. He has plans to kit it in the future.

Testing IR Camera Blocking

August 27, 2008 by Kimberly Lau 37 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u5hAfnq2-4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0][randy] from F.A.T. tested the theory that infrared LEDs can actually hide you from the prying eyes of surveillance cameras. We’ve previously covered camouflage, IR, and other suggestions for eluding the cameras, but haven’t taken to sewing stuff onto our clothes yet. [randy] lined his hoodie with high-intensity infrared LEDs, hoping to create a halo effect that would hide his head, and tested his results. Unfortunately, his efforts were unsuccessful. He tested many many different combinations and we’re confident in his conclusion that it would be very hard to make this work.

SMD Soldering Practice Kit

August 24, 2008 by Eliot 9 Comments

Here’s an interesting kit put together just to help you work on your SMD soldering skills. It’s got 49 SMD LEDs on the front with a programming header and switch jumper. The back has an ATtiny26L and a coin cell. At only 3V, power management is essential; all of the example programs are only addressing one LED at a time (imperceptible to the human eye). If you turn on too many LEDs at the same time, the voltage drop could cause the AVR to reset. Included example programs are a scrolling marque, bouncing balls, and Conway’s game of life. SparkFun has tutorials for regular SMD soldering and using a reflow skillet. The video below shows the kit builder attaching just one LED using the heat and slide method.