“Artificial Sun” Lighting Via Old Satellite Dishes

November 13, 2020 by Lewin Day 53 Comments

Real sunlight is a beautiful thing, but due to the vagaries of Earth’s orbit and local weather systems, it’s not available all the time. [Matt] decided this wasn’t good enough, and set about building a rig to replicate the sun’s rays as closely as possible.

Rayleigh scattering is emulated by passing the light through a glass chamber filled with soapy water – taking advantage of the Tyndall effect.

The great distance between the Sun and the Earth means that the sun’s rays are essentially parallel from our local vantage point. Replicating this, and the soothing nature of a blue sky, were [Matt]’s primary goals with the project. To achieve this, an old satellite dish was pressed into service as a parabolic reflector, coated with mirror-finish vinyl strips. A 500W white LED with a good color rendering index was fitted at the focal point, outfitted with a water cooling system to shed heat. With a point source at its focal point, the parabolic reflector bounces the light such that it the rays are parallel, giving the sense that the light source is coming from an effectivelyl infinite distance away. To then achieve the blue sky effect, the light was then passed through a glass chamber filled with soapy water, which scatters the light using the Tyndall effect. This mimics the Rayleigh scattering in Earth’s atmosphere.

The final result is amazing, with [Matt] shooting footage that appears to be filmed in genuine daylight – despite being shot at night or on rainy days. He also features a cutdown build that can be achieved in a far cheaper and compact form, using Fresnel lenses and blue film. We’ve featured [Matt]’s daylight experiments before, though we’re amazed at the new level reached. Video after the break.

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Infinity Mirror Guitar Shreds Forever

November 9, 2020 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

Just when we thought there was nothing left to make into an infinity mirror, [Burls Art] goes and builds something that seems obvious now that it exists — an infinity mirror guitar. Check out the build video after the break, where [Burls Art] gets right to it without wasting any time.

He started by making a 3/4″ wood frame for the body and the one-piece neck and headstock. The acrylic on the top has two-way mirror film, and the back piece is painted with mirror paint to get the infinity effect going. [Burls Art] also fashioned acrylic boxes for the pickup and the electronics. Those are both buffed to be frosty, so the lights reflect nicely off of them.

There’s nothing super-fancy going on with the electronics, just some app-controlled RGB LEDs. We would love to see a version where the LEDs respond in real time to the music. The effect is still quite cool, so if you don’t want to watch the whole build, at least check out the demo at the end where [Burls Art] plays a riff. Never has a delay pedal been so appropriate.

If you’re not much of a luthier, don’t fret about not being able to make a cover version. We’ve seen plenty of infinity mirrors, but if you want something useful, whip up some infinity drink coasters.

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Replace Your IR Remote With A Web Browser

October 28, 2020 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

While more and more consumer products are rushing to include WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, the simplicity and reliability of infrared has kept it in the game in the game far longer than many might have thought. Despite being thinner and sleeker, the IR remote control that comes with your brand new smart TV isn’t fundamentally different than what we were using in the 1980s.

But that doesn’t mean IR devices can’t enjoy some modern conveniences. Sick of misplacing his remote, [Sasa Karanovic] decided to come up with a way he could emulate it to control his TV over the network. Now with nothing more exotic than a web browser on his phone or computer, he can tap away at a visual representation of a remote to control the TV from anywhere in the house. As you might expect, this project could readily be adapted to control whatever IR gadget you might have in mind.

Assembling a simple IR transmitter dongle.

Admittedly, this isn’t exactly breaking any new ground. We’ve seen plenty of people come up with similar IR gateways in the past with varying levels of complexity. But what we really like about this project is that not only has [Sasa] shared the source code that turns an ESP32 into a network-controlled IR transmitter, but he’s put together a concise video that demonstrates how easy it is so spin up your own version. The 3D printed enclosure that looks like a traditional IR remote was a nice touch too.

The hardware for this project is little more than an ESP32 development board and an LED, but if you’re looking for something a bit more built for purpose, we recently saw a very slick open hardware IR gateway that might fit your needs.

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The 10,000 Pixel Per Inch Display Is Now Possible

October 28, 2020 by Al Williams 54 Comments

A good smartphone now will have about 500 pixels per inch (PPI) on its screen. Even the best phones we could find clock in at just over 800 PPI. But Stanford researchers have a way to make displays with more than 10,000 pixels per inch using technology borrowed from solar panel research.

Of course, that might be overkill on a six-inch phone screen, but for larger displays and close up displays like those used for virtual reality, it could be a game-changer. Your brain is good at editing it out, but in a typical VR headset, you can easily see the pixels from the display even at the highest PPI resolutions available. Worse, you can see the gaps between pixels which give a screen door-like effect. But with a density of 10,000 PPI it would be very difficult to see individual pixels, assuming you can drive that many dots.

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Circuit Sculpture Breathes Life Into Discrete Components

October 27, 2020 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

We’ve probably all given a lot of thought to breathing this year in various contexts. Though breathing is something we all must do, this simple act has become quite the troublemaker in 2020. They say the best art imitates life, and [bornach]’s Astable Exhalation certainly does that, right down to the part about astability. It’s especially interesting that the end result — breathing, visualized — is so calming, it could almost be a meditative device.

There is nary a microcontroller to be found on this circuit sculpture, which uses a pair of astable multivibrator(s) to light two sets of LEDs that represent air being inhaled and exhaled. We like that [bornach] used two sized of exhale LEDs to represent droplets and aerosols in this beautiful circuit sculpture, and we love that most of the components were scavenged from old electronics and older projects.

Our Circuit Sculpture Challenge runs until November 10th, so even if you’re waiting to take the Remoticon workshop before entering, there’s still a little bit of time to whip something up afterward in the post-con adrenaline rush phase. If you need inspiration, check out some of the other contest entries or just surf through all things circuit sculpture.

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POV LED Staff Takes Art For A Spin

October 25, 2020 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

The human body does plenty of cool tricks, but one of the easiest to take advantage of is persistence of vision (POV). Our eyes continue to see light for a fraction of a second after the light goes off, and we can leverage this into fun blinkenlight toys like POV staffs. Sure, you can buy POV staffs and other devices, but they’re pretty expensive and you won’t learn anything that way. Building something yourself is often the more expensive route, but that’s not the case with [shurik179]’s excellent open-source POV staff.

There’s a lot to like about this project, starting with the detailed instructions. It’s based on the ItsyBitsyM4 Express and Adafruit’s Dotstar LED strips. You could use the Bluetooth version, but it’s already quite easy to load images to the staff because it shows up as a USB mass storage device. We like that [shurik179] added an IMU and coded the staff so that the images look consistent no matter how fast the staff is spinning. In the future, [shurik179] might make a Bluetooth version that’s collapsible. That sounds like quite the feat, and we can’t wait to see it in action.

As cool as it is to wave a POV staff around, there’s no real practical application. What’s more practical than a clock?

Bonsai LED Matrix Has Chaotic Roots

October 21, 2020 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Most people don’t hand solder their surface mount LED matrices these days, and they certainly don’t do it with RGB LEDs. [fruchti] isn’t most people, has managed to grow his electronic hobby into the art form know as Bonsai.

The organic shapes of miniature trees grown over the course of decades is the ultimate indicator of patience and persistence. For those who prefer bending copper to their will rather than saplings, producing an LED tree that looks and functions this well is an accomplishment that signals clever planning and patient fabrication. The animated result is a masterpiece that took about eighteen months to complete.

There are 128 enamel-coated wires that twist into branches holding 32 RGB light-emitting diodes. Tapping into each at the base of the tree is a chaotic mess made a bit easier by a cleverly designed circuit board.

A circular petal pattern was laid out in Inkscape that includes a hole at the center for the “trunk” to pass through. The LED matrix is designed with 8 rows and 12 columns, but 24 pads were laid out so that only four wires would need to be soldered to each copper petal. Even so, look at the alligator clip holding up this PCB to get an idea of the scale of this job!

The angular base is itself made of copper clad board soldered on the inside of the seams and painted black on the outside. This hides the “petal” PCB, as well as a breakout board for an STM32 microcontroller and a power management circuit that lets you use your choice of USB or a lithium battery.

We wonder if [fruchti] has thought about adding some interactivity to his sapling. While we haven’t seen such a beautiful, tiny, creation as this, we have seen an LED tree whose lights can be blown out like birthday candles. Wouldn’t this be an excellent entry in our Circuit Sculpture challenge? There’s still a few weeks left!