LED Hacks

1908 Articles

Laser Cutting Your Way To An RGB LED Table

July 24, 2020 by 19 Comments

You’ve got the RGB keyboard, maybe even the RGB mouse. But can you really call yourself master of the technicolor LED if you don’t have an RGB table to game on? We think you already know the answer. Luckily, as [ItKindaWorks] shows in his latest project, it’s easy to build your own. Assuming you’ve got a big enough laser cutter anyway…

The construction of the table is quite straightforward. Using an 80 watt laser cutter, he puts a channel into a sheet of MDF to accept RGB LED strips, a pocket to hold a Qi wireless charger, and a hole to run all the wires out through. This is then backed with a second, solid, sheet of MDF.

Next, a piece of thin wood veneer goes into the laser cutter. In the video after the break you can see its natural tendency to roll up gave [ItKindaWorks] a little bit of trouble, but when strategically weighted down, it eventually lays out flat. He then uses the laser to blast an array of tiny holes in the veneer, through which the light from the LEDs will shine when it’s been glued over the MDF. A few strips of plastic laid over the strips serve both to diffuse the light and support the top surface.

The end result is truly gorgeous and has a very futuristic feel. Assuming you’ve got the equipment, it’s also a relatively simple concept to experiment with. It’s yet another example of the unique construction techniques possible when you add a high-powered laser to your arsenal.

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RGB Minecraft Sign Isn’t Just For Looks

July 24, 2020 by No comments

This laser cut and LED illuminated version of the Minecraft logo created by [Geeksmithing] looks good enough to occupy a place of honor on any gamer’s shelf. But it’s not just decoration: it can also notify you about your Minecraft’s server status and tell you when players are online by way of its addressable LEDs.

In the first half of the video after the break, [Geeksmithing] shows how the logo itself was built by cutting out pieces of white and black acrylic on his laser cutter. When stacked up together, it creates an impressive 3D effect but also isolates each letter. With carefully aligned rows of RGB LEDs behind the stack, each individual letter can be lit in its own color (or not at all) without the light bleeding into either side.

Once he had a way of lighting up each letter individually, it was just a matter of writing some code for the Raspberry Pi that can do something useful with them. Notifying him when the server goes down is easy enough, just blink them all red. But the code [Geeksmithing] came up with also associates each letter with one of the friends he plays with, and lights them up when they go online. So at a glance he can not only tell how many friends are already in the game, but which ones they are. Naturally this means the display can only show the status of nine friends…but hey, that’s more than we have anyway.

We’ve been seeing people connect the real world to Minecraft in weird and wonderful ways for years now, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any sign of things slowing down. While we recognize the game isn’t for everyone, but you’ve got to respect the incredible creativity it’s inspired in young and old players alike.

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Ljusmaskinen Takes The Rave To The Streets (Eventually)

July 16, 2020 by 6 Comments

When humanity comes out the other side of this pandemic there will be a mountain of awesome projects to show off in person. For instance, this backpack mounted DMX lighting was built to be worn as a mobile rave rig by Swedish hacker [Tim Gremalm]. In-person raves aren’t happening right now but that just means there’s time to add waaaaay to many features to this thing until lockdowns become a thing of the past.

The frame holding the lighting integrates into this backpack and we assume that’s where the battery is stored. The Y-shaped masts hold four PAR lights. Incidentally, that mean parabolic aluminized reflectors, which are commonly used for stage lighting, but in this case the halogen bulbs have been torn out for a trio of 4 W RGBW LEDs. The yellow rectangles are 10 W Chip-on-Board LED panels that serve as strobe lights.

Festmaskinen audio rig in 2015

But merely having the lights does not make it a Rave — this party needs both music and a way to synchronize the lighting effects with it. The music part was already built and used at the West Pride Gothenburg festival (the second largest in Sweden after Stockholm) five years ago. That project, called Festmaskinen, works in conjunction with Ljusmaskinen (the Light Machine). So two people carry the rave on their backs, one with music, the other with the lighting, now that’s a party!

The light controller board uses a set of four Arduino Nano boards along with four voltage regulators to provide control to each of the PAR lights. All of it is stitched together by control from a DMX input board which also controls the COBs. (In this image the DMX board is hidden below the light control board.) Of course you need something that can process the audio and turn it into DMX512 to bring those lighting animations to life and for that he reached for a Raspberry Pi.

[Tim] has a quick demo of the rig at work which we’ve embedded below. What we’re missing is seeing how the top-heavy structure handles when worn as a backpack. Hopefully he’ll be able to get out of his low-ceilinged home and let the stage lights fly before too long!

An Easier Way To Roll Your Own LED Ball

July 14, 2020 by 1 Comment

Yes, circuit sculptures are amazing. But the patience and skill required puts most of the designs we’ve seen fairly far out of reach of the average beginner. We totally understand — not everyone finds fun in fiddly, structural soldering.

[Hari Wiguna] was captivated by the LED ball that [Jiří Praus] made last Christmas and figured there had to be less painful ways to cover a sphere in blinkenlights than printing a negative to use as a soldering jig. Turns out there is at least one way — just design the structure to use PCBs in place of brass rod, and fit everything together like a 3D puzzle made of FR4.

This SMD LED ball is almost ready for prime time. [Hari] wants this to be accessible for everyone and completely parametric, so he’s still working out the kinks. Check out the current form after the break as [Hari] rolls the ball through the various display modes using an Arduino and talks about the failures along the way, like having to file out the LED slots because they were designed too tightly the first time. [Hari] is also working on the friction fit of the pieces so the ball is easier to assemble, especially at the beginning.

3D prints as circuit sculpture soldering jigs are great tools, don’t get us wrong. How else are you gonna solder brass rod together on a curve?

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7-Segment Display Is No Small Feat

July 12, 2020 by 13 Comments

The 7-segment display certainly is a popular build, and surprisingly people still come up with new takes on this over a hundred-year-old way to represent numbers. This time [jegatheesan.soundarapandian] is making it big by building a giant 7 feet tall 7-segment display.

Apparently, the plan is to build a giant clock so he started off by making the first digit. To keep it cheap and simple the segments are made from corrugated cardboard which was carefully cut, folded, and then glued together. The light-diffusing lid is simply made from white paper. He used the ubiquitous WS2812B strips to light up the segments, but things turned out to be more complicated as he was not able to get enough strips to fill up all the segments. This forced him to cut up the strip into individual pieces and space them out by reconnecting the LEDs with wires. Cutting, stripping, and soldering 186 wires took him almost 10 hours. An Arduino Uno serves as the brains of the device and there is a nice Android app to control it via Bluetooth.

We are excited to see the complete clock once it is finished. In the meantime let us remember other epic displays like that made from 144 individual 7-segment displays or the giant LED video wall using 1200 ping pong balls.

Video after the break.

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Color Your Workspace, Calm Your Mind

July 7, 2020 by 5 Comments

Every day, it seems to get harder and harder to relax and unwind. A person can only take so many lava-hot showers before they start cutting into work time. Listening to music is a wonderful option, but it can be difficult to find something to listen to that’s soothing without being disruptive. So what else can we try? Oh yes, blinkenlights. Frosted, glowing blinkenlights that bathe the room in color. Ahhhh.

There’s something about those enclosures that completes these so well. [ChrisParkerTech] used Alder wood sprayed with clear coat, which gives them a delightfully clean mid-century look. We also dig the lack of ceiling and unfinished top edge, because it gives the leaking light a bit of infinity pool mystique.

Of course, these wouldn’t be much of a relaxation tool if you have to get up up from your couch, chair, or bean bag every time you want to adjust them. Each strip is connected to a Wemos D1 mini, so [Chris] can control them with his phone via WLED, or make Alexa do it. Check out the build video after the break.

If you really love LEDs, don’t leave home without them. Show the world how you feel with a stylish LED hat.

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Elegant Shoji Lamps From Your 3D Printer

July 6, 2020 by 12 Comments

The gorgeous Shoji-style lamps you’re seeing here aren’t made of wood or paper. Beyond the LEDs illuminating them from within, the lamps are completely 3D printed. There aren’t any fasteners or glue holding them together either, as creator [Dheera Venkatraman] used authentic Japanese wood joinery techniques to make their components fit together like a puzzle.

While we’re usually more taken with the electronic components of the projects that get sent our way, we have to admit that in this case, the enclosure is really the star of the show. [Dheera] has included a versatile mounting point where you could put anything from a cheap LED candle to a few WS2812B modules, but otherwise leaves the integration of electronic components as an exercise for the reader.

All of the components were designed in OpenSCAD, which means it should be relatively easy to add your own designs to the list of included panel types. Despite the colorful details, you won’t need a multi-material printer to run them off either. Everything you see here was printed on a Prusa i3 MK3S in PETG. Filament swaps and careful design were used to achieve the multiple colors visible on some of the more intricate panels.

If the timeless style of these Japanese lanterns has caught your eye, you’ll love this beautiful sunrise clock we covered last year.