Stack Those Boards For An Extra-Special Backlit LED Effect

September 14, 2019 by Jenny List 6 Comments

By now most of us should be used to backlit LEDs, in which a bare board with no copper or soldermask as an LED mounted on its reverse side to shine through as if with a diffuser. [Wim Van Gool] has created such an LED display with a twist, instead of reverse mounted LEDs his Shitty Add-On for Area3001 hackerspace in Leuven, Belgium has a set of WS2812 addressable LEDs shining upwards through a void in a stack of PCBs to the diffuser. The effect is of something that looks about the size and shape of a Kit-Kat finger with a glowing hackerspace logo on the front, and it breaks away from the SAO norm.

Full details are on the GitHub repository for the project, in which we find both large and small takes on the same idea. It appears that there is no onboard processor and that the WS2812s are driven from the host badge, but that doesn’t take away from the ingenuity of the design.

The through-PCB diffuser seems to be the badge must-have of the moment, we’ve seen quite a few such as the recent Numberwang badge. That’s the exciting thing about badge design though, one always knows that there will be a new twist along in the next crop of badges, to keep everything fresh.

Tiny LED Cube Packs Six Meters Of Madness

September 8, 2019 by Kerry Scharfglass 11 Comments

When [Freddie] was faced with the challenge of building a sendoff gift for an an LED-loving coworker he hatched a plan. Instead of making a display from existing video wall LED panels he would make a cube. But not just any cube, a miniature desk sized one that wasn’t short of features or performance. We’d be over the moon if someone gifted us with this itty-bitty Qi coil-powered masterpiece of an RGB cube.

Recently we’ve been blessed with a bevy of beautiful, animated RGB cubes but none hit quite this intersection of size and function. The key ingredient here is tiny but affordable RGB LEDs which measure 1 mm on a side. But LEDs this small are dwarfed by the otherwise minuscule “2020” package WS2812’s and APA102s of the world. Pushing his layout capabilities to the max [Freddie] squeezed each package together into a grid with elements separated by less than 1 mm, resulting in a 64 LED panel that is only 16 mm x 16 mm panel (with test points and controller mounted to the back). Each of these four-layer PCBs that makes up the completed cube contains an astonishing 950 mm of tracking, meaning the entire cube has nearly six meters of traces!

How do you power such a small device with no obvious places to locate a connector? By running magnet wire through a corner and down to a Qi coil of course. Not to let the cube itself outshine the power supply [Freddie] managed to deadbug a suitably impressive supply on the back of the coil itself. Notice the grain of rice in the photo to the left! The only downside here is that the processor – which hangs diagonally in the cube on a tiny motherboard – cannot be reprogrammed. Hopefully future versions will run programming lines out as well.

Check out the video of the cube in action after the break, and the linked photo album for much higher resolution macro photos of the build. While you’re there take a moment to admire the layout sample from one of the panels! If this sets the tone, we’re hoping to see more of [Freddie]’s going-away hacks in the future!

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Big And Glowy Tetris Via Arduino

September 6, 2019 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Tetris was a breakout hit when it was released for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1989, in much the same way that Breakout was a breakout hit in arcades in 1976. Despite this, gamers of today expect a little more than a tiny monochrome LCD with severe motion blur problems. Enter the LED Tetris build from [Electronoobs].

The build relies on a hacker favourite, the WS2812B LED string. The LEDs are set up in a 8×16 matrix to create the familiar Tetris playfield. Buttons and a joystick are then installed on the front panel to allow the player to control the action. An Arduino Mega runs the show, with a DFPlayer used to play the famous theme music as the cherry on top.

It’s a fun build that would be an awesome addition to any hacker’s coffee table. Big glowing LEDs make everything better, after all – this ping-pong ball display is a great example of the form. Video after the break.

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Handmade LED Cube Is A Work Of Art

September 5, 2019 by Lewin Day 18 Comments

We see all kinds of projects come across the news desk at Hackaday. Sometimes it’s a bodge, neatly executed, that makes us laugh out loud at its simple ingenuity. Other times, it’s a case of great skill and attention to detail, brought to bear to craft something of great beauty. [Greg Davill]’s LED cube is firmly the latter.

The matte black finish makes the artwork really pop. Note the matrix of tiny pads for the LEDs on the backside.

The build starts with custom four layer PCBs, in matte black with gold-plated pads. It’s a classic color scheme, and sets the bar for the rest of the project. Rather than proceeding to hook up some commodity microcontrollers to off-the-shelf panels, [Greg] goes his own way. Each PCB gets a 24×24 raw LED matrix, directly soldered on the back side. By producing a “dumb” matrix, there are large savings in current draw to be had over the now-popular smart strings.

The panels are then loaded into a tidy 3D printed cube, with space inside for the FPGA running the show and a power supply. Five panels are held in with double sided-tape and screws, with the last being installed with magnets to allow access to the inside. Neatly folded flat-flex cables are pressed into service to connect everything up.

It’s a build that shows there is value in doing things your own way, and that the new methods don’t always beat out the old. With careful consideration of aesthetics from the start to the end of the project, [Greg] has built an LED cube both astounding in its simplicity, and beautiful in its execution. We’ve seen [Greg]’s work before, too – it’s not too often hand soldered BGAs cross these pages. Video after the break.

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This LED Cube Is One Heck Of An ICEBreaker

September 5, 2019 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Like the tastes of the makers that build them, LED cubes come in all shapes and sizes. From the simplest 3x3x3 microcontroller test, to fancier bespoke installations, they’re a great way to learn a bunch of useful embedded techniques and show off at the same time. [kbob] has done exactly that in spades, with a glittering cube build of his own and published a repository with all the files.

Just like a horde of orcs from Mordor, [kbob]’s cube is all about strength in numbers. Measuring 136 mm on each side, it’s constructed out of 64 x 64 P2 panels, packing 4096 LEDs per side, or 24,576 total. A Raspberry Pi is used to run the show, allowing a variety of animations to be run. Unfortunately, it lacks the raw horsepower to run this many LEDs at a decent frame rate. Instead, it’s teamed up with an ICEBreaker FPGA, which can churn out the required HUB75 signals for the panels without breaking a sweat.

Thanks to the high density of tiny LEDs, and the smooth framerate of the animations, the final effect is rather gorgeous. [kbob] notes that there’s actually a lot of people working on similar projects with ICEBreaker muscle; a recent video from [Piotr] is particularly impressive.

The LED cube will likely remain a staple for sometime, and we can’t wait to see what comes out next from the community. You can even throw in some OpenGL if you wanna get fancy. Video after the break.

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Faux-Neon Sign Says What?, Auf Deutsch

September 2, 2019 by Ted Yapo 11 Comments

To a speaker of English, a sign asking ‘Was?” may not make much sense. In German, however, the question is a more thought-provoking “What?” That’s exactly the point of this faux-neon sign created by [noniq]. The sign uses silicone-enclosed “neon-like” LED strips to spell out the question for all to see — and ponder.

While true neon aficionados will bristle at even calling such LED strips “faux neon” (check the comments below for examples), we really like them for sign projects like this. They’re great-looking, inexpensive, easy to work with, and available with RGB LEDs for variable colors. In this case, they were mounted on 3 mm polystyrene plate glued to a wooden frame made from 22 mm square beams.

One of the things that caught our eye about this build is the use of a CNC mill to create a prototype. With the strokes milled out of a foam board, the final effect could be visualized before committing to the design. This board later served as a template for cutting the LED strips to length — clever! We suspect this could also be done with a hobby knife and a liberal dose of patience by those without access to a CNC mill.

Of course, this type of project doesn’t always turn out perfect the first time. The sign was missing a dot for the question mark, light leakage from ends of the individual segments was creating distracting bright spots on the base, areas where the silicone had been removed to connect the LEDs were noticeably darker, and the letters looked too thin. We’re looking forward to the promised second post, in which [noniq] describes the solution to these issues.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen these LED strips used for sign-making, like in this logo build last Spring.

Giant LED Display Is 1200 Balls To The Wall

August 29, 2019 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

When you’re going to build something big, it’s often a good idea to start small and work out the bugs first. That’s what [bitluni] did with his massive 1200-pixel LED video wall, which he unveiled at Maker Faire Hanover recently.

We covered his prototype a while back, a mere 300 ping pong ball ensconced-LEDs on a large panel. You may recall his travails with the build, including the questionable choice of sheet steel for the panel and the arm-busting effort needed to drill 300 holes with a hand drill. Not wanting to repeat those mistakes, [bitluni] used the custom hole punch he built rather than a drill, and went with aluminum sheet for the four panels needed. It was still a lot of work, and he had to rig up some help to make the tool more comfortable to use, but in the end the punched holes appear much neater than their drilled counterparts.

[bitluni] mastered enough TIG welding to make nice aluminum frames for the panels, making them lightweight and easy to transport. 1200 ping pong balls, a gunked-up soldering iron, and a package of hot glue sticks later, the wall was ready for electronics. It took a 70-amp power supply and an ESP32 to run everything, but that’s enough horsepower to make some impressive graphics and even stream live video – choppy and low-res, but still usable.

We love the look this wall and we appreciate the effort that went into it. And it’s always good to see just how much fun [bitluni] has with his builds – it’s infectious.

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