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.

Continue reading “Giant LED Display Is 1200 Balls To The Wall” →

A Colorful Way To Play Chess On An ATmega328

August 24, 2019 by Maya Posch 2 Comments

We’ve all seen those chess computers that consist out of a physical playing field, and a built-in computer that would indicate where you should put its pieces while inputting the position of your pieces in some way. These systems are usually found in a dusty cardboard box in a back room’s closet, as playing like this is fairly cumbersome, and a lot depends on the built-in chess computer.

This take by [andrei.erdei] on this decades-old concept involves an ATmega328p-based Arduino Pro Mini board, a nice wooden frame, and 4 WS2812-based 65×65 mm RGB 8×8 LED matrices, as well as some TTP223 touch sensors that allow one to control the on-board cursor. This is the sole form of input: using the UP and RIGHT buttons to select the piece to move, confirm with OK, then move to the new position. The chess program will then calculate its next position and indicate it on the LED matrix.

Using physical chess pieces isn’t required either: each 4×4 grid uses a special pattern that indicates the piece that occupies it. This makes it highly portable, but perhaps not as fun as using physical pieces. It also kills the sheer joy of building up that collection of enemy pieces when you’ve hit that winning streak. You can look at the embedded gameplay video after the break and judge for yourself.

Continue reading “A Colorful Way To Play Chess On An ATmega328” →

This Rubik’s Cube Lamp Has Some Serious Retro Style

August 24, 2019 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

The reassembly is handled with super glue and acrylic to diffuse the light.

There’s an easy way to signal to your friends and family that you’re a successful, urbane member of society – by decorating your home with tasteful references to popular culture. A classy oil painting of Yoda or a framed Tarantino movie poster is a great way to go. Alternatively, consider building yourself a swanky Rubik’s Cube lamp.

The build starts by disassembling the cube, as if you were going to cheat and reassemble it in the correct order. Instead, the cube is then gutted to make room for electronics. Inside, a ping pong ball covered in LEDs is installed, along with lithium batteries and a power board cribbed from a USB power bank. The whole assembly is laced back together with glue and frosted acrylic which acts as an retro-styled grid-like diffuser. The power button is even sneakily hidden in one of the squares!

It’s a sweet retro build that would make an excellent addition to any hip lounge room. We’re a big fan of self-contained glowing cubes here at Hackaday – we’ve covered nuclear powered and infinity designs before. Video after the break.

Continue reading “This Rubik’s Cube Lamp Has Some Serious Retro Style” →

LED Triangle Looks Cool; Someone Tell Alt-J

August 24, 2019 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

For the average person, decorating at home is as simple as a few choice picks from the IKEA catalogue. Makers are a different breed, though – preferring something customized and glowing. This LED triangle is a particularly great example of the form, and the latest benchmark for excellence to come out of [scanlime’s] workshop.

Hailing from the recent past of 2014, it’s a design that is well-suited to the average makerspace. Built out of layers of lasercut chipboard and acrylic, it creates 16 seperate pockets for LEDs with very little bleed in between. A black bezel is fitted to complete the effect, along with frosted white acrylic diffusers for each triangle element.

The build uses WS2812B LEDs, controlled by [scanlime’s] Fadecandy controller. Fadecandy is a combination of hardware and software designed specifically for LED art projects, providing high-quality control of dithering and other effects to help make glowables prettier. It tends to turn up wherever head-turning visualizations are needed. In this application, it does a great job, with the pseudo-random flickering of the pixels being almost hypnotizing in nature.

It’s a great cyberpunk art piece, and we’d love to have one on our coffee table at home. If you’re sick of LED cubes, triangle-based builds may reignite your passion. Video after the break.

Continue reading “LED Triangle Looks Cool; Someone Tell Alt-J” →

DIY ZigBee Therapy Lights Are Hue Compatible

August 23, 2019 by Tom Nardi No comments

Working on a project into the wee hours is hardly uncommon for us hackers, but if you’re consistently sleeping until the afternoon, it’s possible you’re suffering from a condition known as Delayed Phase Sleep Disorder (DPSD). Put simply, your body’s internal clock is out of alignment with the world around you. One of the ways to treat this condition is to expose yourself to bright light in the morning, which can help you wake up and feel more refreshed. Unfortunately, these so-called “Bright Light Therapy” boxes tend to be pretty expensive.

Looking for a way to treat his own DPSD, [Edward Shin] decided to build his own light box based on the research he’d done on the various commercial offerings out there. After all, a box full of bright lights that operates on a timer doesn’t seem particularly complex. Of course, in reality there’s a bit more to it than that, but so far the results are certainly promising.

The first decision [Edward] had to make was what kind of light he wanted. Classic light therapy devices, often used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), tend to be full spectrum lights that try and simulate sunlight. But in his research, he found a paper from Nature that explained the melanopsin in the human eye responds primarily to blue and green light. But as intense blue light can apparently lead to macular degeneration, he decided to go with green.

Since [Edward] already uses the Philips Hue system for his home’s lighting, he wanted to bring his therapy light into that ecosystem. The idea was that he could easily schedule his new green light box to go on when he wanted to wake up in the morning. So he used the Mesh Bee from Seeed Studio which not only supports ZigBee, but for which software is available to emulate a Hue bulb. Then he just needed to pair that with a sufficiently beefy LED driver and some 510 nm emitters. Everything is enclosed in a box made of laser cut wood that’s designed to hang from the headboard and shine down onto his face.

Over the years we’ve seen a number of similar projects trying to address SAD, so the idea of a hacker tweaking the concept to tackle DPSD seems a natural enough evolution of the idea. Just remember to speak with a medical professional before coming up with a homebrew treatment plan.

Great Artificial Daylight Via Broken TVs

August 17, 2019 by Lewin Day 34 Comments

[DIY Perks] has long been a fan of lights that accurately mimic real daylight. Often choosing high-quality LEDs for his projects, lately he’s taken a different tack – using broken televisions to produce attractive home lighting solutions.

The hack involves removing the backlight from the damaged television or monitor. These have a powerful white light inside, but the real key is that they also features a Fresnel lens. This helps the backlight appear very similar to a real skylight, due to the way it scatters light around the room.

Due to the difficulty of driving most LED and CCFL backlights, the project strips the original lighting out and replaces it with a set of high-CRI LED strips readily available off eBay. These are easily driven from 12 volts and give a white light more similar to actual daylight compared to most backlights. With the LEDs in place, the monitor’s original diffusers and Fresnel lens are put back in place, and the light is finished off with an aluminium frame.

Fitted to an angled ceiling, the light really does look as if actual sunlight is streaming through a window on a rainy day. It’s a pleasant effect that does a great job of lighting a room, and we suspect it would be excellent for general video work, too. [DIY Perks] is no stranger to a good studio light build, after all. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Great Artificial Daylight Via Broken TVs” →