Make Your Own Flexible Panel Lights

August 3, 2019 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

In this day and age, production values are everything. Even bottom-rung content creators are packing 4K smartphones and DSLRs these days, so if you want to compete, you’re gonna need the hardware. Lighting is the key to creating good video, so you might find a set of flexible panel lights handy. Thankfully, [DIY Perks] is here to show you how to build your own. (Video embedded below.)

The key to building a good video light rig is getting the right CRI, or Color Rendering Index. With low CRI lights, colors will come out looking unnatural or with odd casts in your videos. [DIY Perks] has gone to the effort of hunting down a supplier of high-quality LED strips in a range of different color temperatures that have a high CRI value, making them great for serious video work.

To build the flexible panel, the LED strips are glued onto a fake leather backing pad, which is then given a steel wire skeleton to enable it to be bent into various shapes. Leather loops are built into each corner of the panel as well, allowing the light to be fitted to a stand using a flexible aluminium bracket. The LEDs are slightly under-volted to help them last longer and enable them to run from a laptop power supply.

The build is one that focuses on light quality and usability, rather than just throwing a bunch of bright LEDs at the problem and calling it good. The results are great, with the panel showing a significant improvement on [DIY Perks]’s earlier builds.
Continue reading “Make Your Own Flexible Panel Lights” →

Driving P5 Panels With A Raspberry Pi

August 1, 2019 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

Building displays out of LEDs can be fun, but quickly becomes tedious as the pixel count increases. At this point, it’s worthwhile investing in off-the-shelf panels that have everything pre-soldered and ready to go. [Tom Hammond] wanted to run a P5 panel, and put a Raspberry Pi to work to get it going.

P5 panels are so-called for their 5 mm spacing between LEDs. The panels in question are built with RGB LEDs, allowing full-color graphics to be displayed. In this build, a 64 x 32 panel is used for a total of 2048 pixels. A Raspberry Pi Zero runs the display, using its GPIO to clock out pixel data. Software designed for Christmas light displays is used to program the light show, with xLights being the choice in this case. It’s all wrapped up in a tidy 3D printed frame, and the final product looks remarkably well put together.

It’s a great way to get familiar with P5 panels, and an excellent starting point if you’re contemplating a larger build down the track. If you’re going all out, consider how to make the most of your install from an architectural perspective. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Driving P5 Panels With A Raspberry Pi” →

Big Ol’ LED Wall Looks Cool, Can Draw Over 170 Amps

July 31, 2019 by Lewin Day 15 Comments

Building giant LED walls comes with a serious set of challenges. Whether they lie in power, cable routing, or just finding a way to clock out data fast enough for all the pixels, it takes some doing to build a decent sized display. [Phill] wanted a statement piece for the office, so rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

The build uses P5 panels, which we’ve seen used before on a smaller scale. Initial testing was done with a Raspberry Pi 3, which started to run out of grunt when the build reached 28 panels. The refresh rate was slow, and anything with motion looked messy. At that point, a dedicated driver was sourced in order to handle the full 48-panel display. Other challenges involved dealing with the huge power requirements – over 170 amps at 5 volts – and building a frame to hold all the panels securely.

The final product is impressive, standing 2 meters wide and 1.2 meters high. Resolution is 384 x 256. With a Mac Mini running video into the display through the off-the-shelf driver, all manner of content is possible. [Phill] even whipped up a Slack channel for users to send GIFs and text messages to the display. Naturally, we’re sure nobody will take advantage of this functionality.

If you’ve got your own giant LED wall, and you’re dying to tell us about it, make sure you get in touch. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Big Ol’ LED Wall Looks Cool, Can Draw Over 170 Amps” →

Preserving Historic NASA Display Technology

July 30, 2019 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

When [Patrick Hickey] spent a tidy sum on eBay to purchase a pair of seven-segment displays used in the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center during the Apollo program, he could have just put them up on a shelf. It’s certainly what most people would have done. Instead, he’s decided to study and document their design with the hope of eventually creating 3D replicas of these unique pieces of NASA history.

With a half century now separating us from the Moon landing, it’s more important than ever to preserve the incredible technology that NASA used during mankind’s greatest adventure. Legitimate Apollo-era hardware is fairly scarce on the open market, and certainly not cheap. As [Patrick] explains on the Hackaday.io page for this project, being able to 3D print accurate replicas of these displays is perhaps the best way we can be sure they won’t be lost to history.

But more than that, he also wants others to be able to see them in operation and perhaps even use them in their own projects. So that means coming up with modern electronics that stand-in for the 60s era hardware which originally powered them.

Since [Patrick] doesn’t have access to whatever (likely incandescent) lighting source these displays used originally, his electronics are strictly functional rather than being an attempt at a historic recreation. But we have to say, the effect looks fantastic regardless.

Currently, [Patrick] is putting most of his efforts on the smaller of the two displays that he calls “Type A”. The chunk of milled aluminum with integrated cooling fins has a relatively simple shape that should lend itself to replication through 3D scanning or even just a pair of calipers. He’s also put together a proof of concept for how he intends to light the display with 5mm LEDs on a carefully trimmed bit of protoboard, which he plans on eventually refining to reduce the number of wires used.

One aspect he’s still a little unsure of is how best to replicate the front mask. It appears to be made of etched metal with an integrated fiberglass diffuser, and while he’s already come up with a few possible ways to create a similar front panel for his 3D printed version, he’s certainly open to suggestions from the community.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a dedicated individual use 3D printing to recreate a rare and expensive object. While the purists will say that an extruded plastic version doesn’t compare to the real thing, we think it’s certainly better than letting technology like this fade into obscurity.

College Project Nets 360 Degree POV Display

July 25, 2019 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

Senior college projects are the culmination of years of theoretical learning finally put into practice. For many students they are their first experience of doing some proper, real world engineering. [Melangeaddict] chose to take on a persistence of vision display for his final project, and learned plenty along the way.

The display consists of a row of 48 RGB LEDs mounted on an arm capable of rotating a full 360 degrees, with a simple paper diffuser. This arm is spun up by a belt drive from an electric motor at significant rotational speed, so getting close to this machine is quite inadvisable. Thanks to quality bearings and a careful build, rotating resistance is minimal. An infrared LED is mounted on the frame, and the light picked up by a photodiode on the rotating arm, allowing the images to remain fixed in space without drifting over time. Images can be loaded to the display wirelessly over a Bluetooth interface, which was quite advanced for a DIY project in 2011.

We’re a fan of the 360 degree approach to POV displays, and with the right rotational speed and fast data rates, it would be possible to get some seriously high resolution out of the device. Just be careful not to stick your hands in the mechanism.

There’s a deep well to explore when it comes to POV displays, from three-dimensional builds to vibrating flexible setups. Video after the break.

Continue reading “College Project Nets 360 Degree POV Display” →

Persistence Of Vision On An Old Fan

July 23, 2019 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Persistence of vision is a fun feature of the human visual system, which allows us to blink a bunch of spinning LEDs at the right time to spell out messages that appear to hang in the air. [TN_Inventor] took a stab at his own POV build, using an old desk fan as a base.

The initial build relied on a rotor made of MDF and some very old-school LEDs. The rotor was heavy and unbalanced, causing issues for the motor, and the dim LEDs weren’t visible in normal daytime conditions. Like any good maker, [TN_Inventor] persevered and iterated the design.

The next revision instead relied on protoboard itself for the rotor, greatly reducing the weight and making it easier to balance. The problem of getting power to a rotating mechanism was sidestepped entirely, with a small lipo battery being mounted on the rotor itself. High-brightness white LEDs were employed, making the effect much more visible. This was helped further thanks to the use of transistors to run the LEDs directly from battery voltage, rather than obeying the current limits of the Arduino Nano’s output pins.

The build presents well, with the final POV board being built into the chassis of an old desk fan. Rather than use the original motor, instead a smaller 12 volt geared device was used, powered separately from the main board. The familiar form factor of the desk fan is a great way to finish the project off, and gives it an interesting industrial aesthetic.

POV builds can go a long way – we’ve even seen volumetric displays built in this way. Video after the break. Continue reading “Persistence Of Vision On An Old Fan” →

Breathing LED Done With Raw Logic Synthesized From A Verilog Design

July 20, 2019 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

Breathing LEDs are an attractive adornment on many electronic devices. These days they’re typically controlled by software but of course there were fading effects back in the days of analog too. [Pepijn de Vos] mixes a little of the new and the old by building a hardware-based fader from a Verilog design and even too the time to explain the process in depth.

Rather than using a microcontroller and software, [Pepijn] wrote the logic required to make the LED “breathe” in the hardware description language, Verilog. You may be familiar with this for FPGAs, but using it to plan out a build with logic chips is just as apt a use. The Verilog was synthesized into a circuit using 74-series logic chips, with the help of work by [Dan Ravensloft] who has made a library for the Yosys Open Synthesis Suite. With the addition of a basic clock circuit, the LED is made to breathe and the rate can be controlled by changing the clock speed.

It’s a fun way to experiment with both Verilog and old-school logic, albeit one that may not scale well. An interesting side note from the Twitter thread, [Dan] estimates that with current settings the PicoRV32 CPU would require over 2000 chips to build. Regardless, it’s an interesting tool and one that likely has further scope for experimentation.

First patented by Apple way back in 2002, the breathing LED has been a popular project for those learning electronics. We’ve even seen it on motorbikes. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Breathing LED Done With Raw Logic Synthesized From A Verilog Design” →