Infinity Icosahedron Is Difficult To Contemplate Even Looking Right At It

February 17, 2019 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

Cubes and pyramids are wonderful primitive three-dimensional objects, but everyone knows that the real mystical power is in icosahedrons. Yes, the twenty-sided polyhedron does more than just ruin your saving throws in tabletop RPGs – it can also glow and look shiny in your loungeroom at home.

[janth]’s build relies on semitransparent acrylic mirrors for the infinity effect, lasercut into triangles to form the faces of the icosahedron. The frame is built out of 3D printed rails which slot on to the acrylic mirrors, and also hold the LED strips. [janth] chose high-density strips with 144 LEDs per meter for a more consistent effect, and added frosted acrylic diffusers to all the strips for a clean look with less hotspots from the individual LEDs.

An ESP32 runs the show, and the whole assembly is epoxied together for strength. The final effect is very future disco, and it’s probably against medical advice to stare at it for more than 5 minutes at a time.

The infinity effect is a popular one, and we’ve seen a beautiful cube build by [Heliox] in recent times. Of course, if you do manage to build an actual portal through time and space, and not just a lamp that looks like one, be sure to send us a tip. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Infinity Icosahedron Is Difficult To Contemplate Even Looking Right At It” →

Is That A Word Clock In Your Pocket?

February 15, 2019 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

Word clocks are one of those projects that everyone seems to love. Even if you aren’t into the tech behind how they work, they have a certain appealing aesthetic. Plus you can read the time without worrying about those pesky numbers, to say nothing of those weird little hands that spin around in a circle. This is the 21st century, who has time for that?

Now, thanks to [Gordon Williams], these decidedly modern timepieces just got a lot more accessible. His word clock is not only small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but it’s the easiest-to-build one we’ve ever seen. If you were ever curious about these gadgets but didn’t want to put in the the time and effort required to build a full scale version, this diminutive take on the idea might be just what Father Time ordered.

The trick is to attach the microcontroller directly to the backside of an 8 x 8 LED matrix. As demonstrated by [Gordon], the Bluetooth-enabled Espruino MDBT42Q fits neatly between the rows of pins, which need only a gentlest of persuasions to get lined up and soldered into place. Since the time can be set remotely over Bluetooth, there’s not even so much as an additional button required. While driving the LEDs directly off of the digital pins of a microcontroller is never recommended, the specifics of this application (only a few of the LEDs on at a time, and not for very long) means he can get away with it.

Of course, that just gets you an array of square LEDs you blink. It wouldn’t be much of a word clock without, you know, words. To that end, [Gordon] has provided an overlay which you can print on a standard inkjet printer. While it’s not a perfect effect as the light still comes through the ink, it works well enough to get the point across. One could even argue that the white letters on the gray background helps with visibility compared to just the letters alone lighting up.

If you’re not in the market for a dollhouse-sized word clock, fear not. We’ve got no shortage of adult sized versions of these popular timepieces for your viewing pleasure.

Continue reading “Is That A Word Clock In Your Pocket?” →

COB LED Teardown

February 15, 2019 by Al Williams 15 Comments

[Big Clive] picked up some chip-on-board (COB) LEDs meant for hydroponics that were very unusual and set out to examine them on video. Despite damaging the board almost right away, he managed to do some testing on these arrays and you can see the results in the video below. He also compares it to older LED modules.

The 144 LEDs produce a lot of light. In addition to powering the device up, he also looks at the construction of the LEDs under a magnification, comparing the older style that used tiny bond wires to make connections versus the new version soldered on the board directly.

Continue reading “COB LED Teardown” →

The Empire Strikes Back With The ESP8266

February 13, 2019 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

Like many of us, [Matthew Wentworth] is always looking for a reason to build something. So when he found a 3D model of the “DF.9” laser turret from The Empire Strikes Back intended for Star Wars board games on Thingiverse, he decided it was a perfect ~~excuse~~ opportunity to not only try his hand at remixing an existing 3D design, but adding electronics to it to create something interactive.

As the model was originally intended for a board game, it was obviously quite small. So the first order of business was scaling everything up to twice the original dimensions. As [Matthew] notes, the fact that it still looks so good when expanded by such a large degree is a credit to how detailed the original model is. Once blown up to more useful proportions, he modified the head of the turret as well as the barrel to accept the electronics he planned on grafting into the model.

He created a mount for a standard nine gram servo inside the head of the turret which allows it to rotate, and the barrel got an LED stuck in the end. Both of which are controlled with a NodeMCU ESP8266 development board, allowing [Matthew] to control the direction and intensity of the pew-pew over WiFi. He mentions that in the future he would like to add sound effects that are synchronized to the turret rotation and LED blinking.

For the software side of the project, he used Blynk to quickly build a smartphone interface for the turret. This is the first time he had used Blynk, and reports that outside of a little trial and error, it was some of the easiest code he’s ever written for the Arduino. This is a sentiment we’ve been seeing a lot of recently towards Blynk, and it’s interesting to see how often it shows up in ESP8266 projects now.

Looking ahead [Matthew] says he wants to paint and detail the turret, as the bright orange color scheme probably wouldn’t do terribly well on Hoth. If he can manage the time, he’d also like to add it to the long list of OpenCV-powered turrets that hackers love harassing their friends and family with.

Continue reading “The Empire Strikes Back With The ESP8266” →

Freeform Wire Frame Tulip Blooms To The Touch

February 12, 2019 by Roger Cheng 5 Comments

Holidays are always good for setting a deadline for finishing fun projects, and every Valentine’s Day we see projects delivering special one-of-a-kind gifts. Why buy a perishable bulk-grown biological commodity shipped with a large carbon footprint when we can build something special of our own? [Jiří Praus] certainly seemed to think so, his wife will receive a circuit sculpture tulip that blooms when she touches it.

This project drew from [Jiří]’s experience with aesthetic LED projects. His Arduino-powered snowflake, with LEDs mounted on a custom PCB, is a product available on Tindie. For our recent circuit sculpture contest, his entry is a wire frame variant on his snowflake. This tulip has 7 Adafruit NeoPixel in the center and 30 white SMD LEDs in the petals, which look great. But with the addition of mechanical articulation, this project has raised the bar for all that follow.

We hope [Jiří] will add more details for this project to his Hackaday.io profile. In the meantime, look over his recent Tweets for more details on how this mechanical tulip works. We could see pictures and short videos of details like the wire-and-tube mechanism that allowed all the petals to be actuated by a single servo, and the components that are tidily packaged inside that wooden base.

Need more digital expressions of love? We have no shortage of hearts. Animated LED hearts, illuminated acrylic hearts, and talking hearts. We’re a little short on flower projects, but we do have X-ray of a rose among others to accompany [Jiří]’s tulip.

Continue reading “Freeform Wire Frame Tulip Blooms To The Touch” →

This 3D Printed LED Softbox Really Shines

February 10, 2019 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

Generally speaking, objects made on desktop 3D printers are pretty small. This is of course no surprise, as filament based printers are fairly slow and most don’t have very large beds to begin with. Most people don’t want to wait days for their project to complete, so they use 3D printed parts where it makes sense and supplement them with more traditional components such as aluminum extrusion wherever possible. But not always…

This 3D printed photography softbox created by [Nicholas Sherlock] doesn’t take the easy way out for anything. With the exception of the LEDs and the electronics to drive them, everything in the design has been printed on his Prusa i3. It wasn’t the easiest or fastest way to do it, but it’s hard to argue with the end result. Perhaps even more impressive than the final product is what it took to get there: he actually had to develop a completely new style of part infill he’s calling “Scattered Rectilinear” to pull it off.

Overall the design of the light itself isn’t that complex, ultimately it’s just a box with some LEDs mounted at the back and a pretty simple circuit to control their intensity. The critics will say he could have just used a cardboard box, or maybe wood if he wanted something a little bit stronger. But the point of this project was never the box itself, or the LEDs inside it. It’s all about the diffuser.

[Nicholas] forked Prusa’s version of Slic3r to add in his “Scattered Rectilinear” infill pattern, which is specifically designed to avoid the standard “ribs” inside of a 3D printed object. This is accomplished with randomized straight infill passes, rather than the traditionally overlapped ones. The inside of the print looks very reminiscent of fiberglass mat, which is perhaps the best way to conceptualize its construction. In terms of the final part strength, this infill is abysmal. But on the plus side, the light from the LEDs passing through it emerges with a soft pleasing look that completely obscures the individual points of light.

Anyone with a big enough 3D printer can run off their own copy of his light, as [Nicholas] has released not only his forked version of Slic3r but all of the STL files for the individual components. He’s also put together an exceptionally well documented Thingiverse page that has instructions and detailed build photos, something that’s unfortunately very rare for that platform.

If you’re in the market for a DIY softbox and don’t have a 3D printer handy, fear not. We’ve covered a few that you can build with more traditional methods, as well as several tips and tricks which you can use to get the most out of your photos and videos.

3D Printed Diffusers Make More Natural Light

February 9, 2019 by Richard Baguley 11 Comments

A strip of LEDs may be a simple and flexible way to add light to a project, but they don’t always look natural. There is an easy way to make them look better, though: add a diffuser. That’s what [Nate Damen] did using a 3D printer. He created a diffuser using PETG giving a standard string of LEDs a softer and more natural look that makes them look more like older light sources such as fluorescent strips or EL wire, but with the flexible colors of LEDs. The PETG material he used has a naturally somewhat cloudy look, so it acts as a diffuser without needing any extra treatment.

Continue reading “3D Printed Diffusers Make More Natural Light” →