IPv6 Christmas Display Uses 75 Internet’s Worth Of Addresses

December 24, 2018 by Ted Yapo 32 Comments

We’ve seen internet-enabled holiday displays before, and we know IPv6 offers much more space than the older IPv4 addressing scheme that most of us still use today, but the two have never been more spectacularly demonstrated than at jinglepings.com. The live video stream shows an Internet-connected Christmas tree and an LED display wall that you can control by sending IPv6 ICMP echo request messages, more commonly known as pings.

Reading the page, you quickly parse the fact that there are three ways to control the tree. First, you can type a message in the box and press send – this message gets displayed on the crawl at the bottom of the LED screen. Second, you can light up the tree by sending a ping to the IPv6 address 2001:4c08:2028:2019::RR:GG:BB, where RR, GG, and BB are 8-bit hex values for red, green, and blue. This is a neat abuse of the IPv6 address space, in that the tree has 2²⁴ (around 16.8 million) IPv6 addresses, one for each color you can set. We were impressed by this brute-force use of address space, at least until we read on a little further.

You can also make your own drawings on the LED wall, again by sending pings. In this case, the address to set a pixel to a particular color is: 2001:4c08:2028:X:Y:RR:GG:BB, where X and Y are the pixel coordinates. This seems easy enough: to set pixel (10, 11) to magenta, the RGB value (0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF), you’d simply ping the IPv6 address 2001:4c08:2028:10:11:FF:00:FF. Having an array of addressable LEDs is commonplace in hacker circles today, although each of them having their own live IPv6 address on the Internet seems a little excessive at first. Then it hits you – each LED has an IPv6 address for every possible color, just like the tree: 16.8 million addresses for each LED. The LED display is 160×120 pixels in size, so the total number of IPv6 addresses used is 160x120x2²⁴, which is 75 times larger than all possible IPv4 addresses! This is a hack of monstrous proportions, and we love it.

In case you’re not running IPv6 yet, we’ve got you covered. To send individual pings using your browser, you can use a site like Ipv6now. If you want to send pixels to the display wall, you’re better off using a 6in4 tunnel that lets you access IPv6 sites using your current IPv4 connectivity. Hurricane Electric offers a free 6in4 tunnel service that we’ve found useful. Then it’s just a matter of writing some code to send pixel values as pings. The python scapy module is perfect for this sort of thing. But, first you’ll have to fill out the form on jinglepings.com and wait to get your IPv6 address whitelisted before you can draw on the display; evidently the usual bad actors have found the site and started drawing inappropriate things.

If you think this use of addresses seems wasteful, you needn’t worry. There are around 3.4×10³⁸ IPv6 addresses, enough for 10²⁷ such displays. We’re going to go out on a limb here and say it: nobody will ever need more than 2¹²⁸ IP addresses.

If you’re looking to build an LED holiday display on a smaller budget, check out this one that re-purposes normal LED strings.

Thanks to [Ward] for the tip!

Lighting Up A Very Wiry Candle

December 23, 2018 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

Entries into the Circuit Sculpture Contest tend to be pretty minimalist by nature, and this LED candle by [Amal Mathew] is a perfect example. The idea here was to recreate the slim and uncomplicated nature of a real candle but with a digital twist, and we think he’s pulled it off nicely with a bare minimum part count and exaggerated wire length that gives it the look of a thin pillar candle.

To give the LED a fading effect, [Amal] uses a ATtiny85 programmed with the Arduino IDE. His code uses the analogWrite() in a loop to gradually increase and then decrease the PWM frequency. With the LED connected directly to one of the pins on the ATtiny85, the simple program achieves the fading effect without needing any additional components.

On the opposite side of the candle, connected by long copper wires, is the single CR2032 which provides power for the circuit. In a nice touch, [Amal] has turned the battery 90 degrees relative to the rest of the circuit, so it can serve as a weighted base. We imagine getting it to stand up might be a little fiddly from the looks of it, but once it’s up and merrily fading in and out, it really helps sell the candle idea.

The finished product might look fairly straight-forward, but in his write-up on Hackaday.io, [Amal] gives detailed instructions on how to build your own version if you’re not a bare microcontroller wizard. This includes direction on how to program the ATtiny85 using an Arduino Uno; a neat trick to know even if you aren’t planning on making any candles in the near future. The next logical step is making it so you can “blow out” the LED, which should only take the addition of a resistor and some updated code.

There’s still plenty of time to enter your own functional piece of art in the Circuit Sculpture Contest. Just write it up on Hackaday.io and submit it before the January 8th, 2019 deadline.

Continue reading “Lighting Up A Very Wiry Candle” →

A Perfectly Orderly Way To Manage Your Time

December 23, 2018 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

[Paul Gallagher] has spent years separating his tasks into carefully measured out blocks, a method of time management known as the Pomodoro Technique. If that’s not enough proof that he’s considerably more organized and structured than the average hacker, you only need to take a look at this gorgeous Pomodoro Timer he’s entered into the Circuit Sculpture Contest. Just don’t be surprised if you suddenly feel like your own time management skills aren’t cutting it.

While [Paul] has traditionally just kept mental note of the hour-long blocks of time he breaks his work into, he thought it was about time he put together a dedicated timer to make sure he’s running on schedule. Of course he could have used a commercially available timer or an application on his phone, but he wanted to make something that was simple and didn’t cause any distractions. A timer that was easy to start, reliable, and didn’t do anything extraneous. We’re not sure if looking like the product of a more advanced civilization was part of his official list of goals, but he managed to achieve it in any event.

The timer is broken up into two principle parts: the lower section which has the controls, USB port, a handful of passive components, and an ATmega328 microcontroller, and the top section which makes up the three digit LED display. The two sections are connected by a header on the rear side which makes it easy for [Paul] to take the timer apart if he needs to get back into it for any reason. Notably absent in the design is a RTC; the relatively short duration of the timer (up to a maximum of 95 minutes) means the ATmega328 can be trusted to keep track of the elapsed time itself with an acceptable amount of drift.

The display side of the timer is really a sight to behold, with the legs of each LED soldered to a pair of carefully bent copper wires so they match the angle of the front panel. The associated resistors have been artfully snipped so that their bodies sit flat on the PCB while their leads reach out to the perfect length. It looks like a maintenance nightmare in there, but we love it anyway.

As we near the half-way mark of the Circuit Sculpture Contest, there’s still plenty of time to submit your own piece of functional art. If you’ve got a project that eschews the printed circuit board for a chance to bare it all, write it up on Hackaday.io and be sure to send it in before the January 8th, 2019 deadline.

Continue reading “A Perfectly Orderly Way To Manage Your Time” →

Epoxy Too Thin? Use Wood Flour As A Thixotropic Filler

December 23, 2018 by Donald Papp 27 Comments

The world of glues is wide and varied, and it pays to use the right glue for the job. When [Eric] needed to stick a wide and flat 3D printed mount onto the back of a PCB that had been weatherproofed with an uneven epoxy coating, he needed a gap-filling adhesive that would bond to both surfaces. It seemed like a job for the hot glue gun, but the surface was a bit larger than [Eric] was comfortable using with hot glue for. The larger the surface to be glued, the harder it is to do the whole thing before hot glue cools too much to bond properly.

What [Eric] really wanted to use was a high quality two-part epoxy that he already had on hand, but the stuff was too runny to work properly for this application. His solution was to thicken it with a thixotropic filler, which yields a mixture that is akin to peanut butter: sticky, easily spread to where it’s needed, but otherwise stays in place without dripping or sagging and doesn’t affect bonding.

3D printed pad stuck to back of PCB with thickened epoxy.

Common thixotropic fillers include ground silica or plastic fibers, but [Eric]’s choice was wood flour. Wood flour is really just very fine sawdust, and easily obtained from the bag on his orbital sander. Simply mix up a batch of thin two-part epoxy and stir in some wood flour until the sticky mixture holds its shape. Apply as needed, and allow it to cure.

Thanks to this, [Eric] was able to securely glue a 3D printed pad to the back of his animated LED snowflakes to help mount them in tricky spots. Whether for small projects or huge installations, LEDs, PCBs, and snowflakes are a good combination.

We’re Dreaming Of A Circuit Sculpture Christmas

December 21, 2018 by Tom Nardi 6 Comments

Whether or not you chose to believe our claim that we planned it this way, the holidays happen to fall right smack in the middle of our ongoing Circuit Sculpture Contest, which challenges hackers to build circuits that double as bona fide works of art. It’s become almost too easy to spin up your own PCB, so why not try your hand at building in three dimensions and without a net? The holidays are a perfect time for it as it’s not only a reprieve from the work, school, or forced labor camp that usually ties up our waking hours, but can also be a source of inspiration.

Case in point, this festive LED Christmas tree entry that comes our way courtesy of [Vincent Mkes]. This one really has it all: a recognizable theme, fantastic wire work, copious amounts of LEDs, and in a touch that is sure to delight even the electronics Scrooges amongst our readership, he does it all with the venerable 555 timer. It’s really what the Circuit Sculpture Contest is all about: taking a circuit that might otherwise be pretty ordinary and turning it into something truly unique.

The astute Hackaday reader (as if there was any other type) will likely notice there are actually two NE555 timers under the tree, each blinking their respective bank of LEDs at a different frequency. This makes the final result a bit more vibrant, and through some last-minute revisions, [Vincent] was able to hook them both up to a single power supply to really capture the minimalist spirit of the Contest.

As an early Christmas gift to us all, [Vincent] has done an excellent job documenting this build so anyone who wishes to infuse their end of year party with a little diode-driven holiday cheer can follow along. He’s included build instructions as well as diagrams of the circuit, though we encourage anyone looking to make one of their own to experiment a bit and put their own spin on it. After all, this is supposed to be art.

There’s still plenty of time to get your own entry into the Circuit Sculpture Contest, Yule-related or otherwise. Just document your build on Hackaday.io and submit it before the January 8th, 2019 deadline. Remember that entries can’t just look cool, they still need to be functional. Words to live by in general, but doubly important when they’re the rules of a contest.

Lighting Up The Night Sky With A Flying POV Display

December 19, 2018 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

We’ve seen loads of persistence of vision displays before, but this sky-writing POV display seems as though it may be a first. And we have to agree with its creators that it’s pretty cool.

The idea man on this was [Ivan Miranda], who conceived of a flying POV as a twist on his robotic dot-matrix beach printer. But without any experience in RC flight, he turned to fellow YouTuber [Tom Stanton], whose recent aerial builds include this air-powered plane, for a collaboration. [Ivan]’s original concept was a long strip of Neopixels that would be attached to the underside of a wide-wingspread plane. WIthout much regard for the payload limits of most RC planes, he came up with a working display that was 3 meters long. His video below shows it in use in his shop, with some pretty impressive long exposure images.

[Tom]’s part was to make the POV display flyable. He cut the length down to 2 meters and trimmed the weight enough to mount it to a quadcopter. Ungainly as the machine was, he was able to master its control enough to start painting pictures across the twilight sky. The images at the end of his video are actually stunning – we’re especially fond of Thunderbird 2, which takes us back to our childhood.

We’re not sure what the practical uses of this are, but that’s hardly the point. It’s enough that it’s an interesting project from an unlikely duo. Continue reading “Lighting Up The Night Sky With A Flying POV Display” →

Glowing Eyes For Regular Guys

December 18, 2018 by Lewin Day 47 Comments

Cosplayers continually push the boundary of what’s possible in live costuming, often taking effects from the silver screen and creating them in real life. [KyleofAsgard] is no exception, bringing Thor’s glowing eyes to life in this impressive build.

The helmet is a 3D printed piece from Thingiverse, painted and distressed by hand.

The build relies on special contact lenses, which [Kyle] suggests are best sourced by searching for “electric blue contact lenses”. These glow in the presence of UV light, which here is provided by a strip of UV LEDs embedded into Thor’s helmet from the recent Marvel movies.

The concept is simple, but the attention to detail is what makes this project a winner. Not content with an earlier build that was a tangle of wires and uncomfortable to use, [KyleofAsgard] made some smart upgrades. The battery for the LEDs and all circuitry is built into the helmet, making it easy to take on and off on those long convention days. For a more impressive effect, a relay is used to turn the LEDs on by remote control with a 433MHz module. This allows [Kyle] or an assistant to trigger the effect covertly, adding plenty of drama when the eyes suddenly begin to shine. It’s all done with off-the-shelf parts that even a novice could put together.

Giving credit where it’s due, [Kyle] notes that his work was inspired by that of Instagram cosplayer [missxboof], who executed a similar concept earlier this year. It’s great to see the cosplay community coming together and sharing tips and techniques online. Of course, if your tastes are more Metroid than Marvel, you might prefer this arm cannon build. Video after the break.

[Thanks to NZSmartie for the tip!]

Continue reading “Glowing Eyes For Regular Guys” →