Handheld Arduino Light Painter

April 6, 2018 by Tom Nardi 2 Comments

Light painting is a technique which allows you to “draw” on a photograph by moving a light past the camera during a long exposure shot. While it can be difficult to master, light painting allows for some incredible effects such as text and images that appear to be hovering in mid-air. Think of it like a very slow but much cooler version of an augmented reality app.

[Reven] recently wrote in to tell us about the Arduino light painter he put together, and while DIY (and even commercial) light painting gear isn’t exactly new at this point, we think he’s raised the bar a bit with his design. With the addition of a slick 3D printed enclosure and on-board display and menu system, his light painter looks exceptionally professional for being built out of hardware he had on hand.

On his blog, [Reven] has done a phenomenal job of documenting the build from start to finish. Not only does he include a detailed Bill of Materials and the STL files so you can build your own version of his light painter, he walks the reader though his design process and explains why he did the things he did. Even if you aren’t interested in building a light painter, there’s almost certainly something of interest for anyone who’s ever looked at a pile of parts on their workbench and wondered how they were going to turn it into a functioning device.

Powered by an Arduino Uno, the light painter provides a user interface on a 16×2 LCD which allows control over not only the brightness of the WS2812 LED strips but selecting and loading different images from the micro SD card. The case was designed in FreeCAD, and while [Reven] mentions there are a number of issues which could be improved, satisfies all his design goals.

We covered the original Adafruit project that [Reven] based his code all the way back in 2013, though there’s certainly been more modern interpretations of the idea since then.

A True 3D Printed Weather Station

April 5, 2018 by Tom Nardi 75 Comments

If the term “3D printed weather station” makes you think of a printed enclosure for off-the-shelf sensors, don’t feel bad. We thought the same thing when we first read the message [Rob Ward] sent in about his latest project. Surely he couldn’t mean that he actually printed all the principal parts of a serious weather station setup, such as the wind vane, anemometer, or rain gauge?

Except, on closer inspection, that’s exactly what he did. Every part of the weather station is designed in OpenSCAD, printed out, and infused with various vitamins to turn them into functional pieces of hardware. Interestingly enough, most of the magic is done with simple reed switches and magnets.

For example, the wind vane uses eight reed switches and an embedded magnet to communicate the current wind direction to the Arduino Uno which handles the user interface. Wind speed, on the other hand, it done with a single reed switch as it just needs to count rotations to calculate speed.

[Rob] did “cheat” by using an off-the-shelf barometric pressure sensor, but we’ll give him a pass for that one. Unless somebody wants to hit the tip line with a design for a printable barometer, we’ll consider this the high water mark in printable weather stations.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a DIY anemometer or rain gauge, of varying degrees of complexity. But the clean look of the final version, completely open nature of the OpenSCAD source, and the low part count make this an extremely compelling option for anyone looking to up their home forecasting game.

Workbench Light Arch On The Cheap

April 5, 2018 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

A light arch is exactly what it sounds like: an arch fitted with LED strips that can evenly illuminate the area below. They are becoming very popular in the miniature and model making communities as they put a lot of light where you need it without the shadows that you can get with purely overhead lighting. Those same characteristics make it excellent for electronics work as well, so while we haven’t seen many light arches come our way yet, we expect it won’t be long before they start tricking in.

[Spencer Owen] recently wrote in to tell us about his LED light arch that’s exceptionally easy and cheap to build. Whatever excuse you had before about not trying a light arch over your bench is probably out the window once you check this build out.

The heart of the arch is a length of plastic tile edging, which you can pick up from any big box home improvement store. LED strips are then attached to the inside face of the tile edging, and a suitable power supply wired into one end. [Spencer] mentions he’s strategically wrapped some sections of the arch with a diffuser, which may or may not be necessary for your particular application.

At this point the astute reader may have realized that this doesn’t make an arch, and would just give you a floppy light stick thing. Right you are. The real magic of this design are the 3D printed anchors. All you need to do is bend the tile edging, insert the ends in the anchors, and you’ve got a perfectly formed arch.

The hole in the anchor matches the profile of the tile edging closely, though might need to be adjusted to match a different brand of edging from what [Spencer] has. The tension of the plastic will be enough to hold the arch up without the need for glue or fasteners. As an added bonus, the arch can be taken down by just pulling the edging out and letting it return to its original shape.

Using your newly arisen arch to light up the bench is all well and good, but why stop there? Why not use it as clock, or to play a dungeon crawler?

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LEGO Meets Nintendo Switch

April 4, 2018 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

As you probably know, the Nintendo Switch is the incredibly popular console of the moment. You of course also know that LEGO has been popular since the beginning of recorded history. So it was only a matter of time before somebody decided that these two titans of youthful entertainment needed to combine up like some kind of money-printing Voltron. You know, for science.

[Vimal Patel], a known master of all things plastic brick related, decided to take up the challenge with a few experimental LEGO accessories for the Switch. These add-ons are largely designed to make playing the Switch a bit more comfortable, but represent an interesting first step to more complex hardware modifications down the road.

The key to these experiments are a set of 3D printed rails which allow you to attach standard LEGO parts to the Switch. With the rails installed, [Vimal] demonstrates a simple “kick stand” which improves the system’s stability when not being used in handheld mode.

A few different steering wheel modifications are also demonstrated, which use an impressive bit of engineering to move the controller’s analog stick left and right with rotational input on the wheel. Both variations are shown in-use with Mario Kart, and seem to do the job.

It will be interesting to see what kind of projects will be made possible at the intersection of Switch and LEGO when Nintendo Labo goes live later this month.

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The Era Of Orville Props Has Officially Begun

April 4, 2018 by Tom Nardi 49 Comments

Over a decade after the last Star Trek show warped off of television, we finally have a new series in the form of Star Trek: Discovery. But much to the chagrin of many old school Trek fans, Discovery has gone all in on the gritty and hyper-serialized storytelling that’s taken over TV since Starfleet last patrolled the airwaves. But for those who are looking for somewhat more lighthearted space adventures, Seth MacFarlane (of Family Guy fame) has created a show which is essentially a love-letter to Star Trek: The Next Generation called The Orville. Some have gone as far as to claim that The Orville is the true continuation of the Trek legacy, though such discussion sounds awfully close to a Holy War to us so we’ll steer clear.

Unfortunately for The Orville fans, the series doesn’t have nearly the commercial draw of Trek. Accordingly, the market for things like replica uniforms and props from the show is still in its infancy, meaning fans of the show have to go the DIY route. [JohnSmallBerries] is one such fan, and his 3D printed “Comscanner” from The Orville is a shot across the bow to the well established Trek prop-making scene.

Without so much as an official toy version of the device, [John] was forced to do his initial 3D rendering based completely on screenshots from the show. Even the scale of the device had to be guessed, as it’s usually only seen being held in a crew member’s hand. In the end he reasoned it’s probably supposed to be about the size of a large smartphone.

Not content with just a static prop, [John] managed to integrate not only the spring-assisted retractable display of the scanner from the show, but also some LED backlit panels complete with a screen-accurate user interface. Judging by the internal shots of the scanner, it looks like there’s still plenty of room inside to add some more advanced electronics. The next evolution of this prop will surely be to add in a microcontroller and potentially even a real screen to add some more elaborate effects and (relatively) practical functions.

We’ve seen plenty of impressive builds of Star Trek gadgets, arguably bringing the devices much closer to reality than the original show runners ever did. It will be interesting to see if The Orville inspires a new generation of engineers to bring their favorite fictional pieces of kit into the real world.

Bringing Fiction To Life With 3D Printing

April 2, 2018 by Tom Nardi 27 Comments

I print something nearly every day, and over the last few years, I’ve created hundreds of practical items. Parts to repair my car, specialized tools, scientific instruments, the list goes on and on. It’s very difficult for me to imagine going back to a time where I didn’t have the ability to rapidly create and replicate physical objects at home. I can say with complete honesty that it has been an absolutely life-changing technology for me, personally.

But to everyone else in my life, my friends and family, 3D printers are magical boxes which can produce gadgets, weapons, and characters from their favorite games and movies. Nobody wants to see the parts I made to get my girlfriend’s 1980’s Honda back on the road before she had to go to work in the morning, they want to see the Minecraft block I made for my daughter. I can’t get anyone interested in a device I made to detect the algal density of a sample of water, but they all want me to run off a set of the stones from The Fifth Element for them.

As I recently finished just such a project, a 3D printed limpet mine from Battlefield 1, I thought I would share some thoughts on the best practices for turning fiction into non-fiction.

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There’s More To MIDI Than Music – How About A Light Show?

March 31, 2018 by Sven Gregori 6 Comments

MIDI instruments and controllers are fun devices if you want to combine your interest in music and electronics in a single project. Breaking music down into standardized, digital signals can technically turn anything with a button or a sensor into a musical instrument or effect pedal. On the other hand, the receiving end of the MIDI signal is mostly overlooked.

[FuseBerry], a music connoisseur with a background in electronics and computer science, always wanted to build a custom MIDI device, but instead of an instrument, he ended up with a MIDI controlled light show in the shape of an exploded truncated icosahedron ([FuseBerry]’s effort to look up that name shouldn’t go unnoticed). He designed and 3D-printed all the individual geometric shapes, and painstakingly equipped them with LEDs from a WS2818B strip. An Arduino Uno controls those LEDS, and receives the MIDI signals through a regular 5-pin DIN MIDI connector that is attached to the Arduino’s UART interface.

The LEDs are mapped to pre-defined MIDI notes, so whenever one of them is played, and their NoteOn message is received, the LEDs light up accordingly. [FuseBerry] uses his go-to DAW to create the light patterns, but any software / device that can send MIDI messages should do the trick. In the project’s current state, the light pattern needs to be created manually, but with some adjustments to the Arduino code, that could be more automated, something along the lines of this MIDI controlled Christmas light show.

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