We’re bringing back one of our most popular contests, the Hackaday Circuit Sculpture Challenge! Make your functional circuits go beyond utility by turning them into art!
Solar-powered circuit sculpture by [Mohit Bhoite] which was featured last year.Wire and circuit boards are a fantastic media for creating beautiful projects, and for this one we want both the copper and the boards (or lack of) to be part of the beauty. Your sculpture could be crisp and angular bends in brass rod, a rat’s nest of enamel wire, PCBs with organic shapes, or something completely wild. Your only constraint is that there needs to be some type of working circuit involved.
Three entries will be chosen as top winners in the Most Functional, Most Beautiful, and Best Video categories and be awarded $200 in components from Digi-Key who are sponsoring this contest and also putting together a calendar with images of the top twelve sculptures.
The Wonderlandscape by [Michael Aichlmayr] takes the “sculpture” part of Circuit Sculpture to new levels.Tell us the story of your creation, including a deep dive into how you built the sculpture and what trial and error you went through to pull it off. Many circuit sculptures in the past have included jig-building to get the wire bends just right, so we have a fourth prize of $100 in Tindie credit for the Best Jig build.
Get your project started now on Hackaday.io and use that “Submit Project To:” button in the left sidebar of your project page to enter it in the Circuit Sculpture Challenge. You have until November 10th to submit your entry.
Hit up the lighting aisle of any big box hardware store these days and you’ll probably find a variety of Edison bulbs — modern bulbs meant to evoke the bare, complicated tungsten filament bulbs from the early days of electric candlelight. Edison bulbs use filament LEDs, which resemble skinny candles with wicks at both ends and give off a nice light, especially when diffused by acrylic.
Our favorite part of the build elevates this simple light box into a curiosity for those not in the know. It’s controlled with a mercury tilt switch, so all you’d have to do in a power outage is locate the box and turn it upside down, provided it has a charge.
We’re proud to announce the Hackaday Remoticon, taking place everywhere November 6th – 8th, 2020. It’s a weekend packed with workshops about hardware creation, held virtually for all to enjoy.
But we can’t do it without you. We need you to host a workshop on that skill, technique, or special know-how that you acquired through hard work over too many hours to count. Send in your workshop proposal now!
What is a Remoticon?
The Hackaday Remoticon achieves something that we just couldn’t do at the Hackaday Superconference: host more workshops that involve more people. Anyone who’s been to Supercon over the past six years can tell you it’s space-limited and, although we do our best to host a handful of workshops each day, those available seats are always in high demand.
We’re sad that we can’t get together in person for Supercon this year, but now we have an opportunity to host more workshops, engaging more live instructors and participants because they will be held virtually. This also means that we can make recordings of them available so that more people can learn from the experience. This is something that we tried way back during the first Supercon with Mike Ossmann’s RF Circuit Design workshop and 140,000 people have watched that video. (By the way, that link is worth clicking just to see Joe Kim’s excellent art.) Continue reading “Hackaday Remoticon: Our 2020 Conference Is Packed With Workshops And We’re Calling For Proposals”→
If you’re planning to get into circuit sculpture one of these days, it would probably be best to start with something small and simple, instead of trying to make a crazy light-up spaceship or something with a lot of curves on the first go. A small form factor doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t also be useful. Why not start by making a small automatic night light?
The circuit itself is quite simple, especially because it uses an Arduino. You could accomplish the same thing with a 555, but that’s going to complicate the circuit sculpture part of things a bit. As long as the ambient light level coming in from the light-dependent resistor is low enough, then the two LEDs will be lit.
We love the frosted acrylic panels that [akshar1101] connected together with what looks like right angle header pins. If you wanted to expose the electronics, localize the light diffusion with a little acrylic cover that slips over the LEDs. Check it out in the demo after the break.
Yes, circuit sculptures are amazing. But the patience and skill required puts most of the designs we’ve seen fairly far out of reach of the average beginner. We totally understand — not everyone finds fun in fiddly, structural soldering.
This SMD LED ball is almost ready for prime time. [Hari] wants this to be accessible for everyone and completely parametric, so he’s still working out the kinks. Check out the current form after the break as [Hari] rolls the ball through the various display modes using an Arduino and talks about the failures along the way, like having to file out the LED slots because they were designed too tightly the first time. [Hari] is also working on the friction fit of the pieces so the ball is easier to assemble, especially at the beginning.
If you haven’t seen [Jiří]’s tulip, check out our coverage from back when he first built it. The brass wire and tube mechanism and some clever linkages let a single servo open the Neopixel-adorned petals at a touch. But what started as a one-off romantic gesture for his wife on Valentine’s Day became something more, and what was a labor of love turned into just labor very quickly. [Jiří]’s solution, explained in the brief video below, is a 3D-printed jig that holds all the wires that form the tulip petals locked into position. The wire that defines the spine of the petal goes into a groove and gets held down with removable clips. The edge wires are held by rotating clips, and the veins of the petals just lay in place in grooves. The area around each joint is hollowed out so [Jiří] can solder easily without melting the plastic jig.
The best part comes at the end, when it’s time to release the completed petal. For that, a tool with pins that looks a little like a hedgehog is inserted from below, and pins that fit into each joint’s hole pop the finished petal off. We can see how this tool would greatly increase the production of his tulips, so if that’s his goal, he’s on track.
A little over a year ago, we ran a contest that challenged readers to leave the comfort of their PCBs and breadboards. We wanted to see circuits built in three dimensions, with extra points awarded for creativity and artistic flair. Truth be told there was initially some concern that the “Circuit Sculpture” contest was a bit too abstract for the Hackaday community, but the overwhelming number of absolutely gorgeous entries certainly put those doubts to rest.
In a recent video, [Michael Aichlmayr] walks viewers through the creation of his mesmerizing entry Wonderlandscape, which ended up taking honorable mention in the Circuit Sculpture contest for Best Metalworks. Though this is much more than just a simple walk-through of a project. Sure you’ll see how brass bar stock was artfully twisted and wrapped to create a metallic winterscape that looks like it could have come from Bob Ross’s hitherto unknown cyberpunk period, but that’s only half the story.
The brass bar was twisted by hand with pliers.
In the video, [Michael] recalls how he discovered the burgeoning electronic sculpture community, and points to a few exceptional examples that got him hooked on finding the beauty that’s usually hidden inside of a plastic enclosure. Eventually he heard about the Circuit Sculpture contest, and decided it was the perfect opportunity to build something of his own. That’s right, Wonderlandscape is his very first attempt at turning electronics into art.
But the best may be yet to come. [Michael] explains that, due to the time constraints of the contest, he had to use metal stock purchased from the crafts store. But his ultimate goal is actually to melt down salvaged brass and bronze components and make his own wire and rods. We can’t wait to see what he’ll be able to accomplish when he starts working with his own custom made metal, and are eagerly awaiting the future video that he says will go over the techniques he’s been working on.
This story is a great reminder of how stepping out of your comfort zone once and awhile can be a good thing. Entering the contest with no previous experience was a risk to be sure, but [Michael] came out the other side more experienced and with a few new friends in the community. So why not enter our latest contest and see where it takes you?
