ddrysfeöd circuit art sound and light scultpture

Labyrinthian Circuit Sculpture Evokes Moods With Sound And Light

October 20, 2021 by Ryan Flowers 5 Comments

In a famous letter penned by Victorian era author Oscar Wilde, he wrote:

“Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility.”

We can’t help but wonder if [Eirik Brandal] was evoking such Wilde thoughts when he wrote to tell us about ddrysfeöd, an electronic sound and light sculpture which he called “uselessly applied electronics.” Given the mood created by the video below the break, we have to agree that it is indeed quite artful. But if it serves a purpose to inspire and cause wonderment, is it really useless? Let the philosophers philosophize. On to the hack!

[Eirik] was himself inspired by mazes such as those found in children’s activity books and magazines whose goal is to keep a child ~~busy~~ challenged by drawing a solid line from start to finish. With these in mind, [Eirik] constructed ddrysfeöd as an intricate entanglement of electronics, metal, clear and mirrored acrylic, and plated steel, all flung into a three dimensional vortex.

LED’s of red and white oscillate in time with each other. Orchestrating the multimedia symphony is an ESP32, with one core relegated to dealing with the mundane functions of the sculpture while the other waves its electronic wand to keep the ensemble suitably arranged. LED’s are bored into the base, and the acrylic is sanded on the edges to diffuse the supplied light. The electronics run on the usual +5 V, but a +12 V power supply gives volume to the LM380 audio amplifier. We also appreciated that [Eirik] expanded his skills on this project by using Sketchup to plan out the project, even printing the patterns for cutting and drilling the acrylic glass.

If [Eirik]’s build style looks familiar, it may be because you’ve seen it here on Hackaday’s Circuit Sculpture Contest, where some of his work was named Most Beautiful. You can also feast your eyes on a BEAM bot inspired pummer in the shape of a satellite. And remember, if you run across something that presses your buttons, let us know via the Tip Line!

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ESP32 Clock Pushes Outrun Graphics Over Composite

October 19, 2021 by Tom Nardi 24 Comments

We’ve covered plenty of clocks powered by the ESP32, but this one from [Marcio Teixeira] is really something special. Rather than driving a traditional physical display, the microcontroller is instead generating a composite video signal of an animated digital clock. This could be fed into whatever device you wish, but given the 80’s synthwave style it’s pumping out, you’ll probably want to find a suitably retro CRT to do it justice.

Specifically this is a variant of the “Dali” clock, where each digit seems to melt and morph into its successor. Though his version doesn’t necessarily share code with all the previous iterations, [Marcio] does credit the developers who have pulled off similar visual tricks going all the way back to 1979. Given the vintage of this particular animation, the neon skyline and infinite scrolling grid certainly feel like a perfect fit.

Want to add a little vaporwave vibe to your own workbench? Assuming you’ve already got a 80s style CRT, all you need is an ESP32 and two wires stuck into the composite video port. One goes to ground, and the other goes to the chip’s analog pin. Once everything is powered up, you’ll be able to configure the clock with a web-based interface. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

In the documentation, [Marcio] calls out a few open source projects which were instrumental to getting his clock off the ground. The pioneering work [bitluni] did to get video out of the ESP32 is something of a given, but he also sends a hat tip to [rossumur] for his collection of 8-bit game console emulators written for the microcontroller. Projects like this are a fantastic example of what’s possible when a community works together to truly push the envelope.

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Art Project Fast And Fouriously Transforms Audio Into Eye Candy

October 14, 2021 by Ryan Flowers 2 Comments

Fast Fourier Transforms. Spectrum Analyzers. Waterfall displays. Not long ago, such terms were reserved for high end test gear. But oh, how things have changed! It’s no surprise to many Hackaday readers that modern microcontrollers have transformed the scene as they become more powerful and as a result are endowed with more and more powerful software libraries. [mircemk] has used such a library along with other open source software combined with mostly off the shelf hardware to create what he calls the DIY FFT Spectrum Analyzer. Rather than being a piece of test gear, this artful project aims to please the eye.

The overall build is relatively simple. Audio is acquired via a line-in jack or a microphone, and then piped into an ESP32. The ESP32 runs the audio through the FFT routine, sampling, slicing, and dicing the audio into 16 individual bands. The visual output is displayed on a 16 x 16 WS2812 Led Matrix. [mircemk] wrote several routines for displaying the incoming audio, with a waterfall, a graph, and other visualizations that are quit aesthetically pleasing. Some of them are downright mesmerizing! You can see the results in the video below the break.

Of course the build doesn’t stop with slapping some hardware and a few passive components together. To really be finished, it needs to be encased in something worth displaying. [mircemk] does not disappoint, as a beautiful 3D-printed enclosure wraps it all up nicely.

We think that the final product is great, and it reminds us of some of the very things that inspired us early on in our hacking careers. We would love to see this project integrated with an Interactive Musical Art Installation of any kind, the more esoteric the better. Perhaps a 555 timer synth could fit the bill? Be sure to share your own hacks with us via the Tip Line!

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A tiny TV that shows weather, news, and the classic test pattern.

Tiny TV Tells The Temperature Tale

October 13, 2021 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

Once upon a time, we would run home from the bus stop to watch Gargoyles and Brady Bunch reruns on the family TV, a late-1970s console Magnavox number that sat on the floor and was about 50% more cabinet than CRT. The old TV, a streamlined white Zenith at least ten years older, had been relegated to the man cave in the basement. It looked so mod compared to the “new” TV, but that’s not the aesthetic my folks were after. They wanted their electronics to double as furniture.

This little TV is a happy medium between the two styles, and for us, it’s all about those feet. But instead of cartoons, it switches between showing the current weather and the top news headlines. Inside that classy oak cabinet is an LCD, an ESP32, and an SD card module. The TV uses OpenWeatherMap and pulls the corresponding weather image from the SD card based on time of day — light images for day, and dark images for night.

We love that it shows the SMPTE color bars, aka the standard American TV test pattern as it switches between weather and news. After showing the top headlines, it automatically switches back to the weather channel. Be sure to check out the short demo video after the break.

Do you like your tiny televisions in strange places? Here’s one you can use to trim your tree this year.

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A wall clock with exposed circuit boards

Drunk Wall Clock Uses Convoluted Circuits To Display Time

September 20, 2021 by Robin Kearey 9 Comments

Here at Hackaday we can never get enough of odd clocks, and we’re delighted to see [Dan O’Shea]’s creation called the Wifi-Telnet-FPGA-NTSC Drunk Wall Clock. That mouthful is an accurate description of what it does: at the heart of the device is an ESP32 that uses WiFi to connect to a Raspberry Pi. It then telnets into the system, logs in, and requests the current time using the Linux date command. So far, so ordinary.

The “FPGA” part is where it gets weirder: the ESP32 is hooked up to a VGA1306 board. This is a little PCB with an FPGA that emulates an OLED display and outputs the image to a VGA connector. [Dan] could have simply hooked up a VGA display to this, but instead went for another layer of complexity by converting the VGA signal to something resembling composite video, using nothing more than three resistors. The resulting “NTSC” signal is then fed into a small TFT display that shows the time.

The clock got its “drunk” label because the process of repeatedly running the date command and parsing its output is slow and prone to hiccups, resulting in a display where the seconds advance in a somewhat unsteady manner. This fits well with the overall aesthetic of the clock, which consists of a heap of PCBs held together with cable ties and electrical tape. Mounted on a round panel of recycled wood, it makes a beautiful wall ornament for any hacker lab.

We love projects like this that accomplish a simple task in a convoluted way, and there’s no shortage of needlessly complicated clocks, whether physically drawing the time or using machine-learning data. But if you simply like your clocks with their electronics exposed, check out this free-form LED clock or this neat circuit sculpture clock.

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Tiny ESP32 Strider Walks The Walk

September 6, 2021 by Danie Conradie 3 Comments

Wheels might be the simplest method of locomotion for robots, but walkers are infinitely more satisfying to watch. This is certainly the case for [Chen Liang’s] tiny Strider walker controlled by a ESP32 camera board.

The Strider mechanism might look similar to Strandbeest walkers, but it lifts its feet higher, allowing it to traverse rougher terrain. [Chen]’s little 3D printed version is driven by a pair of geared N20 motors, with three legs on each side. The ESP32 camera board allows for control and an FPV video feed using WiFi, with power coming from a 14500 LiFePO4 battery. The width required by the motors, leg mechanisms, and bearings means the robot is quite wide, to the point that it could get stuck on something that’s outside the camera’s field of view. [Chen] is working to make it narrower by using continuous rotation servos and a wire drive shaft.

We’ve seen no shortage or riffs on the many-legged walkers, like the TrotBot and Strider mechanism developed by [Wade] and [Ben Vagle], and their website is an excellent resource for prospective builders.

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An Earthquake Display To Keep You Abreast Of Rumblings Worldwide

September 3, 2021 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

The Internet has brought us the ability to share data all over the globe, and nearly instantaneously at that. It’s revolutionized the sharing of science across the world, and taking advantage of this global data network is this earthquake display from [AndyGadget].

The build relies on an ESP32 fitted with an ILI9486 TFT display. The screen is in color and has a nice 480×320 resolution. This enables it to display a reasonably legible world map using the Web Mercator projection to fit the rectangular screen. The microcontroller then pulls in information from Seismic Portal, a site that aggregates data from seismographs and other sensors scattered all over the world. Data from the site is pulled into the device live and overlaid on the world map, allowing the viewer to see the location of any current earthquakes at a glance.

It’s a great project, and one that we reckon would make a great addition to any university geology department. If it’s sparked an interest, consider diving deeper into the world of seismic analysis and data yourself!