Directing Ambient Light For Some Extra Glow

February 11, 2023 by Dave Rowntree 17 Comments

[Yuichiro Morimoto] wanted to create a decorative lamp, one that wasn’t burdened with batteries or wires, but used just the ambient light in the room to create a directed glow effect. Using a coloured circular acrylic sheet, with a special coating (not specified) ambient light impinging on the surface is diffused toward the edge. This centre sheet is embedded in an opalescent sheet, which scatters the light from the center sheet, giving a pleasant glow, kind of akin to a solar corona. An additional diffuser cover sheet on the front covers over the edge to hide it, and further enhance the glow effect.

Details of the ‘special coating’ are scarce, with the coloured sheet described as a condenser plate. This clearly isn’t the same as diffuser plastic, as that cannot be seen through as clearly as some of the photographs show. So we’re a little stumped on this one! Please answer in the comments if you can, ahem, shed some light on this one!

When talking about ambient light, many people will think more along the lines of active lighting, for example, adaptive ambient light around a TV like this hack.

Continue reading “Directing Ambient Light For Some Extra Glow” →

A hand holding a paper cup pours orange resin into a mold. There are several different colors in a spiral inside a circular mold on a circular platform with holes around its perimeter sitting on a wooden table.

Reproducing Vinyl Records In Resin

November 1, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 9 Comments

While most are just plain, vinyl records can be found in a variety of colors, shapes, and some even glow in the dark. [Evan and Katelyn] decided to spruce up a plain old record by replicating it in bright, glow-in-the-dark resin.

By first making a silicone mold of the vinyl record and then pouring several different colors of resin into the resulting mold, [Evan and Katelyn] were able to make a groovy-looking record that still retained the texture necessary to transmit the original sounds of the record. The resulting piece has some static, but the music is still identifiable. That said, audiophiles would probably prefer to leave this up on the wall instead of in their phonograph.

Acrylic rings were laser cut and bolted together to build the form for the silicone mold with the original record placed at the bottom. To prevent bubbles, the silicone was degassed in a vacuum chamber before pouring over the record and the resin was cured in a pressure pot after pouring into the resulting mold.

If you’re interested in how records were originally made, check out this installment of Retrotechtacular. A more practical application of resin might be this technique to reproduce vintage plastic parts.

Continue reading “Reproducing Vinyl Records In Resin” →

Water Droplet Sculpture Using LEDs And Arduino

March 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

This water sculpture can stop drops of water in mid-air. This is accomplished by flashing LEDs to illuminate the droplets at just the right time. But it’s not limited to blinky lights alone. The top of the frame has eight nozzles, each fed by its own pump. An Arduino controls the pumps and the lights making it possible to create different motion effects by adjusting how events line up. For instance, the image above shows just two of the water nozzles on, but in the video after the break it appears one is dripping downward while the other is dripping upward.

Alas, there’s few build details for this but the source code is available for downloading. If we were going to build one of these ourselves we’d probably try to regulate the drips using some solenoids built from scratch. How would you do it? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Continue reading “Water Droplet Sculpture Using LEDs And Arduino” →

Zinc Sulfide Glow Power At Home

October 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

Further solidifying her mad-scientist persona, [Jeri Ellsworth] is making glow powder with household chemicals. When we saw the title of the video we though it would be fun to try it ourselves, but the first few minutes scared that out of us.

To gather the raw materials she puts some pennies in a bench motor and files them into powder. From there it’s trial and error with different cleaners and tools to create just the right dangerous reaction to get the chemical properties she’s looking for.

Check out her experiments after the break. And if you find you’re wanting more, go back and take a look at her EL wire fabrication process.

Continue reading “Zinc Sulfide Glow Power At Home” →

Out Now: EL Coat, Coming Soon: EL Hat

August 10, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 41 Comments

[Render] says his coat is simply “enhanced with EL wire”, but we know the truth. He’s secretly an alien that can’t block out all of his glowing green skin with a the black coat. No? Fine,

You can put away the sewing machine, [Render] simply used a needle and fishing line to attach ~50-70 foot of electroluminescent wire to the outside of a coat he picked up at a local clothing shop. Solder and program in an inverter and controller board thanks to SparkFun, and you’re ready to go.

Just double check all your connections, high voltage directly on your person is not fun. Trust us.

Ghost Matrix, Glow Printing

May 23, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x24ESDCkmN0]

Ok, there aren’t any usefull applications we can think of for this one, but we want one really badly. This is a combination of a miniPOV, some UV LEDs, a CNC rig, and some glow in the dark paper. The Ghost matrix works similar to a dot matrix printer where it flashes the UV light to activate the paper. The final effect is very nice. Great job on this one.

[via Laughing Squid]

Shih Chieh Huang’s Recycled Bots

July 23, 2008 by Kimberly Lau 5 Comments

We’re really sorry to have missed GLOW. It was a unique all-night art and music event that took place the evening of July 19, 2008, in Santa Monica, and lasted until dawn. We were most intrigued by [Shih Chieh Huang]’s haunting robotic sculptures. They were eerily beautiful, and appeared to be alive and “breathing”. He took some unusual materials – plastic bags and bottles, computer fans and circuit boards, among others, and combined them all to give the creatures otherworldly auras. Simultaneously familiar and strange, the sculptures are designed to evoke marine life, yet they’re completely different, in both materials and structure. More coverage and pictures of the event can be found at LAist, NOTCOT, and on Flickr.