[Fran]’s LEDs, Nixies, And VFDs.

January 4, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

With a love of blinky and glowey things, [Fran] has collected a lot of electronic display devices over the years. Now she’s doing a few teardowns and tutorials on some of her (and our) favorite parts: LEDs and VFD and Nixie tubes

Perhaps it’s unsurprising that someone with hardware from a Saturn V flight computer also has a whole lot of vintage components, but we’re just surprised at how complete [Fran]’s collection is. She has one of the very first commercial LEDs ever made. It’s a very tiny red LED made by Monsanto (yes, that company) packaged in a very odd lead-and-cup package.

Also in her LED collection is a strange Western Electric part that’s green, but not the green you expect from an LED. This LED is more of an emerald color – not this color, but more like the green you get with a CMYK process. It would be really cool to see one of these put in a package with red, green, and blue LED, and could have some interesting applications considering the color space of an RGB LED.

Apart from her LEDs, [Fran] also has a huge collection of VFD and Nixie tubes. Despite the beliefs of eBay sellers, these two technologies are not the same: VFDs are true vacuum tubes with a phosphorescent coating and work something like a CRT turned inside out. Nixies, on the other hand, are filled with a gas (usually neon) that turns to plasma when current flows through one of the digits. [Fran] has a ton of VFDs and Nixies – mostly military surplus – and sent a few over to [Dave Jones] for him to fool around with.

It’s all very cool stuff and a great lead-in to what we hear [Fran] will be looking at next: electroluminescent displays found in the Apollo Guidance Computer.

Videos below.

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UFO-looking RGB LED RC Plane Lights Up The Night, Uses All The Acronyms

December 30, 2013 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

[Roballoba] decided to combine his love for RC planes, things that light up, and photography, and we’re glad he did. He shares his method in this Instructable for illuminating a bare styrofoam replacement fuselage for a Parkzone Stryker RC plane. There are many more amazing pictures there as well.

He used low-tack tape to lay out the LED strips on the fuselage, solder the connections, and test them. Once he was satisfied with the arrangment, he flipped the strips face down so the foam diffuses the light. The lights are powered by a 12V Li-Po battery he soldered to a deans connector. Finally, [Roballoba] covered and heat sealed everything with Doculam, a very cost-effective laminate that offers great protection and security.

He used some LED corn lights as afterburners, which is a nice touch of realism. There is a video after the break where [Roballoba] shows us the connections up close and then runs through some light show options. Another video of a nighttime flight is waiting for you in the write up.

Spent too much money on eggnog and a new console this year to be able to replicate this build? $30 will snag what you need for this smartphone-controlled paper plane we featured a few weeks back. You could always BeDazzle it.

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LED Matrix Mask Will Scare Up Holiday Cheer

December 24, 2013 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

[Davide] sent us this fun LED matrix mask he built using an ATMega8 and 74LS595N shift registers. Each of the eyes is an 8×8 LED matrix, and the mouth is made from two 8x8s. [Davide] used a ULN2803A Darlington transistor array to drive the matrices.

When the user steps behind the mask, an IR sensor detects that a face is within range and activates the facial features. The code randomly runs the eye and mouth patterns. If the user starts speaking, a microphone element detects his voice and a separate speaking mouth pattern is executed.

The mask body and stand are découpaged with pages from Dylan Dog comics. [Davide] says he built the mask years ago, but decided to submit it to the 2013 Inverart Art Fair in Milan. As you can probably imagine, the mask has been a big hit with the kids so far. Stick around to see [Davide]’s Santa-fied demonstration after the jump. [Davide] didn’t give us any details on that sweet hat, unfortunately.

If you require a better degree of protection or more LEDs, check out this LED helmet.

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Touching Conversations: Email Snippets Scroll By On Electro-Embroidery Piece

December 19, 2013 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

[Wei Chieh Shih] really moves the needle when it comes to wearable technology. His textile design project entitled I Am Very Happy I Hope You Are Too is a striking marriage of masterful hand embroidery, delicate circuitry, and careful programming.

[Wei] is using an Arduino micro to drive a matrix of surface-mount LEDs in the Hello, World video, which is a ramp-up to the scrolling text version that’s ~~in progress~~ now finished. That full version is part of his residency project at Arquetopia in Oaxaca, Mexico and displays snippets of emails from his past relationships. It’s huge, with multiple matrices as large as 8×25 pixels!

No build notes could be found for this or any of [Wei]’s similar projects, like this awesomely dangerous 200 laser diode jacket or this eerily beautiful light installation on Taiwan’s north beach. Based on the pictures, our speculation is that he is using ordinary 6-strand embroidery floss to make stem or half cross-stitches on all the paths. He then runs very thin, flexible conductor underneath the channel of stitches and solders the wires to the component pads.

If [Wei] wants another way to wear his heart on his sleeve, he could investigate these dynamic LED clothing hacks.

Update: [Wei] has completed this project, and has more information available at his Behance site.

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Arduino Xmas Tree Shield

December 18, 2013 by Kevin Darrah 12 Comments

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Nothing reminds us that it’s the holiday season more than an LED Christmas Tree submission. This obviously is not the first of its kind, but [Jose] does offer up a new technique using addressable RGB LEDs.

[Jose] decided to use 20 WS2812B RGB LEDs, which if you haven’t seen before, are RGB LEDs with an integrated controller. Yep, that’s right, just power/ground and 1 data line is all that is needed to control hundreds of RGB LEDs. This LED tree’s design is simple: a custom-etched PCB cut it in to the shape of a Christmas tree. The WS2812B LEDs helped keep everything clean, so the tree lacks any ‘ugly’ ornaments, except for the required bypass cap here and there. For an added bonus, the tree’s LEDs are synchronized to music generated by an Arduino via a piezo buzzer. Why is it a shield? Well, the whole tree plugs in nicely to a standard Arduino interface. This looks like the perfect starter project to familiarize yourself with addressable LEDs, or at least to get you warmed up before building your own infinity portal.

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Snowden Immortalized As Bond Villain In Edge-Lit Acrylic Poster

December 17, 2013 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

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[Wilywyrm] needed to come up with a final project for art class that commented on a social issue. Healthcare, schmealthcare, he said, and busted out this movie poster about the NSA spying scandal instead.

The circuit uses three extended-duty astable 555 timers to control the brightness of the 5050 RGB common-anode LED strips that run up the sides of the 24″ x 12″ x 1/4″ acrylic panels. Each of the three panels was laser-engraved at 600 DPI on an Epilog laser engraver and features a different aspect of the poster. There’s one for Snowden, one for Daniel Craig, and one for the text.

[Wilywyrm] tied the color channels together in the first panel to output white light. He used red for the second panel and blue for the third. A complete list of parts with build notes is available on his Google Drive. [Wilywyrm]’s notes include improvement ideas, like making all the RGB strips color-adjustable with more 555s or a microcontroller and timers.

Perhaps [Wilywyrm] could get into the clear whiteboard business after college.

Simple 10 Watt LED Driver Is Hot Stuff

November 20, 2013 by Adam Fabio 23 Comments

[Peter] needed to drive a high power LED for his microscope. Rather than pick up a commercial LED driver, he built a simple constant current LED driver and fan control. We’ve featured [Peter’s] pumpkin candle LED work here on Hackaday in the past. Today he’s moving on to higher power LEDs. A 10 watt LED would be a good replacement light source for an old halogen/fiber optic ring light setup. [Peter] started with his old standby – an 8 pin Microchip PIC. In this case, a PIC12F1501. A PIC alone won’t handle a 10 watt LED, so he utilized a CAT4101 constant current LED driver from ON Semi. The PIC performs three tasks in this circuit. It handles user input from two buttons, generates a PWM signal to the LED driver, and generates a PWM signal for a cooling fan.

Control is simple: Press both buttons and the LED comes on full bright. Press the “up” button, and the LED can be stepped up from 10% to 100% in 10 steps. The “down” button drops the LED power back down. [Peter] even had a spare pin. He’s currently using it as an LED on/off confirmation, though we’d probably use it with a 1wire temperature sensor as a backup to thermal protection built into the CAT4101. It may be overkill, but we’d also move the buttons away from that 7805 linear regulator. Being that this circuit will be used with a microscope, it may eventually be operated by touch alone. It would be a bit surprising to try to press a button and end up with a burnt fingertip!

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