Putting On A Show In The Rain

February 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

Let’s face it, walking around in the rain sucks. [Matth3w] is trying to add a little whimsy to an unpleasant experience by adding an LED matrix to his umbrella. The array contains 80 LEDs that are individually addressable. This is a mutiplexed array that relies on a MIC2981 source driver for the eight rows (or rings in this case), with the ten columns handled by the Arduino. The effect is quite nice as you can see in the video after the break. Now that he’s proven this works, you might want to etch your own PCB in order to get rid of the Arduino board and prototyping shield, making it easier to waterproof the control circuitry. This would make a nice addition to your illuminated umbrella stock.

Continue reading “Putting On A Show In The Rain” →

RGB Display Development

January 17, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[SeBsZ] tipped us off that he’s working on a display using RGB LEDs. He’s etched some nice surface mount controller boards to carry the ATmega8 microcontroller and NXP PCA9635 drivers. This setup uses the I2C bus to address each expansion board of 5 LED modules. Theoretically this hardware would allow for 638 RGB modules but because of power and refresh rate issues he’s set his sights on reaching somewhere between 100-125, a total of about 25 expansion boards.

There’s not a ton to show off yet. But we expect big things from the project. Partly because one of his goals is to generate a display that can be rolled up and easily moved, and partly because his large-scale light bulb displays are so impressive. Take a look at the video of his 60-bulb unit after the break.

Continue reading “RGB Display Development” →

Guerilla Theater Hits Two Wheels

January 17, 2010 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Tom] wanted to take the show on the road so he added lights to his bike using theater grade control hardware. The picture above shows three tail lights comprised of 195 LEDs. Built on perf-board, a DMX512 controller can display several patterns on each module. The lighting technician (bike pilot) controls the patterns through a series of switches on the handlebars. There’s several pages of details posted including schematics and firmware. This would bring a little extra fun the next time you ride in a Critical Mass event.

Know Your Resistors… Tell The Time

January 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 32 Comments

[Darren] built a clock that uses a resistor to display the time. Well, it really uses a model of a resistor. This extremely tardy entry in the Hackaday design challenge houses all of the electronics on a PCB the size of a business card. Four RGB LEDs shine up through holes in the wooden base to light bands on an acrylic tube. The colors correspond to the values used in the Resistor Color Code. In the picture above the clock is displaying 5:26 (that’s supposed to be a red band but the camera didn’t pick it up too well). The band in the center fades up over 60 seconds to signify AM, and down to show PM.

It may be late, but it’s a clever design. It looks sleek and it uses no buttons for an interface. [Darren] sourced the LEDs themselves as light sensors to display the date, and enter time setting mode.

Home Made Small Form Factor LED Projector

January 15, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ8Kq2wLrf0]

[Newtonn2] dropped a tip in our inbox this morning that made us quite happy. This is a step by step build of a small form factor LED based projector. While the size may not get some of you too excited at first, those of us who have built projectors before know that home made ones are usually quite large. This one is roughly the size of the small office projectors you would see in a large retailer. He’s using a 30 watt LEd for the light and we didn’t notice a lumen measurement anywhere, but it looks bright enough to be watchable. Pictures usually turn out dark, so in person, the projection probably looks more bright and crisp. Now he just needs to find a high definition LCD that size.

TF2 Kill Counter, Binary Style

December 30, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 27 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Pft-GPQWU]

After getting some fun new toys for Christmas, [IceColdFreezie] set up this kill counter for Team Fortress 2. At first glance, we weren’t that impressed. It’s an Arduino and a few LEDs. Then we saw that it was counting the kills in binary. We’re not sure if it gets much geekier than that. You can download the source code and try it out yourself. Just don’t make more than 31 kills.

[via littlebirdceo]

Ikea Dioder Hack

December 29, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

[Joseph] wrote in to tell us about his Ikea Dioder hack. The Dioder is a lighting system with a silly name from Ikea. It is basically 4 RGB LED bars that are connected to a controller that will cycle their colors in different manners. They aren’t individually addressable, and at $50 aren’t really that great of a deal for people who could build their own. [Joseph] thought that maybe, if the features could be extended, it could be a decent lighting system. He bought it and began searching. Disappointed by the lack of hacks available, he cracked it open and began brainstorming. Ultimately, he decided to interface it with his computer. He can now control it with software, so making an ambilight clone shouldn’t be too difficult.

He does mention that he thought of making 4 independent drivers so that each light bar could be a different color. We agree that this would be the next logical step, possibly even rewiring for individual access to each LED.