led

1376 Articles

LED Buttons

May 4, 2009 by 26 Comments

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For their final project in ECE 4760 at Cornell, [Christina] and [Joe] made a small single octave keyboard using LEDs as the input. They used a total of 63 LEDs to make the keys. Each key consists of 9 LEDs, with the center one acting as a sensor. When you lay your finger on it, the light reflects off of your finger and is picked up by the center LED. An ATMega 664 runs custom code to play a sound. You can find out more details about the construction as well as download the source code on the site. You can also download an example movie of it in action ( 7MB .mp4)

Space Invader Button

April 14, 2009 by 36 Comments

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[Marcus] saw [Alex]’s 64 pixel project and decided it could be implemented in even less space. Pictured above is his Space Invader button with a bicolor LED matrix. The controller board is all SMD and piggybacked on the matrix. An ATmega164P drives the 24 pins via transistors. In addition to animation, the board can do LED sensing too. It’s a very clever project and [Marcus] has some notes about working with such tiny components. You can see a video of it below. Continue reading “Space Invader Button” →

Spatialized Umbrella

April 12, 2009 by 20 Comments

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Reader [Joe Saavedra] sent in his latest project: the spatialized umbrella. The base of each umbrella rib features an LED, speaker, and distance sensor. These are connected to an ATMega168 microcontroller running the Arduino environment. The IR sensor triggers a rain drop sound based on proximity. Shorter distances mean more droplets are played. The sounds are generated using a lookup table and the digital pins. You can see the demo video embedded below.

Using the Arduino environment without the associated board is part of another idea that [Joe] is working on. The MapDuino Project uses the standard Arduino hardware for programming, but then transfers the chip to a more barebones circuit in target project. They based their initial work on the ITP breadboard Arduino. Continue reading “Spatialized Umbrella” →

RGB 7 Segment Display

April 11, 2009 by 22 Comments

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[Markus] noticed a lack of 7 segment LED displays that could show RGB. Like any hacker, he sought to remedy this.  The solution he came up with was to basically remove all the electronics from the plastic body of the display. He then mounted new surface mount RGB LEDs in the correct places. This may be a bit messy, and definitely increased the footprint in this layout, but as you can see from the pictures on his site, the final result is quite nice. What uses can you think of for these?

The Bulbdial Clock Comes To Life

April 8, 2009 by 7 Comments

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Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has built the bulbdial clock, an idea originated by Ironic Sans.  It’s basically a high definition indoor sundial. The LEDs arranged in a circle shine a light on the peg in the middle casting a shadow, just like a sundial. There are 3 colors of rings, allowing for hour, minute, and second shadows. This isn’t the first time that Ironic Sans has seen ideas come to reality. There were the pre pixelated reality show clothes and the sneaky histogram hidden message system. While it is a cute idea, it isn’t really new. People have been patenting this idea for a while.

Simple, Elegant, Lemon Battery

April 5, 2009 by 16 Comments

[Madaeon] pointed us toward this entry for the Instructables Epilog challenge. While this may not be extremely complex, or have as many wires as our typical post, it is a fantastic example of thinking outside the box. How many lemon batteries have we seen? A lot. This one stands out as being more elegantly displayed and functional at the same time. In its final form, you sprinkle lemon juice on it’s petals and it lights up. If you ever find yourself in the position of teaching someone about electronics, remember this project. Sometimes aesthetics can make a dull simple project take on a life of its own.