This wall clock built by [Alf Müller] is lovely, using two NeoPixel rings to mark the time by casting light onto a 3D-printed ring. The blue shows the minutes, made more discrete by a grid inside the ring. The green shows the hours. [Alf] has provided the code so you can rework the color scheme. It might be interesting to add seconds with the red LEDs, or perhaps a countdown triggered by a touch sensor…
Continue reading “3D-Printed LED Wall Clock Does Lots With Little”
Should a clock be round? Depends on the style of clock, we suppose. After all, we wouldn’t expect to see a digital clock with a round readout just for fun. But a binary clock — that’s another animal altogether. Whereas [JohnThinger] made just a few weeks back a linear binary clock using an RGB LED strip and an ATtiny, he decided it would look much better in the round.
Before you go decrying the fact that there are numbers other than 1 and 0 on the thing, those are simply the power of two by which one must multiply to get the time. And naturally, it’s done in three phases, with the yellow-green numbers representing the seconds, the pink-red representing minutes, and the blue standing for the current hour. No, the point is not to make life easier. But it’s a good-looking clock, no?
Just as before, an ATtiny85 is the brain, with an RTC chip and an oscillator to keep time. But now, the display involves negative space 3D-printed numbers and an RGB LED ring. Be sure to check it out after the break.
Continue reading “Circular Binary Clock Uses The Power To Tell Time”
[Kellechu] went full parent beast mode by creating a prom dress for her daughter. This incredible build is a tour-de-force of DIY crafting, combining sewing, electronics, 3D printing and programming.
The dress skirt is made of tulle that allows for the LED strip underneath to diffuse through. The top bodice is made of fiber optic fabric sewn between the fabric form with the dangling fiber optic threads grouped into bundles. The dangling fiber optic bundles were then inserted and glued into “out caps” that forced the strands to sit next to a NeoPixel LED. A 20 NeoPixel “Dots Strand” strip was strung around the waist line, affixing 12 of the NeoPixels with an “out cap” to light up the fiber optic bodice. The remaining NeoPixels were outfitted with a diffuser cap and hung lower to light up the tulle skirt portion of the dress.
A wand was 3D printed and housed with an RFM69HCW Packet Radio M0 Feather, a NeoPixel LED color ring and a TCS34725 Flora color sensor powered by a 2.2 Ah 3.7 V LiPo battery. Another RFM69HCW Packet Radio M0 Feather was placed in the dress to be able to receive messages from the wand so that the sensed color could be transmitted and the LED strip could be updated with the sensed color. The dress portion was powered by a 10 Ah 3.7 V LiPo, with the battery and electronics fitting snugly into yoga bike shorts with side pockets.
[Kellechu]’s Instructable is full of details about the process and is worth checking out. For example, [Kellechu] goes into detail about the troubles and care taken when dealing with the different media, making sure to avoid ironing the fiber optics so as not to melt the lines and experimenting with different sewing needles to limit the amount of dead fibers as collateral damage from the sewing process.
Dresses with LEDs and other lights are a big hit, as can be seen from our feature on an LED wedding dress.
Continue reading “Be The Star Of The Evening With This Light Up Prom Dress”
If you’re writing a screenplay or novel, there will likely be points along the way at which you can’t get enough encouragement from friends and family. While kind words are kind, acts such as [scubabear]’s can provide a push like no other. By commissioning another 3D designer friend to model a character from the first friend’s screenplay so he could print and animate it, [scubabear] fed two birds with one scone, you might say.
Designer friend [Sean] modeled the mighty Braomar in Maya and Z-brush, and [scubabear] did test prints on a Formlabs Form2 as they went along to keep an eye on things. Eventually, they had a discussion about making space for wires and such, so [Sean] took to Blender to make Braomar hollow enough for wires, but not so empty that he would collapse under the stress of being (we presume) the main character.
Braomar stands upon a sigil that changes color thanks to an RGB LED ring in the base that’s driven by an Arduino Nano. A single pixel in the fireball is wired through Braomar’s body and flickers with the help of an addressable LED sequencer board.
Our favorite part of this build has to be the power scheme. Not content to have a wire running out from the base or even a remote control for power-draining concerns, [scubabear] used disc magnets in the base to switch on the 9 V battery when Screenplay Friend rotates it.
Of course, if you need inspiration to even thing about beginning to write a screenplay or novel, maybe you should lead with the maquette-building and then construct a story around your creation.
This project was an entry into the 2022 Sci-Fi Contest. Check out all of the winning entries here.
Security cameras are a commodity item these days, but that doesn’t mean [edgett’s] design using a Pi Zero, an Arducam, an LED ring, and active cooling isn’t worth a look. This is a great example of how integrating some off-the-shelf modules and 3D printing can create very professional-looking results. There’s also a trackball interface so you can control the camera. The software, written in Python, is available on GitHub.
The trackball doesn’t move the camera, but it does manage a menu system that lets you capture a photo or video, set the optical parameters like exposure, shutter, and ISO, and launch Camera Remote to offer a Web-based interface instead of the trackball.
If you add infrared illumination, you can swap out the camera for an IR version and have a nice-looking night vision camera, too. The camera is reasonably compact. Not including the lens and the tripod, the camera measures 100 by 44 by 44 mm. So under two inches square and about 4 inches long.
We worried a little about gluing the LED ring down, but then again our phones are all glued together these days, so maybe we should stop fretting. One thing we didn’t see on either site, though, was a picture taken with the camera itself. However, the 12-megapixel camera and quality lens should do a great job. We’ve even seen that particular camera module work with a much smaller computer recently.
After the year humanity has endured, we could all use a little more relaxation in our lives. This atmosphere lamp is just the thing to set a relaxing ambience for work, studying, or hanging out. Just touch the surface and the light ripples to life, resembling the concentric circles that form on the surface of still water when it is touched. When the light settles, it looks like an inviting pool that’s ready for a nighttime swim.
There aren’t really any surprises inside — the lamp is operated via capsense by touching the center of the top. Three NeoPixel rings and an RGB LED strip provide the lighting, and an Arduino UNO runs the show. [Qttting_F] used an inexpensive ceramic bowl with a piece of acrylic for a lid, but this could just as easily be printed in white PLA or something. Check it out in action after the break.
Ambience is nice, but sometimes you need something more functional. Those types of lamps can be printed, too.
While there are a lot of objects from the Sims that we wish were real, we probably wish more than anything that everyone had a mood indicator hovering above their heads at all times. It would make working from home go a lot more smoothly, for instance. [8BitsAndAByte] made this Bluetooth-controlled plumb bob as part of their Sims Halloween costume, but we think it has real day-to-day value as this pandemic wears on, either as a mood ring or a portable free/busy indicator.
The hardware is about as simple as it gets — an Adafruit Feather nRF52 Bluefruit controls a pair of NeoPixel rings, one for each half of the translucent 3D-printed plumb bob. Power comes from a 500mAh battery, and all the electronics are situated inside of an attractive hat. Check out the build video after the break.
There’s more than one way to use color to convey information. This seven-segment temperature display does it with thermochromic film.
Continue reading “Sims-Style Plumb Bob Broadcasts Your Mood”
