Millennium Falcon Docking Bay Doubles As Table

April 22, 2020 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

A glass table makes a perfect display case for showing off whatever’s important to you, but if you want keep the dust off of your treasures, closing up the sides is probably a wise move. It might not be a bad idea to put some lighting in there to make sure everything is easy to see. You might as well make the lights RGB and remote controlled, so you can fiddle with the look from across the room. Of course, you could go all in and just make the thing a diorama…

It’s not hard to imagine the line of thinking that convinced [Erv Plecter] he should turn a simple glass table into a docking bay for a model of the Millennium Falcon, and looking at the final results, we think it was the right move. With an incredible attention to detail, what started out a generic looking table and rather modest toy, have been combined into an interactive display that could woo even the staunchest of Trekkies.

If you’ve ever considered lighting a model, this project is an excellent example to follow. The Hasbro toy that [Erv] started with certainly wasn’t what you’d call studio quality; the little lighting it featured wasn’t even accurate to how the ship appears in the films. But with some reference material, fiber optic cables, and enough Arduinos to drive it all, the final lighting is truly a marvel. We’d say the engine is our favorite part, but those tiny lit panels in the cockpit are hard to beat.

While the Falcon is clearly the star of the show, the docking bay itself is certainly no afterthought. The back-lit panels, with their inscrutable Imperial design aesthetic, look fantastic. The addition of small details like crates and barrels, plus the glossy black PVC sheet used for the floor, really brings the whole scene to life. It’s almost a shame that the ship itself is so big, as a smaller model would have left more room to toss in a few Stormtroopers and droids out on patrol.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody augment a “toy” grade model with additional lighting effects. While the scale miniature aficionados in the audience might turn their nose up at some of the artistic liberties taken on these low fidelity models, we think any normal person would be blown away if they saw them in person.

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RGB Kitchen Uses Pots To Stir Up Color

April 17, 2020 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

Anyone who has done anything with RGB LEDs knows that their ability to display pretty much any color is somehow both the best and worst thing about them. How do you get it right? How do you make your results repeatable? [Thomas] has the answer. He dug around in the ol’ parts cupboard, found a few pots, and got to work making this stay-home stew of a project — an on-demand RGB LED color mixer.

Three cleverly color-coded potentiometers and an Arduino let [Thomas] step through 0-255 to mix various values of red, blue, and green. The shade that gets made is displayed live on a set of 10 individual NeoPixels that are laid out under a frosty diffusing panel. Each of the RGB values are also shown on an 16×2 LCD.

This is one of those projects that hits a sweet spot of being simple, useful, and fun. It’s even nice-looking and compact. What more could you want from a project cobbled together from ingredients on hand? [Thomas] is even giving away the code recipe.

Once you dial in your ideal colors, why not make a gesture-controlled lamp?

Reverse Engineering An RGB Keyboard Under Linux

April 14, 2020 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

Hardware support under Linux is far better than it ever has been in the past. These days, most things “just work” out of the box, and you probably won’t have to compile any custom kernel modules. Certainly a far cry from where things were a decade ago. But that doesn’t mean everything will work to 100% of its abilities. Take for example, the Duck keyboard that [Cynthia Revström] has. Sure it works as a basic keyboard under any OS, but getting those fancy RGB LEDs working is another story entirely.

Don’t get the wrong idea here, [Cynthia] isn’t just trying to get the keyboard to flash along to music; the goal was to use the RGB lighting of the Ducky keyboard for notifications that the user can’t possibly ignore. Even the most laser-focused among us would have a hard time not noticing that the entire keyboard is blinking red. But the “DuckyRGB” software that you need to do something like that is Windows-only and apparently distributed via a sketchy Google Drive link. Yikes.

The first step to creating an alternative was to spin up a Windows VM and install DuckyRGB. From there, Wireshark could listen in between the virtual computer and the Ducky keyboard to see what the software was sending over the wire. After identifying a version number being sent in the clear, [Cynthia] was able to isolate the LED commands by searching for the hex color codes. From there, it was a relatively simple matter of writing some glue code to connect it up to an alert service and get notifications going.

There was only one problem; the keyboard didn’t work anymore. Turns out the tool that [Cynthia] wrote to control the keyboard’s LEDs was claiming the device so the kernel couldn’t access it for normal input. It took a detour with HIDAPI to get everyone playing together nicely, and now changing the color of your Ducky keyboard on Linux doesn’t turn it into a paperweight.

Even if you don’t have a Ducky keyboard, or aren’t particularly interested in having its LEDs blinked at you if you do, this project is a phenomenal example of practical USB reverse engineering. [Cynthia] says the inspiration for this project came from friend [Ben Cox], who’s write-up on creating USB userspace drivers we covered last year. If you’ve got and old USB gadget with Windows-only drivers, maybe it’s time you take a crack at unlocking it.

Table Tennis Ball Lamp Serves Up Style

April 11, 2020 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

Although RGB LEDs diffused by ping pong balls will probably never stop being cool, [thomasj152] feels that flat panels of balls have become a bit of a tired concept. After a lot of effort and two complete builds, he has spun up an 80-ball spherical lamp. The results are positively glowing!

All the balls are connected together with some clever 3D printed pieces that were inspired by the classic soccer ball layout of hexagons and pentagons. [thomasj152] chose this shape because it’s fairly easy to code animation sequences for it.

The design also breaks down nicely into two halves, which makes it easier to wire. All 80 of the balls are controlled with a single NodeMCU ESP8266 development board.

This stranded version is the second lamp [thomasj152] built. The first one used the same soccer ball style, but had RGB LED strips instead, and the balls were wrangled with laser-cut support pieces. Strips lay much flatter than strands do, leaving the inside tidy and spacious. Unfortunately, the LED strips got fried accidentally, which is extra sad because the strips version looks like way more work.

The bright spot here is that [thomasj152] can now provide instructions for both versions. He even has code that cycles through each pentagon and hexagon section, lighting them up one at a time for testing and sanity checks. Roll past the break for a walk-through video that shows both versions and explains the differences.

Got a bunch of wall space begging for blinkenlights? Apparently it’s possible to throw together a working 300-ball video wall in less than 24 hours. Who knew?

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NeoPixel Matrix Simulation Lets You Virtually Groove To The Lights

April 4, 2020 by Al Williams 5 Comments

You are stuck at home quarantined and you want to do some Arduino projects. The problem is you don’t have all the cool devices you want to use. Sure, you can order them, but the stores are slow shipping things that aren’t essential these days. If you want to get a headstart while you are waiting for the postman, check out Wokwi’s Playground. For example, you can write code to drive a virtual NeoPixel 16×16 matrix. There’s even example code to get you started.

There are quite a few other choices in the playground including Charlieplexed LEDs, a keypad, and an LCD. There are also challenges. For example, in the traffic light challenge, you are given code that uses a task scheduler library to implement a traffic light. You have to add a turn signal to the code.

In addition to LEDs in various configurations, the site has some serial bus components, an LCD, a keypad, and a NeoPixel strip. There are also a few tools including an EasyEDA to KiCad converter and a way to share sourcecode similar to Pastebin.

Of course, simulations only get you so far, but the site is a fun way to play with some different I/O devices. It would be very nice if you could compose for the different components together, but you could work your code in sections, if necessary. You can do similar things with TinkerCad circuits. If you want to install software, there’s a simulator for you, too.

Seven-Segment Shelves Do Double Duty

March 18, 2020 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

[Lewis] of [DIY Machines] was always on the lookout for that perfect something to hang above the couch. After spending a lot of time fruitlessly searching, he designed and built this awesome shelving unit with recessed lighting that doubles as a huge 7-segment clock.

The clock part works as you probably expect — an Elegoo Nano fetches the time from a real-time clock module and displays it on the WS2812B LED strips arranged in 7-segment formations. There’s a photocell module to detect the ambient light level in the room, so the display is never brighter than it needs to be.

Don’t have a 3D printer yet? Then you may need to pass on this one. Aside from the wood back plane and the electronics, the rest of this build is done with printed plastic, starting with 31 carefully-designed supports for the shelves. There are also the LED strip holders, and the sleeve pieces that hide all the wires and give this project its beautifully finished look.

You may have noticed that the far left digit isn’t a full seven segments. If you’re committed to 24-hour time, you’d have to adjust everything to allow for that, but you’d end up with two more shelves. Given the fantastic build video after the break, it probably wouldn’t take too long to figure all that out.

We like big clocks and we cannot lie. If you have room for it, build something like this blinkenlit beauty.

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Latest FlexLED Milestone Refines The POV Display

February 28, 2020 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

With his FlexLED project, [Carl Bugeja] is trying to perfect a simple and affordable persistence of vision (POV) display capable of generating “holographic” characters in mid-air. Traditionally POV systems spin LEDs rapidly to create the desired illusion, but that means motors, slip rings, and noise. As the name implies, the goal with this project is to do away with all that and replace it with a self-actuating flexible PCB.

The device is able to quickly move the LEDs back and forth quietly and efficiently thanks to a permanent magnet and magnetic coils integrated into the flexible PCB. With no motors or gears, the whole unit is smaller and less complex than other POV displays. As an added bonus, there’s no danger to the operator or the device should a curious user stick their finger into it.

The last time we took a look at this project, [Carl] had entered an earlier single-LED version into the 2019 Hackaday Prize. Competition was tough last year, and unfortunately FlexLED didn’t get selected as a Finalist. But we’re still extremely interested in seeing the project develop, and we imagine so are you.

The recently completed second version of the display features an improved coil design, eight RGB LEDs and a 3D printed base with integrated magnet. With more LEDs onboard, a single display is able to show multiple characters and even rudimentary animations. A large array of these flapping elements promises to be quite a sight.

But before you get too excited, [Carl] does have some bad news. For one, the cost of building them in small quantities is high, which is always tough for a single hacker trying to iterate a design. Worse, some of the LEDs seem to have died on this prototype already. He says it likely has something to do with the stress of flexing back and forth so quickly, which is obviously a bit troubling. He’s looking to get some feedback from the community, and is hoping to address these issues in the next version.

For an interesting look into his flexible PCB actuator projects, check out the interview [Carl] did with us at the 2018 Hackaday Superconference.

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