A Digital Guestbook Is A Perfect Hacker Wedding Gift

September 22, 2020 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

With his brother’s wedding coming up, [Sebastian] needed a wedding gift. Rather than purchasing something, he elected to build a digital guestbook so guests could share their well-wishes with the happy couple.

The guestbook has a simple web-based interface, which was accessible over a domain name [Sebastian] registered with the couple’s names ahead of the event. There, users could enter text and draw a friendly message for the digital guestbook. The guestbook itself consists of an ESP32 running a e-ink display, packaged in a tidy 3D printed enclosure featuring the couple’s initials. It regularly queries the web server, and displays the messages it finds on the screen.

It’s a great use of an e-ink display, as it made reading the messages in bright daylight easy where other technologies may have faltered. [Sebastian] was also clever to install some LEDs for the night portion of the reception. We’ve featured a few wedding gifts on these pages before, including this particularly amusing sugar cube. Video after the break.

Continue reading “A Digital Guestbook Is A Perfect Hacker Wedding Gift” →

A Wedding Gift Fit For A Hardware Hacker

July 13, 2019 by Jenny List 7 Comments

If you read Hackaday on a regular basis, there are some names you will have seen more than once. People who continually produce fascinating and inventive projects that amaze and delight us, and who always keep us coming back for more. One such hacker is [Jeroen Domburg], perhaps better known in these pages by the handle [Sprite_TM], who has never failed to delight us in this respect.

Today is a special day for [Jeroen] for it is his wedding day, and his friend [Maarten Tromp] has decided to surprise him and his wife [Mingming] with a special gift. At first sight it is simply a pair of blinky badges in the shape of a bride and groom, but closer examination reveals much more. The PCBs are studded with WS2812 addressable LEDs controlled by an ESP32 module and powered by a small LiPo battery, and the clever part lies in the software. The two badges communicate via Bluetooth, allowing them to both synchronise their flashing and flash ever faster as the couple come closer to each other.

The write-up is an interesting tale of the tribulations of designing a badge, from which we take away that buying cheap LEDs may be a false economy. A surprise was that the black-cased and white-cased versions of the LEDs had different timings, and they proved prone to failure.

We wish the happy couple all the best, thank [Sprite_TM] for all he has given us over the years, and look forward to seeing his future projects.

Rocking Playmobil Wedding

October 4, 2017 by Brian McEvoy 6 Comments

Many of us have put our making/hacking/building skills to use as a favor for our friends and family. [Boris Werner] is no different, he set about creating a music festival stage with Playmobil figures and parts for a couple of friends who were getting married. The miniature performers are 1/24 scale models of the forming family. The bride and groom are on guitar and vocals while junior drums.

Turning children’s toys into a wedding-worthy gift isn’t easy but the level of detail [Boris Werner] used is something we can all learn from. The video after the break does a great job of showing just how many cool synchronized lighting features can be crammed into a tiny stage in the flavor of a real show and often using genuine Playmobil parts. Automation was a mix of MOSFET controlled LEDs for the stage lighting, addressable light rings behind the curtain, a disco ball with a stepper motor and music, all controlled by an Arduino.

Unless you are some kind of Playmobil purist, this is way cooler than anything straight out of the box. This is the first mention of Playmobil on Hackaday but miniatures are hardly a new subject like this similarly scaled space sedan.

Continue reading “Rocking Playmobil Wedding” →

Rushing The Design And Construction Of LED Centerpieces

August 11, 2017 by Donald Papp 7 Comments

‘Dragon Flame’ RGB LED table centerpieces, by [Alex Lao]

Sometimes the most important thing is getting something done.

[Alex Lao] was recently in such a situation. His sister was getting married and he designed, built, and delivered twenty RGB LED table centerpieces in a rush. There were no prototypes made, and when the parts arrived all twenty were built all at once over a single weekend. These table centerpieces are illuminated by RGB LEDs and battery-powered, but have an option to be powered by a wall adapter.

[Alex] helpfully shared some tips on reducing the production risks and helping ensure results in such a limited time frame. His advice boils down to this: reduce the unknowns. For Alex this meant re-using code and components from a previous project — even if they were not optimal — so that known-good schematic and footprint libraries could be used for the design.

From one perspective, the PIC32 microcontroller inside each lamp is overkill for an LED centerpiece. From another perspective, it was in fact the perfect part to use because it was the fastest way for [Alex] to get the devices working with no surprises.

For an added perspective on needing to get production right the first time on a much larger scale, be sure to check out getting an installation made up of 25,000 PCBs right the first time.

Fail Of The Week: Ferrofluid

July 22, 2016 by Elliot Williams 16 Comments

It’s more of a half-fail than a full fail, but [Basti] is accustomed to getting things right (eventually) so it sticks in his craw that he wasn’t able to fully realize his ferrofluid dreams (German, translated here). Anyway, fail or demi-fail, the project is certainly a lesson in the reality of ferrofluid.

We’ve all seen amazing things done with ferrofluid and magnets. How hard can it be to make an interactive ferrofluid wedding present for his sister? Where ferrofluid spikes climb up a beautifully cut steel heart in a jar? (Answer: very hard.)

Continue reading “Fail Of The Week: Ferrofluid” →

Interactive WeddingBots Built Into Nespresso Capsules

July 1, 2016 by Moritz Walter 2 Comments

Today is a very special day for [Mandy and Sebastian], as they conclude the sacred solder joint of marriage. We send our sincerest congratulations and best wishes to the bridal couple, and can’t help but envy the guests of their ceremony, who received a very special wedding favor: A WeddingBot.

For their wedding party, [Mandy and Sebastian] created a little game on their own (translated). Each guest would receive a unique, little WeddingBot. Each of these is individually tailored for a certain guest and features a fitting look, a characteristic behavior and would play a special melody or jingle meaningful to this guest. However, the guests don’t get their WeddingBot, they get the WeddingBot of another guest – and the challenge to find this guest on the party. Guests would then exchange their WeddingBots, which also makes a great occasion to introduce themselves to each other. If the clues given by the WeddingBots themselves would not suffice to find the right owner, guest could place a WeddingBot on a clue station, which then would provide further hints by displaying images, texts or even riddles.

The design is based on the ATtiny45 microcontroller, with LEDs for the eyes, a light sensor, and a piezo disc for the sound as the main components. As an enclosure, they chose to repurpose empty Nespresso® capsules, which look nice and adds volume to the PCBs. The smiley face silk screen on the PCBs was then individualized with a black marker and packed in a beautiful hand-crafted box. The little fellows communicate with the Raspberry Pi based clue station by flashing their LEDs in a certain pattern. A light sensor hooked up to the Pi lets the station identify the bot and display the corresponding clue on a screen. Check out the video below to see how it works:

Continue reading “Interactive WeddingBots Built Into Nespresso Capsules” →

Trivia Lock Box Spices Up Wedding Reception

November 9, 2015 by Adam Fabio 19 Comments

Any hardware hacker will tell you, a significant other who embraces your passion is a keeper. [Nathan] found a keeper in [Jessica] – they even worked together on a hardware hack for their own wedding. The couple wanted an interactive element for their guests. Disposable cameras are getting a bit hard to find these days, so the solution was a trivia powered lock box designed and built by [Nathan] himself. Guests arrived at their tables to find locked boxes and cards with trivia questions about the couple. Only by answering the questions correctly would they unlock the box to access the prizes inside.

Each box consists of a Really Bare Bones Board, which is essentially an ATmega328 breakout board. The user interface consists of five tactile switches and a 16×2 character based LCD. The box is a clear Vaultz pencil box (Yes, the same brand Ahmed used for his clock). The final element is of course the locking mechanism. One of [Nathan’s] friends noticed that the Vaultz box latch was riveted in, and was spring loaded. It only took a bit of work to flip the latch from the outside to the inside. Cheap 9g micro servos from the far east pull the latch open with a string. The only thing we haven’t figured out is how [Nathan] closed the latches while they were inside the box. Obviously some black magic was involved! [Jessica] decorated the box with circuit traces created on her vinyl cutter.

On the eve of the big day, [Nathan] realized that his tactile switches were… not really switching. The superglue he had used to mount them had seeped into the switch body, freezing it solid. Nathan saved the project with a herculean effort of soldering 5 switches on each of 12 boxes the night before his own wedding.

What was in the box? Alka-Seltzer tablets. When added to vases filled with oil and water, the fizzy tablets turned the vases into mini lava lamps. The boxes also contained coins which were redeemable for Hawaiian Leis.

Click past the break to see the boxes in action on [Nathan] and [Jessica’s] big day and if you’re looking to build a fleet of hardware for your own wedding, take a look at the centerpieces [Bill Porter] created a couple of years ago.

Continue reading “Trivia Lock Box Spices Up Wedding Reception” →