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274 items tagged "led"
Related tags:
board [+],
project [+],
persistence of vision [+],
rgb leds [+],
light painting [+],
home [+],
microcontrollers [+],
microcontroller [+],
lamp [+],
clock [+],
shift registers [+],
ikea [+],
hackaday [+],
game [+],
diy [+],
classic [+],
video [+],
table [+],
pong [+],
painting [+],
mathieu [+],
lighting [+],
fun [+],
color [+],
building [+],
attiny [+],
alex [+],
Hardware [+],
time [+],
show [+],
segment [+],
scanner [+],
room [+],
prototype [+],
nick [+],
marquee [+],
links [+],
light source [+],
life [+],
larson [+],
helicopter [+],
heart [+],
flashlight [+],
erik [+],
dioder [+],
device [+],
dave [+],
cubes [+],
christmas lights [+],
bulb [+],
blinky [+],
blinkm [+],
ben [+],
ball [+],
array [+],
alan [+],
4x4x4 cube [+],
leds [+],
year [+],
weather [+],
wearable [+],
usb [+],
umbrella [+],
tutorial [+],
travelling light [+],
tool [+],
tetris [+],
suit [+],
snake [+],
seven segment displays [+],
robert [+],
radio controlled [+],
pwm [+],
pulse width modulation [+],
protoboard [+],
projector [+],
power leds [+],
ping pong balls [+],
piezo [+],
physics [+],
pete [+],
paul [+],
party [+],
nixie [+],
night [+],
news [+],
mouse movements [+],
mouse [+],
modulation [+],
mike szczys [+],
micro controller [+],
michael [+],
meter [+],
message [+],
matrix display [+],
markus [+],
mad scientist [+],
macetech [+],
mace [+],
light [+],
led strip [+],
led driver [+],
led display [+],
led clock [+],
led bar [+],
lcd screens [+],
lcd [+],
laser cutter [+],
kit [+],
juke [+],
john [+],
inverter [+],
illumination [+],
helmet [+],
headgear [+],
hand [+],
hacking [+],
garrett [+],
game of life [+],
friend [+],
fpslic [+],
foot [+],
followup [+],
engineer [+],
dorm room [+],
dog collar [+],
dog [+],
disco [+],
digital [+],
different colors [+],
day [+],
david [+],
custom [+],
craig [+],
control [+],
color sensor [+],
collar [+],
coffee table [+],
coffee [+],
coat [+],
circuits [+],
christmas [+],
car [+],
cameras [+],
cadmium sulfide [+],
build [+],
brains [+],
box [+],
blue leds [+],
blade [+],
bit [+],
battery life [+],
basement [+],
badwolf [+],
backlight [+],
antoine [+],
android [+],
andrew [+],
activity [+],
accelerometer [+],
HackIt [+],
4x4x4 [+],
hacks [+],
arduino [+],
zaniness [+],
zach [+],
ytai [+],
youtube clip [+],
yosh [+],
writeup [+],
writer david [+],
writer [+],
workbench area [+],
workbench [+],
work [+],
wizardry [+],
window [+],
wind powered [+],
wind [+],
william dillon [+],
wilfred [+],
wiimote [+],
wii remote [+],
wifi [+],
wife [+],
width [+],
white dome [+],
wheel controller [+],
what [+],
wes faler [+],
wedding anniversary [+],
webcam images [+],
webcam [+],
web interface [+],
web enabled [+],
web connectivity [+],
weather station [+],
way [+],
waxing [+],
water wall [+],
wand [+],
walmart [+],
wall sign [+],
wall dorm [+],
wall [+],
volumetric 3d [+],
voltage [+],
vodka bottle [+],
vodka [+],
visualizer [+],
vision [+],
virtual array [+],
vinod stanur [+],
vinod [+],
viking [+],
video tour [+],
video screen [+],
video encoding [+],
video display [+],
video block [+],
vibrations [+],
vertical axis wind turbine [+],
velcro [+],
valentine s day [+],
valentine [+],
uv light [+],
uv leds [+],
usb connector [+],
usb connection [+],
usa [+],
urban settings [+],
upvote [+],
unused space [+],
university of vermont [+],
unique design [+],
ungodly reason [+],
ultraviolet exposure [+],
ubiquity [+],
type model [+],
tyler [+],
twelve hours [+],
turning [+],
turn signals [+],
turn [+],
turbine [+],
tubular [+],
tube [+],
tron [+],
troll [+],
trip [+],
tri color [+],
travis goodspeed [+],
transmitters [+],
toy [+],
tour [+],
toulouse france [+],
toulouse [+],
touch [+],
toorcon [+],
tons of time [+],
tom [+],
todd harrison [+],
todd [+],
tipline [+],
time wiring [+],
time radio [+],
tilty [+],
thrun [+],
thick glass [+],
thermal printers [+],
testing [+],
test rig [+],
temperature [+],
tearing [+],
target [+],
taiwan [+],
tail light [+],
tail [+],
tag [+],
table lamps [+],
sylvia cheng [+],
swappable [+],
surprise [+],
surplus [+],
surgical microscope [+],
surgical [+],
surface mount [+],
supercaps [+],
supercap [+],
super [+],
subroutines [+],
studying engineering [+],
student projects [+],
student [+],
stripper pole [+],
strip [+],
street usa [+],
street legal [+],
story [+],
stop motion animation [+],
stock pic [+],
stock design [+],
stock controller [+],
stock [+],
still image [+],
sticky note [+],
stick [+],
steven [+],
steve hoefer [+],
stephen shaffer [+],
stephen [+],
step [+],
steady hand [+],
status [+],
station [+],
start from scratch [+],
start [+],
starfiremx [+],
star field [+],
star [+],
stan [+],
stairs [+],
stair [+],
stage lighting [+],
sponges [+],
splunk [+],
spinning [+],
spindicator [+],
spin [+],
spectrum analyzer [+],
sparkfun [+],
space power [+],
space labs [+],
space invaders [+],
south eastern [+],
something [+],
someone [+],
soft light source [+],
social gatherings [+],
snow on the ground [+],
snare drum [+],
snake game [+],
smother [+],
smd components [+],
smart phones [+],
smart phone [+],
small [+],
slide show [+],
slew [+],
sleeping [+],
skipp [+],
ski pole [+],
ski [+],
size [+],
six months [+],
simulator [+],
simon [+],
silicon carbide [+],
side pockets [+],
shoe [+],
shield [+],
shelving unit [+],
shelf products [+],
sheer brilliance [+],
sheer beauty [+],
sheep project [+],
share [+],
shanghai [+],
seven segments [+],
series [+],
serial ports [+],
serial [+],
senior design project [+],
semester party [+],
selector [+],
segment leds [+],
see through [+],
sean [+],
scrolling marquee [+],
scrolling [+],
scroller [+],
scratch [+],
scott [+],
scoreboard [+],
score [+],
school [+],
scarf [+],
scanner hacking [+],
sander [+],
sadness [+],
ryan [+],
runner [+],
rucalgary [+],
rs232 serial port [+],
rovio [+],
roel vertegaal [+],
rod [+],
robotic arm [+],
roberto barrios [+],
robert olszewski [+],
riney [+],
rincker [+],
rikard lindstrm [+],
right before your eyes [+],
right [+],
rig [+],
rick [+],
richard osgood [+],
richard kline [+],
rgen [+],
rgb unit [+],
revolights [+],
reverse engineering [+],
retrobrad [+],
research partners [+],
rescuing [+],
reproducing [+],
replica lightsaber [+],
rensselaer polytechnic institute [+],
remote [+],
relwin [+],
relative brightness [+],
registers [+],
redeye [+],
recent article [+],
rear window [+],
rear [+],
real time clock [+],
real reason [+],
reading light [+],
reading lamp [+],
reading [+],
rapid fire [+],
ralf htter [+],
rajendra [+],
raindrops [+],
rainbow [+],
rain [+],
radio shack [+],
radio control helicopter [+],
radar [+],
rabbit hole [+],
queen [+],
python package [+],
python [+],
pwm controlled [+],
pwm channels [+],
puzzle [+],
punk [+],
pumpkin [+],
pulses [+],
prototyping board [+],
proper heat [+],
project choice [+],
professor shadoko [+],
professional board [+],
processing power [+],
processing [+],
process [+],
printer interface [+],
printer [+],
printed circuit boards [+],
price tag [+],
premise [+],
precision [+],
practice [+],
powerful system [+],
powerful computer [+],
power index [+],
power [+],
position [+],
pong table [+],
pong game [+],
polycarbonate [+],
poland [+],
pocketbook [+],
plotting [+],
plotter [+],
plenty [+],
playing in the rain [+],
pizzazz [+],
pixel [+],
pir sensor [+],
pinewood derby cars [+],
pinewood [+],
pin headers [+],
piezo sensors [+],
picture [+],
pickaxe [+],
picaxe [+],
pic16f877 microcontroller [+],
pic 16f627 [+],
physics lesson [+],
photoresistors [+],
photoresistor [+],
photography [+],
phone [+],
pet gaming [+],
persistence [+],
peripherals [+],
performance [+],
pentagonal [+],
pendulum [+],
pendant [+],
peggy [+],
pegboard [+],
peak power output [+],
pcb layouts [+],
pcb design [+],
pcb [+],
pc ir [+],
pattern [+],
patrick [+],
path [+],
pat on the back [+],
partyscroller [+],
party lighting [+],
party decor [+],
part [+],
parker [+],
parallel port [+],
papydoo [+],
own accord [+],
outdoor displays [+],
orb [+],
onironaut [+],
omaha [+],
oled displays [+],
oled display [+],
oled [+],
old hat [+],
old friend [+],
office mates [+],
office [+],
occasion [+],
object permanence [+],
o malley [+],
notch [+],
nostalgic purposes [+],
norm santos [+],
nixie tubes [+],
nikolai [+],
nightlights [+],
nick schulze [+],
new zealand [+],
new year [+],
new [+],
netgear routers [+],
netgear [+],
netbook [+],
neighbors [+],
negative edge [+],
nanode [+],
music parties [+],
music events [+],
music [+],
museum exhibit [+],
mug [+],
msp430 [+],
msp [+],
moving [+],
mouth [+],
mouse input [+],
mouse cursor [+],
mount rgb [+],
motorcycle helmet visors [+],
motor acts [+],
motion sensor [+],
motherboard [+],
mood lighting [+],
month [+],
monitoring [+],
mohawk [+],
module [+],
mode toggle [+],
minimalist [+],
mini [+],
mind [+],
mike [+],
microsimon [+],
microscope [+],
michael ross [+],
michael ossmann [+],
michael knight [+],
michael kleinigger [+],
miceuz [+],
message marquee [+],
mental stability [+],
medea [+],
mdf [+],
maximum effect [+],
max thrun [+],
matrix table [+],
matrix package [+],
matrix modules [+],
matrix game [+],
matrix displays [+],
matrix clock [+],
masterwork [+],
mashup [+],
martin [+],
mark labbato [+],
marcus [+],
marco di feo [+],
marc devidts [+],
main street electrical parade [+],
main street [+],
magic the gathering forum [+],
magic the gathering [+],
magic [+],
madison [+],
mac mini [+],
lumens per watt [+],
lumens [+],
lumen [+],
low voltage [+],
long way [+],
long exposure photography [+],
logical step [+],
lithium polymer [+],
liquor bottle [+],
linux distro [+],
linux board [+],
linux [+],
limpkin [+],
lightsaber [+],
lighting solution [+],
lighting situation [+],
lighting product [+],
lighting control [+],
lighting arrangements [+],
lighthouse light [+],
lighthouse [+],
lighted windows [+],
lighted [+],
light writer [+],
light wand [+],
light sources [+],
light sensitivity [+],
light projector [+],
light paintings [+],
light fixture [+],
light effects [+],
light bulbs [+],
light bulb [+],
lid [+],
leo rampen [+],
leo [+],
lenny [+],
legacy [+],
led wand [+],
led scroller [+],
led meter [+],
led message board [+],
led message [+],
led light bulb [+],
led lamp [+],
led flashlight [+],
led color [+],
led bulbs [+],
led bulb [+],
led backlit lcd [+],
led array [+],
ldr [+],
launchpad [+],
last christmas [+],
laser pointer [+],
laser cut [+],
larson scanner [+],
laptop [+],
lamp control [+],
krix [+],
krasnow [+],
kraftwerk [+],
kopfkopfkopfaffe [+],
kirill [+],
kinect [+],
kindle [+],
kim [+],
kibum [+],
keychain [+],
kevin baker [+],
kenneth finnegan [+],
kenneth [+],
ken [+],
jurassic park [+],
jumbo screens [+],
jrgen [+],
joseph [+],
john riney [+],
john graham cummings [+],
johannes agricola [+],
jeri [+],
jacques lebrac [+],
jack o lantern [+],
j bremnant [+],
isaac [+],
iron [+],
ir illumination [+],
iphone [+],
inverter circuit [+],
invention [+],
interface [+],
interactive table [+],
interactive exhibit [+],
intensity [+],
integration servers [+],
insulation board [+],
instructibles [+],
instructables [+],
inspiration [+],
insane [+],
input [+],
ingenuity [+],
infinity [+],
indirect light [+],
index window [+],
incandescent light bulbs [+],
incandescent bulb [+],
improve [+],
impressive display [+],
ian cathey [+],
iain [+],
hugo [+],
http [+],
hp calculators [+],
horizontal axis [+],
hook up [+],
homebrew [+],
home theater [+],
home score [+],
home decorating [+],
holiday in china [+],
holiday decorations [+],
hole components [+],
hoekstra [+],
hobbyist [+],
hobby electronics [+],
high efficiency [+],
helmits [+],
helicopter blades [+],
heat dissipation [+],
heart shaped pieces [+],
heart pieces [+],
headlight [+],
headlamp [+],
headband [+],
headache [+],
head cameron [+],
hdd [+],
having a party [+],
harvey [+],
harrison krix [+],
hardware revision [+],
hardware interface [+],
hardware design [+],
hard drive [+],
hampton [+],
halloween costume [+],
halloween [+],
hacker [+],
hack [+],
guy [+],
guitar tuner [+],
guitar [+],
guillaume [+],
guide [+],
groundhog [+],
gross understatement [+],
grids [+],
grid [+],
greg [+],
great interactive [+],
graphite [+],
graphic eq [+],
graph [+],
google translation [+],
google [+],
goodspeed [+],
goodness [+],
goettingen germany [+],
glueing [+],
glue [+],
glow [+],
glove box [+],
glove [+],
globe [+],
glip [+],
glass block [+],
glass [+],
girlfriend [+],
gift cards [+],
gift [+],
giant hand [+],
germany [+],
george hadley [+],
george [+],
generative art [+],
generation [+],
geert [+],
gaze [+],
gauntlet [+],
gathering [+],
garrett mace [+],
garret [+],
gaming pieces [+],
gallery [+],
fun toys [+],
fun lab [+],
fun design [+],
full color led display [+],
ftdi [+],
front [+],
frits rincker [+],
friend kevin [+],
frequency [+],
free laser [+],
france [+],
footwell [+],
foot diameter [+],
foam insulation [+],
foam board [+],
foam [+],
flower protoboard [+],
flower bouquet [+],
flower [+],
florian schneider [+],
floor [+],
flex boards [+],
flavors [+],
fireworks [+],
fire button [+],
fire and light [+],
finnegan [+],
finish [+],
film [+],
fiddle [+],
fiber optic [+],
female pin [+],
faux fur coats [+],
fashion emergency [+],
fashion accessory [+],
fart [+],
fancy schmancy [+],
fan [+],
family [+],
facility [+],
facebook [+],
fabien [+],
eye [+],
exposure camera [+],
exposure [+],
explanations [+],
exhibition center [+],
exhibit [+],
everything [+],
everett tom [+],
everett [+],
eve [+],
evan [+],
equalizer [+],
entertainment [+],
endeavor [+],
enameled wires [+],
emsl [+],
empty case [+],
electronics markets [+],
electric sheep [+],
electric [+],
elecfreaks [+],
eight hours [+],
easy on the eyes [+],
dsp [+],
dry erase markers [+],
driving at night [+],
driver [+],
drive [+],
dress [+],
dremel [+],
downvote [+],
doubling [+],
double dose [+],
dotklok [+],
dorm room parties [+],
dorm [+],
don smith [+],
don [+],
dominoes [+],
dome light [+],
dome [+],
doesn [+],
dmitry [+],
displaying [+],
discourteous drivers [+],
disco floor [+],
diode [+],
dim environment [+],
digital picture frame [+],
different color [+],
didn [+],
diameter globe [+],
dev [+],
detailed [+],
derby [+],
demand [+],
dell monitor [+],
decatron [+],
deborah omalley [+],
death [+],
dazzling [+],
david prutchi [+],
david forbes [+],
daisy chain [+],
daises [+],
daft punk [+],
daft [+],
d pov [+],
cylon [+],
cylinder [+],
custom pcb [+],
custom lighthouse [+],
cube project [+],
crowd [+],
crenshaw [+],
craig lindley [+],
course [+],
couple [+],
core concept [+],
cool music [+],
conways [+],
conway [+],
controller unit [+],
controller circuit [+],
controller [+],
continuous integration [+],
contact lens [+],
cons [+],
connector [+],
conductive thread [+],
computer module [+],
computer [+],
complete control [+],
company [+],
comments section [+],
commenters [+],
combat robot [+],
combat [+],
colors [+],
colornode [+],
color selector [+],
color fiber [+],
college dollars [+],
cold cathode [+],
clones [+],
clock module [+],
clock circuit [+],
classic game [+],
circus [+],
circuitry [+],
circuit simulation software [+],
circuit [+],
chunk [+],
christmas sign [+],
christmas edition [+],
christmas decorations [+],
christian enchelmaier [+],
christian [+],
chris williamson [+],
chris [+],
china [+],
chemistry [+],
checkbooks [+],
charlieplex [+],
chalk board [+],
central elements [+],
cellphones [+],
ccfl [+],
cathode ray tube [+],
cat [+],
case designs [+],
case [+],
card [+],
carbon molecule [+],
car lighting [+],
car interior [+],
captain morgan [+],
capacitor [+],
capacitance [+],
cameron [+],
camera tricks [+],
caleb kraft [+],
caleb [+],
cakes [+],
business trip [+],
business [+],
burning man [+],
bunch [+],
bullnose [+],
bulbs [+],
builing [+],
buckle [+],
buck converter [+],
brite [+],
bringing [+],
brightness value [+],
brevet [+],
brendan vercoelen [+],
brendan [+],
breadboard [+],
brass plate [+],
brainstorming [+],
brainiac [+],
brad blucher [+],
brad [+],
bottle [+],
book [+],
bob [+],
boatload [+],
board layout [+],
blucher [+],
block puzzles [+],
blinky lights [+],
blinker [+],
blinkenlights [+],
blank canvases [+],
blade runner [+],
bitbang [+],
bit by bit [+],
biomedical science [+],
binary clock [+],
binary [+],
bill porter [+],
bill hammack [+],
bill [+],
bike light [+],
bike [+],
bicycling [+],
bicycle wheels [+],
bert [+],
ben krasnow [+],
belt buckle [+],
belt [+],
beginner tutorial [+],
beginner [+],
becky stern [+],
battery [+],
batch jobs [+],
batch [+],
barcode [+],
barbot [+],
bar graph [+],
bar [+],
band equalizer [+],
ban [+],
bali [+],
backup lights [+],
backpack [+],
awesome dad [+],
awesome [+],
automotive electronics [+],
automatic knitting machines [+],
author points [+],
audio frequencies [+],
audio [+],
attiny13 [+],
atmel [+],
async firefly [+],
asmt [+],
asher glick [+],
artwork [+],
aron hoekstra [+],
aron [+],
animation [+],
animating [+],
animated christmas [+],
andrey [+],
andrew magill [+],
analog clock [+],
analog [+],
ambitious fundraising campaign [+],
ambilight [+],
amazon [+],
aluminum pipe [+],
alex george [+],
albert [+],
airplane [+],
air [+],
adrian crenshaw [+],
adobe after effects [+],
admiral nelson [+],
adjustable lighting [+],
added interest [+],
adam outler [+],
accidental [+],
accent lighting [+],
accent [+],
ability [+],
aaron [+],
Hackerspaces [+],
9v batteries [+],
8mm projector [+],
8mm cameras [+],
7 segment displays [+],
7 segment [+],
3x3x3 cube [+],
3 axis accelerometer [+],
2n3904 transistor [+],
2d array [+],
27c256 [+],
12v halogen [+],
matrix [+],
display [+],
rgb [+],
cube [+],
pov [+],
led matrix [+],
xmos,
wisconsin,
wasn,
version,
vcr head,
vcr,
vadim suhovatih,
vadim,
university,
twittering,
trumps,
trash heap,
this,
tape,
switchmode,
swarm,
super bright white leds,
sphere,
slave mode,
schematics,
right tools,
ride,
resistors,
replica,
readable message,
reactor,
pub,
proof of concept,
printed circuit board,
printed,
pov led,
phorsepov,
phorse,
pcbs,
pastime,
organic light,
oleds,
oled screens,
nothing,
nintendo ds,
nintendo,
mortarboard,
may,
matrix board,
leonard,
lens,
led display matrix,
learning experience,
layout plan,
labor of love,
kind,
julian skidmore,
joel,
joe,
iron man,
internal rechargeable battery,
interesting marketing,
implementation,
head,
garrett birkel,
fresnel lens,
fredrik petrini,
forum thread,
force feedback,
force,
flash animations,
flash,
fictional source,
few moments,
feedback,
feast your eyes,
experience,
epilog laser,
end,
easy hack,
duck tape,
ds. there,
ds,
diorama,
design,
daniel daigle,
csaba,
craftsmanship,
controller board,
commencement ceremony,
commencement,
color temperature,
clear plastic tubing,
cheap flashlight,
business end,
bleuer,
bike helmet,
audio signal,
attiny25,
atmega8,
art basel,
art,
arc,
3d cubes
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10:01
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Hack a Day
Give your garden lights a little bit more life by changing out the LEDs. In the process, you can also choose a different color if you like. It really is as simple as cracking it open and replacing the stock LED, but a bit of a change may also prolong the stored charge. These garden [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
There’s a certain mystique about old home movies and 8mm film; whether it’s footage from a family gathering from 40 years ago or a stop-motion animation you made when you were 12, there’s an immediacy for film that the VHS tapes from your family’s first camcorder can’t match. [Teslas Moustache] has been getting into 8mm cameras and [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
What started off as a fun project using light bulbs picked up some sponsorship and is going on tour. This project now uses LED modules controlled on the 2.4 GHz band to turn buildings into full color displays. It’s the product of students at Wrocław University of Technology in Poland. The group is something of an [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
While there was no mention of it on their blog, [Garret] from mace tech was spied wearing some pretty cool looking LED glasses at MakerFaire last weekend. This morning, we noticed a Lytro gallery of the glasses and they look pretty cool (as a toy, not a fashion accessory). For those who haven’t played with [...]
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8:01
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Hack a Day
In a decision we completely agree with, these industrious young women decided that playing in the rain would only be more fun if it included an interactive light show. They wanted the rain itself to cause LEDs in their umbrella to light up. To achieve this, they put piezo sensors on each of the 8 [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
[Richard Osgood] is back again with an interesting project. This time he has constructed a color sensor. His initial design was to use three LEDs and a photoresistor. He would shine a red, then green, then blue LED on a surface and record the reflected light with the photoresistor allowing him to determine how much [...]
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15:01
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Hack a Day
Ooooh, nice enclosure! This is a little motion sensing lamp which [Krazatchu] built a few years back as a Mother’s Day gift. The PIR sensor is easy enough to see as the white dome on the front of the case. But look closely below that and you’ll see the LDR which it uses to keep [...]
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14:01
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Hack a Day
Careful planning and a steady hand let [Leo Rampen] fit everything he needed to build a graphic equalizer display on his LED wall sign. There’s a lot of components that needed to fit on this board, and he decided not use to an etched board for the build. The idea for the project started off as [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
Cool picture, huh? Wait until you see the video footage of this LED-adorned RC helicopter flying on a dark night. But this isn’t an art project. Analyzing the long-exposure photography turns out to be a great way of clearing up some of the physics of flight which otherwise are not at all intuitive. The helicopter [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
Take a gander at the Giant LED bar graph which [Chunky Hampton] recently completed (from this image we don’t think the nick name suits him). It’s simple both mechanically and electrically, but we love the look and think it would be a nice addition to your home, hackerspace, or as a children’s museum exhibit (we’re [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
In the quest to add some mood lighting in his basement, [Mohonri] found an infrared wireless remote that is able to control several RGB LED strips. The only problem with this remote is the inability to control it via a wall-mount panel or even a computer. Obviously this would not stand for such a swank basement, [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
For the last few months, [Ben] has been building a 3D light painting robot. Instead of a couple Arduino-controlled LEDs that a person moves around the Lightplot, as [Ben] calls it, uses a robotic arm to move a LED in 3D space. The build started with [Ben] testing his idea by putting a laser pointer [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
[Alex George] has been collecting miniatures of Main Street, USA in Disney Land hand crafted by artist [Robert Olszewski]. These models are incredibly accurate, but sadly static. [Alex] has some of the floats from the Main Street Electrical Parade that light up with the help of a few LEDs. One day, [Alex] found himself wishing he could watch [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
This is the senior design project for a group at the University of Vermont. It’s a wet, bubbly, blinky, interactive thing. Each column is a clear tube filled with water, with a string of fully addressable RGB LEDs suspended in the center. In idle mode, the lights scroll through a series of interesting patterns while [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
We see a lot of LED matrix projects. They’re fun, and you can learn a lot of basic lessons during the build. But this one is out of the ordinary. [Rtty21] built an oddly sized, and sound controlled matrix shield for his Arduino. That’s it right there, the shield is the large chunk of protoboard [...]
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15:30
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Hack a Day
We’ve covered plenty of light painting projects here. People are always finding new ways to create interesting things in this fairly new medium. This project covers a method of creating orbs or spheres in your light paintings. The author points out that many people do this currently by putting the light source at the end [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
[Professor Shadoko's] Mac Mini died. But since the case designs on Apple products are half the reason to buy them, he decided to reuse the enclosure by turning it into this clock (translated). As with the binary clock we saw yesterday, this one uses a bunch of LEDs to display the time, but it does it [...]
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5:00
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Hack a Day
[DanNixon] has put together this unique interactive table concept. Usually, when we see the term interactive table, we think of an LED grid. That just happens to be what we see the most of. While this table does, in fact, have an LED grid in the table top, it also has several other features and [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
Whether you’re trying to light your path, build your own night vision, or do some tanning at home, this flashlight has you covered. [David Prutchi] designed the high power flashlight with three swappable heads. He built the base unit out of aluminum pipe. It’s got plenty of room for the four 9V batteries that act [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
This is a blinky ball that [David] designed, built, and programmed himself. Does it look familiar? It should, he took his inspiration from the original prototype, and the Hackerspace-produced derivative. [David's] version is not as small, or as blinky, but in our minds the development process is the real reason for building something like this. [...]
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14:01
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Hack a Day
[Viktor] doesn’t remember why he started this project. He doesn’t know what he had in mind in the beginning, nor what the intended use was.He knows he wanted something interactive with blue LEDs. What he ended up with, was a 3 axis Accelerometer with a pretty cool display that sits on his desk to amuse visitors. [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
When driving at night you need to be able to see where you’re going. And that goes for reversing up as well. But the stock white lights on [Ryan's] ride didn’t provide the type of illumination he wanted, so he replaced them with two sets of super bright LED modules. These are ridiculously bright, perhaps [...]
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14:40
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Hack a Day
We really like [Geert's] take on accent lighting for his stairs. He built his own LED channels which mount under the bullnose of each step. The LED strips that he used are actually quite inexpensive. They are RGB versions, but the pixels are not individually addressable. This means that instead of having drivers integrated into [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
Along with quadrotors, and portable game consoles, one of the hacks we never get tired of seeing is an LED matrix table. [Christian Enchelmaier] wrote in to share his take on the ever popular pixelated furniture, which we think came out pretty well (Translation). Instead of going for a full-sized coffee table, [Christian] decided to [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
[Nick] wrote in telling us about the LED cube he built over the course of six months. He calls LED cubes ‘done to death,’ but [Nick] might be too humble. His 8x8x8 RGB LED cube is the best we’ve ever seen. To start his build, [Nick] built a simple 4x4x4 cube as a proof of [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
While huge LED panels are a relatively common project du jour for people wanting to flex their engineering muscle, we’re taken aback by the sheer beauty of [Skot9000]‘s huge LED display made of seven-segment displays. He calls the build DigitGrid, and it’s a wondrous display the likes of which we’ve never seen. To build a display [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
The Ikea Dioder is an LED light sold at the big blue and yellow building that lets you mix your own colors using a simple button and wheel controller. [Marco Di Feo] looked at all of the other projects out there that alter the controller and figured out that the IC can be directly replaced [...]
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12:51
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Hack a Day
For a newborn, everything is magical; a lack of object permanence means everything is new, wonderful, and novel. What then, could be better than a projected star field circling an infant’s room, gently sending them to sleep? [Pete] was inspired by this earlier starlight projector that projects a rotating star field onto the walls and ceiling of [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
[Todd Harrison] was thinking of replacing some incandescent light bulbs in his house with LED models, so and his wife picked up a single candelabra bulb to test before they spent the cash to swap them all out. The bulb died in about a week’s time, so [Todd] got out his trusty electronic disassembly device [...]
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13:21
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Hack a Day
Controlling LEDs is really quite simple. As you know, they need to be current limited which is as easy as applying Ohm’s law to your given set of values. To make things even more even there’s a slew of constant current LED driver chips out there that can be had for a song. But do [...]
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11:49
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Hack a Day
Want to monitor the company system without continually loading up the Splunk dashboard? It turns out that they’ve got their own Python package which makes pulling down data a snap. All [Rick] needed to do was hook up an LED meter as an external display. It used to be that this would take a lot [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
The more we think about this one the more we like it. [Michael] built himself a wind-powered persistence-of-vision weather station. Okay, that sounds interesting, but he ups the ante when you find out what’s included in the system. A stepper motor acts as the generator which powers the electronics. As we’ve seen before; if you spin [...]
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8:01
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Hack a Day
[Antoine] wrote in to let us know that he soldiers on with his flashlight project. He’s doubled up on the supercaps and tripled the LEDs (translated). The core concept has stayed the same since the original version. He wanted a flashlight that was small and used no batteries. This iteration came about as he looked at [...]
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11:37
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Hack a Day
[KonaStar] shows us that adding some light to you car interior isn’t very hard. It’s just a matter finding some unused space and routing the cables so that they’re out of sight. Here he’s added LED lighting to the footwells and glove box of his car. He managed to find some depressions in the molded [...]
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13:01
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Hack a Day
[Alex] built an add-on board for his TI launchpad that lets him use it as a wireless controller for an RGB lamp (translated). As you can see above, the board has a pair of female pin-headers which make it easy to install or remove the board. This way you can use it for other projects without [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
[BadWolf's] girlfriend wanted him to build her a lamp for Christmas and he didn’t disappoint. What he came up with is a water-filled color changing lamp with bubbles for added interest. See for yourself in the clip after the jump. The color changing properties are easily taken care of by some waterproof RGB LED strips. [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
It’s not often that we see something so brilliantly simple we’re left reaching for our checkbooks while wondering exactly how we never though of that before. [Jürgen]‘s edge-lit Nixie display is one of those builds. [Jürgen]‘s modern take on a Nixie display uses ten laser-engraved pieces of acrylic to emulate a Nixie numerical display. In the [...]
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13:31
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Hack a Day
We get a ton of tips about Kickstarter projects. Here is a great example of what we need to see in order to feature one of them. This LED Blinky Ball developed by Null Space Labs is the target of a rather ambitious fundraising campaign. But in addition to the fundraising write-up they’ve shared extensive [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
It’s not roses or jewelry, but we hope [Erik]‘s light-up USB heart will be appreciated by his significant other. When the two heart pieces come in contact with each other, each side lights up. [Erik] started his build by cutting two half-heart shaped pieces out of polycarbonate. After drilling a few holes for LEDs and wires, [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
Flashing LEDs for a persistence of vision display are on bicycle wheels, alarm clocks, and even light painting sticks to draw images in the air. What if you wanted to plot an image in the air (translation) with a single LED? That’s what [acorv] did after taking a cue from a polar plotter. Like the polar plotter and [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
You won’t find [Antoine] stumbling around in the dark. He just finished working on this LED flashlight which draws power from a super-capacitor (translated). He realized that lighting a high-efficiency LED takes so little power that there are many benefits in play when deciding to move away from batteries. When compared to a super capacitor, batteries [...]
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13:49
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Hack a Day
Around this time last year, [KopfKopfKopfAffe] was enlisted as a set designer and was told to build some sort of light effects for electronic music parties. The budget for the project wasn’t much at 200 Euros, but he did manage to build decent 5×5 RGB LED matrix that is fully controllable by a computer. [KopfKopfKopfAffe] [...]
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8:01
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Hack a Day
Have you ever seen an LED display made out of routers? [Sean] took eight Netgear routers and made an 8×4 display out of them. Because that wasn’t cool enough, a very small version of Conway’s Game of Life was added to the build. Each router is running a copy of OpenWrt, a Linux distro meant [...]
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10:53
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Hack a Day
[Cameron] decided to give his twenty-year-old headlamp a makeover. He uses it when he’s out for a run and wanted to have more light to see where he’s going, as well as a red tail light on the back. The stock design uses an incandescent bulb on the front of the head band, and a [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
LEDs and and cameras always make a fun mixture, and its not all that hard to have quite a bit of fun as well. The Light Painting Stick is similar to other long exposure camera tricks like LightScythe and gets about the same reults. The difference is the Light Painting Stick is self contained meaning [...]
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15:29
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Hack a Day
A month ago, we saw a marvelous demonstration of troll physics from YouTube user [Fredzislaw100]. In his video, we saw a circuit of three switches and three LEDs wired in series and but not acting like the should. A lot of the comments for this post elicited reasonable explanations like modifying the battery or pure camera wizardry via After Effects. Thankfully, [Alan] stepped [...]
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13:24
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Hack a Day
[Greg] is really working on a small scale with his LED Matrix backpack PCB. It’s a toy that he designed as an activity. He constrained himself to a board which would exactly match the outline of an 8×8 bicolor LED matrix package. What you see here is the side of the PCB which will be facing [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
Even though everyone with a smart phone has a small, powerful computer in their pocket, we haven’t seen many applications of this portable processing power that use the built-in camera. [Michael] decided to change this and built an LED matrix that displays the data coming from the phone’s camera. For the build, [Michael] used two [...]
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7:17
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Hack a Day
[Ryan]‘s cylinder POV display is an amazing piece of work. Right now it’s impressive sitting on his workbench, but we’re sure it would be astonishing hanging above the middle of a dance floor. There are 64 RGB LEDs on this display and they’re certainly bright enough to liven up any space. Power is provided through a slip [...]
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15:01
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Hack a Day
[Vinod Stanur] is working with a mouse input and a microcontroller driven LED matrix. The mouse cursor is tracked inside of a window by Python and the resulting coordinates on the LED grid are illuminated. He calls it an LED matrix “Paint Toy” because one of the features he’s included lets the user create pixel [...]
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9:19
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Hack a Day
[miceuz] has a friend that works as a theatre technician, and in the course of his job he often needs to jigger with various stage components while shows are in progress. As you can imagine, the lighting situation is far from ideal, so he asked [miceuz] to build him an adjustable lighting solution for his [...]
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7:19
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Hack a Day
For his first big build with an MSP430, [Javon] decided to an RGB LED fader. Having worked with Arduinos in the past, he figured that his MSP430 would have a few PWM channels. After being proved wrong by the data sheet, [Javon] needed to figure out a way to switch a bunch of RGB LEDs with [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
An 8×8 LED Matrix Game Grows Up: [Pixel Land] is an iPhone game similar to [Super Mario Brothers] using a virtual array of 8×8 pixels. This wouldn’t normally be interesting, but we’ve actually featured “this” game as an 8×8 LED matrix game. How to Drill Golf or Ping-Pong Balls: Drilling golf or ping-pong balls is [...]
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6:00
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Hack a Day
[George] just finished his first project: an 8×8 matrix “Board of Many Ping-Pong Balls” with 64 RGB LEDs. He started this project when he was 14 years old and finished the build over this last Christmas break. We won’t make any presumptions about [George]‘s age, but we couldn’t think of a better project to start [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
[Asher Glick] wrote in to share a project he has been working on with his friend [Kevin Baker], a 4x4x4 RGB LED cube. The pair are students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and also members of the newly-formed Embedded Hardware Club on campus. As their first collaborative project, they decided to take on the ubiquitous LED [...]
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5:01
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Hack a Day
Last month we caught wind of an impressive display of troll physics. [Fredzislaw100] out of Poland posted a video of a circuit that should not exist. As expected, the comments in our coverage blew up with 200 posts. About half the commenters called a little Adobe After Effects trickery, while the other half offered up an electrical explanation. [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
[Craig Lindley] recently finished building his own RGB LED cube project. It’s made up of four layers of 4×4 LED grids, but you may notice that the framework that supports the structure is not the usual ratsnet of wires we’ve come to expect. They’re actually long, thin circuit boards. [Craig] grabbed the Rainbow Cube kit sold [...]
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5:00
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Hack a Day
[Rod] is in a position to provide a community service on New Year’s Eve. He spends the evening at a relative’s house next to the beach. There are fireworks at midnight, but the crowd has no communal way to count down to the deadline. This year, he build his own count-down display so that everyone [...]
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9:30
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Hack a Day
This animated LED buckyball has little to do with modeling a carbon molecule but a lot to do with adding some excitement to your party decor. [Tim] felt that the LED cube hacks had run their course, so took on the challenge of a sphere made out of pentagonal and hexagonal components instead. As with [...]
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12:59
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Hack a Day
Here’s a neat 4x4x4 LED cube made with an ElecFreaks Flower Protoboard. A few days ago, we posted a neat new prototyping board made specifically for SMD work. Instead of the usual ‘holes-with-circles’ protoboard layout, the ElecFreaks team decided to go with a flower-shaped pad. This makes it especially easy to deal with SMD components when building [...]
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14:53
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Hack a Day
[Ben Krasnow] wrote in, saying that every so often a news story appears covering a project in which researchers embed a single pixel LED display inside a contact lens. The most recent article he saw featured a contact-wearing rabbit, and not being one to shy away from damaging his own body in the name of [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
This LED lamp, which uses a soda cup as a lampshade, is Internet enabled thanks to a Linux board (translated). To say the system is overpowered would be a gross understatement. But at least there’s plenty of room for growth. The lamp is really just a hardware extension for the Linux board. A half-dozen colored LEDs [...]
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8:08
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Hack a Day
Guess where this guy’s headed in his suit of many colors? If you said Burning Man give your self a pat on the back. After making a half-hearted EL suit for the festival in 2010 [Sander] decided he needed to step it up this year. He bought and affixed 200 LED modules to this suit [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
[Alex] sent in a neat Ikea DIODER build that controls strings of RGB LEDs with HTTP requests. We’ve seen Ikea DIODERs controlled wirelessly and over USB, but using the Internet with a DIODER is new to us. For his build, [Alex] used a Nanode, a small Arduino-like board that has built-in web connectivity. The hardware [...]
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15:01
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Hack a Day
[Fjord Carver] brings together an RGB LED and CdS Photoresistor to make a color sensor. Those Cadmium Sulfide lights sensors usually have a very wide swing of resistance when exposed to varying levels of light sensitivity. That makes for great resolution when reading them using the ADC of a microcontroller. The LED comes into play by shining [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
[Marcus] was recently commissioned to put together the electronics for a slick 10 meter long LED installation at the Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park Exhibition Center in Taiwan. While you might assume that he was asked to construct a large LED matrix, this project is a little bit different from what you probably expected. The display [...]
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15:01
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Hack a Day
The guys at BuildLounge wrote us to share a giant LED sign they came across in the submission pile for their “Win a Laser Cutter” contest that’s currently under way. [Stephen Shaffer] helps run a huge party called Fantastic Planet, for which the group typically outsources the lighting arrangements. They got tired of hiring light [...]
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15:01
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Hack a Day
[Dave] just can’t seem to get enough of modifying his new car. Where he lives, it’s typically dark on his ride home from work and he finds himself dropping things on the floor of his car all too often. Nissan decided not to include lighting in the Juke’s foot well or glove box, so [Dave] decided [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
This dorm room is ready to entertain, thanks in part to the LED wall sconces that [Joseph] hacked together. Inside each fixture you’ll find three 3-Watt LED modules. For proper heat dissipation he mounted them on sheet metal which he cut out, including some fingers for additional surface area. The shape for the heat sink was chosen [...]
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9:16
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Hack a Day
[Brainiac27] isn’t going to let the absence of sun prevent him from biking. He has no trouble lighting his path with this 1300 Lumen bike light he built. The light source is a 3-up star by Cree. It puts off a lot of light, but also generates quite a bit of heat which is the [...]
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11:30
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Hack a Day
[Martin] wrote in to share a project his company has been working on for some time, a gigantic 1470 pixel LED wall. The group provides lighting for clubs, parties, etc, and their hand-built LED matrix is always certain to be the hit of the show. The amazing matrix was designed from the ground up and [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
[Fabien] wrote in to share a link to this RGB video display which he made. He’s got some pretty cool routines that make it more functional than you would think, but first we want to comment on the construction. He used an RGB strip, which makes this look like an incredibly simple build. The strip [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
[Steven] had one of those musical gift cards laying around, and thought he might as well reuse the piezo speaker inside it. Without a particular project in mind, he soldered an LED to the piezo and tapped on it, which caused the LED to illuminate as expected. He started to wonder what quantity of force [...]
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5:01
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Hack a Day
If you happen to do a lot of video encoding, you know that your computer can really drag while the process is carried out. Our own [Mike Szczys] transcodes videos at home fairly often, and because the process is automated, he doesn’t always know if a conversion is taking place in the background. He has [...]
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13:01
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Hack a Day
[Markus] had been drooling over some LED panels to use as a soft light source for photography, but being a hobbyist, he didn’t want to spend a ton of money to buy them. He figured that he had enough electronics know-how to build his own panels, while saving a boatload of cash in the process. [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
[Paul] was looking to spice up his holiday decorations this year, so he picked up some GE Color Effects lights and started hacking away. We’ve already seen how hacker-friendly these LED bulbs are, which is why [Paul] decided to give them a try. His ultimate goal was to synchronize several sets of lights from one [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
[Dave] spiced up his new 2012 Nissan Juke with a little tail-light amendment. You can see that outlining the rim of the light enclosure is a series of dots. This is an LED strip that he added to augment the brake lights. It’s glued in place, and features side emitting LEDs so that the light will [...]
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13:01
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Hack a Day
Five bucks will buy you a STRÅLA lamp from Ikea. It’s a battery operated hanging lamp that pipes the light out through multiple branches of fiber optic bundles. But you’ll only get white out of this, which is pretty boring. [Boris] decided to swap out the stock LED for an RGB unit and drive it with [...]
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14:15
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Hack a Day
This fully-addressable RGB LED matrix was built by [John Graham-Cummings]. He didn’t start from scratch, but wisely repurposed a strand of GE Color Effect lights and built a pleasant looking case in which to mount the G-35 hardware. We’ve seen this hardware used in a similar way before. Because each ‘bulb’ has its own microcontroller, [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
For some ungodly reason, [Scott] has a friend that wanted a ‘sexting themed’ Halloween costume. We won’t try to make any presumptions of the creativity or mental stability of [Scott]‘s friend, but the SMS scrolling LED belt buckle he came up with is pretty cool. The belt is based around a $13 scrolling LED belt [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
Our own [Mike Szczys] recently sat down and put together a great tutorial on building a Larson Scanner. The ubiquitous circuit is usually one of the first few projects on a budding hackers list of things to build, since they are just so darn fun. Simple versions of the scanner sweep back and forth lighting [...]
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13:30
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Hack a Day
[Garrett Mace] decided to beef up his 58 inches of plasma with 60 Watts of LED lighting. After seeing a ton of Ambilight clones using his LED modules, he’s built his own powerful system. Not surprisingly, it’s nothing short of professional-grade work. Kudos to [Garrett] for showing the entire process in the video after the [...]
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6:01
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Hack a Day
[Erik] has been keeping extremely busy with his latest project, a flexible RGB LED matrix that he calls “Project Light Bright”. The folks at BuildLounge tell us that this is the first entry they have received so far in their “Light Contest”, in which they are giving away a free laser cutter to the best [...]
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4:38
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Hack a Day
Hackaday reader [chrysn] picked up a 3-button RGB model DIODER light from IKEA and thought he might as well take it apart to see what he could do with it. Having seen several DIODER hacks featured here, he knew it was easily hackable, but he didn’t want to simply rehash what other had already done. [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
We can order seven segment displays in red, green, yellow, or blue all day long. One thing we haven’t seen is an RGB segmented display, so [Markus]‘ project is really interesting. He took a stock seven segment display and modded it into an RGB display. After taking a Dremel to the back of the stock [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
[Gagandeep] was sick and tired of discourteous drivers on the highway, so he decided that he would put together a display to let them know what he thought of their poor driving skills. He planned on putting the display up in the rear window of his car, so he had to ensure that it did [...]
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13:05
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Hack a Day
[Nikolai] has a friend who is into fire and light shows. Her birthday was coming up, so [Nikolai] decided to build something to compliment her performances. He came up with a 10 cm LED ball (Russian, Google translation) that has a matrix of 256 LEDs wrapped around its surface. The ball’s structural support is its [...]
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12:14
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Hack a Day
[Kyle] was looking for a way to spice up his boring brick-wall dorm room. The Christmasqualizer he came up with brightens up his room and would make an awesome place for a rave. The strings of lights in [Kyle]‘s Christmasqualizer are off-the-shelf Christmas lights. A simple circuit for the 7-band equalizer was built following this [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
At Hive13, a Cincinnati-based hackerspace, they like to hack everything – even their bathroom. One of the bathroom’s walls faces the street, and is made up of thick glass privacy blocks. A few years ago, they thought it would be a cool idea to install an LED matrix to the back side of the glass [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
[mike6789k] wanted to spice up his dorm room, so he built a cool music synchronized light show that struck us as being very well thought out. We have seen similar music-based visualizations before, but they tend to be pretty basic, relying on volume more than actual audio frequencies to trigger the lighting. [mike6789k] didn’t want [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
Sure, it may be two and a half months until Christmas. That doesn’t mean we can’t start building a few Christmas decorations. Last year, [RB] over at Embedded Lab made an animated Christmas sign using a simple microcontroller setup. This year, [RB] is adding a blinking LED border and doing the entire project with 74xx [...]
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16:01
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Hack a Day
Around a year ago, a bunch of blinkenlights were installed in the HCI-Building of ETH Zürich. These LED spots weren’t interactive and only showed hardcoded patterns. Of course a bunch of LEDs demand interactivity, so for the first-semester party this year a giant game of Tetris was built on the side of a building. There’s [...]
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12:46
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Hack a Day
This Daft Punk helmet replica is beautiful to look at, but the deeper we delve into the build process, the more we begin to think that the entire project is a piece of artwork. [Harrison Krix] has been working on it for months, and just posted his three-part build log in September. Check out the [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
[StarfireMX] churned out a fantastic turn signal replacement for his Mustang. When he switches on his blinker, a chasing pattern of amber LEDs is shown on the front corner of his car. Pretty cool, and as far as we can tell this is still street legal. But once he gets onto private property [StarfireMX] can [...]
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3:44
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Hack a Day
[Patrick] was prepping for some future projects he had in mind, for which he will need a simple 2D array of addressable LEDs. While it is certainly possible for him to build his own LED array and control hardware, he thought he would try out some off the shelf products to see if something might [...]
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10:50
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Hack a Day
An Arduino can handle running a small LED cube on its own, but if you’re planning on building something big, eventually you are going to run out of pins. For something like an 8x8x8 cube, odds are you will have to turn to shift registers to get the job done. While you could design a [...]
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10:38
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Hack a Day
[Mathieu] needed to open up his Acer Aspire One to do a hard drive replacement and decided to add a bit of pizzazz while he was in there. The image above is the lid of the netbook adorned with RGB LEDs and a spray painted stencil. He previously purchased a set of surface mount RGB packages on [...]
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6:00
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Hack a Day
[Tom] recently started experimenting with Charlieplexing, and wrote in to share the 4x4x4 cube he built with an ATtiny24. Similar to this minimalist 4x4x4 LED cube we featured the other day, [Tom’s] version attempts to use the least pins possible to drive the LEDs, but in a different manner. [Tom] didn’t want to sacrifice brightness, [...]
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13:01
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Hack a Day
[Chris Williamson] designed the Rave Rover, a mobile disco floor with integrated stripper pole for this year’s DragonCon. [Chris] started building combat robots back in 2000 for Battlebots and Robot Wars and cofounded the South Eastern Combat Robot league. He’s a lover and not a fighter, so for the DragonCon robotics track [Chris] built his [...]
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6:00
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Hack a Day
[Kirill] wrote in to share his ATtiny hack, a 4x4x LED cube. The 64 LED display is a great choice to fully utilize the hardware he chose. It’s multiplexed by level. Each of the four levels are wired with common cathodes, switched by a 2N3904 transistor. The anodes are driven by two 595 shift registers, [...]
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7:03
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Hack a Day
Although not everyone has the ability to make a hacked Pong game Like [Marcelo], even fewer have the ability or the creativity to come up with the elaborate hack that he did. The basic premise of his game is a version of pong played on a breadboard with a 8×8 matrix of LEDs. The controls [...]
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10:00
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Hack a Day
[David] has always wanted use UV LEDs to write on a phosphorescent surface ever since saw an article about it on Make. He accidentally purchased UV LEDs when he meant to buy purple ones, so he figured that his mistake was all the reason he needed to give UV light writing a try. He built [...]
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8:01
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Hack a Day
[vinod] sent in his replica of a Snake game, the game to play on old Nokia dumb phones. The build is based on a PIC16F877 microcontroller just like previous Snake builds we’ve seen, but [vinod] didn’t use physical buttons in his build. Instead, he used a Philips infrared TV remote to control the game. The [...]
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12:41
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Hack a Day
As [Plasma2002] put it, “Those jumbo screens at concerts that display your text messages can be a lot of fun. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the same thing for your own parties or social gatherings?” The answer to this question came in the form of this hack, a scrolling marquee sign that [...]
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13:01
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Hack a Day
[Augusto] wrote in to tell us about his keychain-sized persistence of vision project. He built the original prototype on some protoboard, using a PIC 16F627 to drive eight LEDs. Synchronization is managed by a tilt sensor on the board that starts the strobing to match the direction the board is traveling. This is a similar [...]
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13:48
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Hack a Day
If you didn’t land the job after your last interview, it might have been because you were not wearing this sweet Kraftwerk-inspired necktie. Although our own [Caleb Kraft] insists that this recent creation by the folks over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is a tribute to him, [Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider] beg to differ. [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
[Garrett] over at MaceTech was approached by a friend who needed a light-up mohawk installed on a Viking helmet, and he needed it ASAP. Now, [Garrett] does tons of work with LEDs but it’s not every day you are asked to construct a sound-responsive LED mohawk. He had all sorts of LEDs and other bits [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
[Holzleim's] flashlight build is quite impressive. And the rise and fall of the hardware is quite a story. He designed it as a handheld light, relying on batteries to power a multitude of high-power LEDs inside.From the collection of four 5350 mAh lithium polymer cells he was able to achieve a peak power output that [...]
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10:03
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Hack a Day
Bicycling at night can be a potentially hazardous endeavor for several reasons, but primarily because well, it’s dark. Inattentive drivers, weather, and other factors aside, the most important thing you can do to keep yourself safe is to ensure that you can see and that you are seen by others. Revolights, an invention put together [...]
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15:05
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Hack a Day
[Zach's] company is all about the safety and to reinforce those ideals they handed out POV display fans to each employee. “Being Safe is Cool”, get it? Gimmicky… yes, but now [Zach's] got a tiny little POV fan to hack. Although he may not have known it, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this hardware. These fans were [...]
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12:04
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Hack a Day
Instructable user [cubeberg’s] daughter saw Tron:Legacy earlier this year and decided right then and there that she wanted to dress up as Quorra for Halloween. Being the awesome dad he is, he decided to make her costume himself, and hit the stores in search of an Identity Disc to complete the look. The toy was [...]
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14:54
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Hack a Day
We here at Hack A Day love LED’s, and all things LED related, but one of the biggest problems with LED’s are the small size. We want bigger and brighter, matrices the size of our TV, seven segments as big as a wall and a single white led the size of a baseball, and brighter [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
Here’s an altered PCB that gives USB control to an Ikea Dioder. This is a $50 product that comes with four strips each containing nine RGB LEDs. The stock controller has a color selection wheel and a couple of buttons. [Rikard Lindström] wanted to use it to match ambient light to the colors of his [...]
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14:00
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Hack a Day
[Brendan Vercoelen] is a university student in New Zealand studying engineering. He says his recent gigantic LED cube build, “isn’t very serious” compared to other student projects, but that doesn’t mean it’s not impressive. The original plan for the build was a 16x16x16 tri-color LED cube. After realizing how much soldering that really was, [Brendan] [...]
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4:01
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Hack a Day
A user named [BOcnc] on the rcgroups forums just posted his RGB POV helicopter blades. The two blades are attached to the heli just as any other whirlygig. The electronics, though, are mounted underneath the blade with a battery pack. We covered a build last year that demonstrated weight added to a spinning blade won’t [...]
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13:00
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Hack a Day
Whether for fashion, emergency lighting, or just to make a statement, these lighted shoe clips make for a unique footwear accessory. [Becky Stern], who we’ve seen before hacking automatic knitting machines, tackles this quick lighted project. The electronics are simple, two LEDs connected in parallel to a button battery by some conductive thread. The circuit [...]
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13:33
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Hack a Day
[Isaac] sent in his mashup build of a LED cube combined with a graphic EQ meter. The build is fairly simple and from the video we can tell that his build would be a great installation in a dubstep venue. While it’s not the 9x9x9 cube possible with some judicious coding we think it’s a [...]
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16:01
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Hack a Day
This year, students working for Texas Instruments as part of their Co-op program were challenged to construct a project around the company’s MSP430 microcontroller. A team of three students, [Max Thrun, Mark Labbato, Ian Cathey] decided to build something that would fit perfectly in any college student’s dorm room – an RGB LED coffee table. [...]
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13:30
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Hack a Day
Pulse Width Modulation is definitely the preferred method of dimming an LED with a microcontroller, but we were interested in hearing about a different method called Binary Code Modulation. BCM does the same thing as PWM, it turns the LED on and off very rapidly so that your eye cannot detect a flicker. The brightness [...]
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16:01
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Hack a Day
Someone sent in a tip that pointed us to this Magic: The Gathering forum thread where a user named [DistortedDesigns] made a life counter for Magic: The Gathering out of Nixie tubes. While there’s not many details for this build, it’s just too cool to be forgotten in a single forum. The project began by etching [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
Hackaday contributor [Nick Schulze] popped out an impressive set of LED headgear for a hat-themed party. [Nick] is no stranger to working with LEDs. Previously he built a blue 8x8x8 cube something like this other 512 node full color version. He had a bunch of LEDs left over from that project and decided to put [...]
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4:04
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Hack a Day
Hackaday reader [BGR] wrote in to share a video he put together showing off a cool “poor man’s LED scroller” that he built. Rather than build a huge array of LEDs, spending tons of time time wiring and programming, he decided to use only a handful of LEDs on a moving display instead. The scroller [...]
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8:01
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Hack a Day
[David Forbes] is no stranger to the weird and esoteric, so he created a color LED TV built into a lab coat. He plans on bringing it to Burning Man next month. The RGB LEDs are mounted narrow flex boards, providing a 160×120 pixel NTSC display. Video processing is taken care of by an Xilinx [...]
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8:22
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Hack a Day
[Michael Ross] is a photographer who has been getting into light painting recently. He’s come up with his own RGB light wand to create some amazing images, and also written a very, very thorough tutorial (PDF warning) on how to build your own light wand. The light wand is based on an Arduino Mega board [...]
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6:02
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Hack a Day
[Eli Skipp] wrote in to share a project she has been working on bit by bit, for over a year – an LED VU meter scarf. The project was originally going to be built using a custom PCB, but no matter how long she spent troubleshooting the piece, it just wouldn’t work right. She eventually [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
Meet MBLed, a set of interactive 8×8 LED tiles. Put them next to each other and they will orient themselves into a video screen which is the sum of the parts. If this sounds familiar it’s because we’ve seen the concept before in the GLiP project. [Guillaume] tells us that MB Led is the new [...]
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3:50
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Hack a Day
[Andrey] from RTFM has built himself a glowing LED pendant using only three parts and some simple code. The hack is not particularly complicated but [Andrey] provides some decent instructions on Pickaxe programming via an RS232 serial port and RGB LED control to produce the nice glowing effects. The pendant contains an RGB LED, a [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
[Steve Hoefer] is not a huge fan of traditional table lamps, so he set off to build a reading light of his own that was more aesthetically pleasing than the standard fare. He thought it would be pretty appropriate to construct his reading lamp out of a book, and we’re inclined to agree. He stripped [...]
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12:01
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Hack a Day
If you are planning on using more than a handful of BlinkMs in a project, you will likely find that their $15 price tag quickly adds up. Instructables user [jimthree] found himself in that position and opted to create his own homebrew version of a BlinkM instead. He calls his creations “Ghetto Pixels”, and while [...]
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14:02
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Hack a Day
[Bob] had a couple of bright, 12V halogen spotlights in his hallway that didn’t get much use. Rather than toss them out or leave them sitting idle, he decided to replace the bright bulbs with dimmer LEDs that he could keep lit through the night. He opened up the spotlights, removing the bulbs and the [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
Because surplus LED panels from an early 1990s supercomputer is a completely reasonable thing to own, [William Dillon] set to work displaying them on his wall. The LED panels came from a surplus CM-5 Connection Machine, best known from it’s role as the mainframe in Jurassic Park (only an empty case with LED panels were [...]
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9:01
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Hack a Day
[Jeri] threw down the geeky fashion gauntlet by building this LED enhanced dress. She chose to assemble the project for her trip to BarBot 2011, and we can’t think of a more appropriate setting for such a garment. It uses a motion sensor to set off a delayed pattern of blue lights hidden underneath the [...]
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7:18
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Hack a Day
[Fileark] had the backlight on his digital picture frame go out one day. These are generally Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps which require an inverter to source the voltage necessary for proper operation. When they stop working, the inverter is usually to blame. Since that circuit is made up of pretty small surface mount circuitry, he decided to [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
[Hugo] went all out when sharing his findings while reverse engineering this small LED marquee. He purchased the 29×7 LED matrix for under $12 but was surprised to find that the USB connector wasn’t a standard type and didn’t come with a cable. He first soldered a standard connector in place and then set out [...]
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4:04
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Hack a Day
[Mathieu] was on holiday in China and picked up some fun toys while perusing the numerous electronics markets there. The most interesting things he discovered were a pair of RGB LED matrices. They came in two different flavors, one made for indoor and one for outdoor displays, sporting a 64×32 and 32×16 resolution, respectively. If [...]
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15:01
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Hack a Day
[Evan] is one of those neighbors you only wish you had. His neighbors were renovating their basement for use as home theater, and he stopped by to check out how things were coming along. While there, he suggested they add some LED lighting to their shelving unit to make them pop. His neighbors were game, so [...]
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8:16
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Hack a Day
[Stephen] wrote in to show us this fun LED wall he constructed in his house. He says he was inspired by this project, but found the cost of the BlinkM units from sparkfun to be out of his price range. He really liked how they worked though, so he downloaded the schematic and firmware and [...]
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3:57
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Hack a Day
How long has it been since you’ve played a game of tag? [Sylvia Cheng, Kibum Kim, and Roel Vertegaal] from Queen’s University’s human media lab have concocted a fun twist on the classic game that just might compel you to start playing again. Their game, called TagURIt, arms two players with Lumalive LED t-shirts which [...]
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8:54
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Hack a Day
[Dmitry] was shopping for LEDs and accidentally pulled the trigger on the wrong type. Since he didn’t want to be wasteful, he figured he should at least take the time to build something with them. A LED matrix display was the obvious project choice, but he only had a PIC16F688 at his disposal. Since the [...]
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7:11
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Hack a Day
Here is a post from [John's Projects]. For the insane, satirical, and incredible 2011 Omaha Groundhog Prom [John] and his buddy fabricated helmets reminiscent of our favorite robot rockers. [John] needed something harder, better, faster, stronger than the competition and wound up creating LED matrices that mount behind aerodynamic motorcycle helmet visors. The helmets were [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
Instructables user [llopez-garcia] was looking for something that would make him stand out at music events or clubs, and decided that an LED matrix built into a set of sunglasses would do the trick. He grabbed some LEDs and the biggest pair of sunglasses he could find at WalMart, then he got down to business. [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
[Rajendra Bhatt] wrote in to share a tutorial he put together demonstrating the basics of using LED dot matrix displays. While this subject might be old hat to many out there, his helpful walkthroughs are geared more towards beginners who are exploring various electronics concepts for the first time. He explains the theory behind LED [...]
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3:57
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Hack a Day
[Andrew & Deborah O'Malley] were tapped to created an interactive exhibit. The mission was to show that social problems take continual support from a lot of people before they can be solved. The piece needed to be architectural in nature, and they ended up building this touch-sensitive model building with individually lighted windows. The project log that [...]
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12:25
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Hack a Day
[Fede.tft] wrote in to tell us about some work he’s been doing to save battery life for LED dominoes. He originally got the idea after reading this post about the electronic gaming pieces. That project was aimed at the 555 timer contest and therefore, used a 555 timer. [Fede.tft] calculates the battery life for the [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
We’ve already added the components needed to build [Rucalgary's] tiny POV device to our next parts order. The little device sets a new standard for tiny persistence of vision boards. Instead of relying on the user to find the best speed and timing for swinging the board around, [Rucalgary] used an accelerometer. This is the [...]
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6:07
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Hack a Day
Papydoo spends most of its time sleeping, but if startled by vibration it will wake up and stare you down with a cold and unnerving robo-gaze like you have not seen before. Or it might just do something crazy like display a scrolling Space Invaders character marquee. That’s the thing with Papydoo, you just never [...]
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7:06
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Hack a Day
[Iain] is getting to the point in his life where he finds himself waxing nostalgic about various different technologies from his youth. One item he has always been fond of is first generation 7 segment consumer LED displays, like those found in old calculators. He was excited to find one of these displays at the [...]
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13:49
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Hack a Day
A large part of science is making mistakes and learning from them in order to make each subsequent design that much better. When your experimentation involves hacking cakes, each failure is an exercise in deliciousness. [Craig] and his group of research partners often bake electronics-related cakes whenever part of the team departs in search of [...]
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14:00
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Hack a Day
[RandomTask] is sharing a Larson scanner he built a few decades ago. These days you can whip one of these up using an Arduino in under an hour. He mentions this, but we agree that for nostalgic purposes there’s nothing like implementing the scanning LED effect using hardware. Often called a Cylon Eye (after the [...]
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5:02
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Hack a Day
We love spinning POV displays but have yet to build one to call our very own. This project might be the one that we end up building. It’s looks good and it’s the only persistence of vision display that comes to mind which can be built in twelve hours. The spinning is taken care of [...]
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8:34
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Hack a Day
Get your graphite and hike a wheel, [Aron Hoekstra] writes in to completely embarrass us with some excellent pinewood derby cars. In the pursuit of that extra something [Aron] consulted with his sons who came up with some cool ideas for cars, one Tron themed and the other basically a Wiimote with wheels! The official [...]
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14:02
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Hack a Day
In his line of work, Hackaday reader [Pedantite] often has to monitor the build status of several continuous integration servers throughout the day. One afternoon, he got the idea to install a set of stop lights in the office in order to monitor the status of the servers, but filed it away as a “wouldn’t [...]
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6:03
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Hack a Day
Some people tend to get awfully attached to their favorite mug. Like an old friend, the mug holds a special place in their hearts, and there’s a weird sadness when it finally gives up the ghost. Through the winter months [Ben’s] girlfriend is never without hers, and when it broke, he decided to give her [...]
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6:27
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Hack a Day
[Mathieu] has bee working to refine the code running on an LED matrix, and added some neat display tricks along the way. He wanted to make the display directly addressable from a computer. The 96×64 bi-color LED display is powered by an Atmel FPSLIC and already used double-buffering. Enabling a PC to write directly to [...]
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4:01
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Hack a Day
When [Tyler] heard about the LED matrix display that Medea Vodka was building into their bottles, he immediately wanted to get his hands on one. Who could blame him? Someone had finally combined two things we love dearly: booze and LEDs. He struggled to find a bottle at any of his local stores for the [...]
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4:09
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Hack a Day
This handy printer interface started out as a request on our very own forums when forum member [victorf] needed some output via thermal printers. He had scored a number of HP82240B thermal printers intended for use with HP calculators, but of course they used the somewhat arcane HP protocol first drafted in the 1960′s and [...]
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11:00
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Hack a Day
The BlinkM “Smart LED” is a great little device on its own accord. It allows for complete control of its RGB LED using a built-in microcontroller, enabling the user to do a wide array of things that normally require PWM to accomplish. At just over half an inch square, this little device might also be [...]
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8:59
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Hack a Day
[Paul] wrote in to tell us about this LED driver board he’s been working on with a few friends. The collaborators had been unhappy with the Lumens per Watt ratings (or lack of a rating) on low powered LEDs and set out to find a better solution. They picked up the beefy ASMT-MT00 which houses [...]
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8:53
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Hack a Day
While Pong has traditionally been a game played between two individuals, Instructables user [Brad] has put together a variation that doubles the fun. His Pong coffee table has the ability to support up to four users at once, and makes for quite the living room centerpiece. The table is made from sheets of MDF and [...]
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7:01
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Hack a Day
Instructables user [lincomatic] was doing some home decorating and was trying to find something that would really tie the room together. He decided against adding a nice rug, a light fixture is what he was after. Rather than settle on a simple lamp for the corner of the room, he constructed an 8×8 RGB LED [...]
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6:00
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Hack a Day
Magnified glasses A late hacking session, and parts-on-hand came together as the inspiration for [BadWolf's] magnified glasses with LED lighting. Pendulum Printer This orb, when swung like a pendulum, prints images by dropping ink out the bottom. A processing sketch works in conjuction with a Wii Remote and an IR LED in the orb to [...]
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13:07
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Hack a Day
Instructables user [Dustyn] recently constructed a wind-based lantern to provide a bit of free, renewable light in urban settings. The project is based around a vertical-axis wind turbine, which she says are better suited to these environments since wind often comes from all different directions. Despite their lower efficiency compared their horizontal-axis brethren, this style [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
[Dave] needed some extra light above his desk/workbench area and decided to wire up some RGB LED light strips to brighten the place up a bit. He wasn’t content with using a standard switch to toggle them on and off, and after some brainstorming, he decided to build a capacitive touch circuit using a pair [...]
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12:00
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Hack a Day
Some say that handing out business cards is an antiquated practice due to the ubiquity of smart phones which can be used to trade or record contact information in mere moments. Instructables user [sponges] however, doesn’t agree and is pushing a “business card renaissance” of sorts with his POV business card. Hand-built in his basement, [...]
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11:01
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Hack a Day
In the comments section of our 512-LED cube post from the other day, several people suggested that to take the project up a notch, building a similar cube using RGB LEDS was the next logical step. It seems that Hack-a-Day reader [vespine] was way ahead of the curve, as he sent us the build details [...]
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14:01
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Hack a Day
We’ve seen LED cubes before, but [nick] upped the ante with his 8x8x8 LED cube that uses only three pins on his microcontroller. Previous LED cubes we’ve covered drove the LEDs with shift registers and latches, but [nick] used STP16CP LED sink drivers to reduce the component count. The STP16CP can control 16 LEDs each, [...]
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14:01
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Hack a Day
We had a basic understanding of how LCD monitors worked, and you may too. But the thing is, [Bill Hammack] doesn’t just explain the basics. Since he’s the Engineer Guy he explains the engineering principles behind how LED backlit LCD screens operate. But he does it in a way that everyone can understand. After the [...]
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4:05
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Hack a Day
Instructables user [Simon] admits he addicted to electronics. Lucky for him, his wife of 15 years is pretty cool with, or at least tolerant of his need to fiddle with anything that plugs in. As a gift for their wedding anniversary, he decided it would be neat to combine his love for his wife with [...]
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11:30
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Hack a Day
[Relwin] has being working on using LEDs as bi-directional devices. The setup above allows him to use each LED as an input, looking for a bright light source and then syncing up with the activity it receives. It is the most basic of communications using the components. The hardware at the heart of the system [...]
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12:15
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Hack a Day
[dev_dsp] wanted to try his hand at creating a purely analog implementation of multiple synchronizing fireflies powered by a single battery and built from off-the shelf, through-hole components on inexpensive protoboard. In theory, even your local Radio Shack should still carry all of this stuff. He was obviously inspired by [alex]‘s fireflies that we’ve covered [...]
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8:30
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Hack a Day
[Albert] has made a few PC IR transmitters and receivers using the traditional connection of RS232 serial, and that is fine, but as we are all aware, not every computer has serial ports standard. Searching though normal USB <> RS232 dongles didn’t meet his requirements. Deciding on making it himself, he whipped up this FTDI [...]
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14:27
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Hack a Day
[Erik] is a broke engineer. When this past Valentine’s day rolled around he didn’t have any cash to buy a gift for his girlfriend, so he had to get creative. Every girl likes flowers, but unless he was going to give his lady some day old daises from the grocery dumpster, he would have to [...]
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8:49
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Hack a Day
[Alan] shared an update with us regarding a project he has been working on for some time, radio-controlled LED light strips destined for use by the Travelling Light Circus. If you are not familiar with the project or need a quick refresher, you can read our post about it here. He recently met up with [...]
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11:04
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Hack a Day
[Ammon] repairs busted LCD monitors as a side hobby, so replacing burned out CCFLs and inverter circuits is something he can do in his sleep. One Dell monitor he received had him so perplexed, that he simply gave up on trying to repair the inverter circuit. He still wanted to get it working, so he [...]
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14:31
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Hack a Day
If you walked into an art gallery and saw nothing but blank canvases lining the wall, you might be compelled to demand your money back, or assume that you had discovered the world’s laziest artist. If this gallery happened to be displaying work by [Brad Blucher and Kyle Clements] however, you would be mistaken. These [...]
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11:46
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Hack a Day
Here’s an artsy way to map out WiFi networks around you; use a big light pole and long exposures to graph them on top of photographs. This capture method is often called light painting, and uses the relative brightness of LEDs to stretch out a still image – moving the stick quickly while the shutter [...]
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13:14
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Hack a Day
Building LED arrays that can display all sorts of different patterns is pretty easy these days. Hook up an Arduino, do some charlieplexing, and off you go. When [Viktor] was younger he didn’t have all those fancy schmancy microcontrollers and circuit simulation software you kids have these days. In fact, last we heard, he had [...]
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4:00
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Hack a Day
ePaper displays are easy on the eyes because there’s no flickering backlight to put strain on them. This is great until you’re trying to read in a dim environment. Of course Amazon will sell you a backlight that’s powered from the reader itself if you’re willing to pay. [Txoof] thought the price was a bit [...]
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10:01
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Hack a Day
[Limpkin] picked up a beautiful painting of Budda while in Bali because he thought it would react well with different colors of lighting. His overall goal was to create a picture frame with built-in LEDs. The major design specification for the project was to provide an indirect light source that would not shine in the [...]
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6:06
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Hack a Day
[Everett Tom] added some blinking LEDs to his visor while honing his PCB design skills at the same time. He started with the TI eZ430-F2013 for prototyping the blinking circuit along with its mode toggle buttons. Once this was worked out he used BatchPCB (a low-cost professional board fab option) to manufacture a board. The [...]
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4:05
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Hack a Day
[Powder4u] wanted to make a persistence of vision display for his bicycle but with 50 cm of snow on the ground it’s hard to get out and ride right now. Instead he made this persistence of vision ski-pole accessory. We asked him to share some details and he obliged. It’s made using an Arduino compatible [...]
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12:03
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Hack a Day
[Andrew] is showing off his latest creation, an LED matrix clock, which he is calling “DOTKLOK”. The clock is powered by an atmega328 micro controller with a real time clock module keeping the time. The display is made out of a grid of 8×8 LED matrices giving it a resolution of 24×16, and is all [...]
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6:06
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Hack a Day
[i am jen] needed to spice up some shoes, and what better way to do that, than to spike them out in LEDs controlled by a micro controller. In order to make the LED strips, an inventive use of Velcro is applied. One half of the strip is secured to the shoes, while the other [...]
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8:03
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Hack a Day
[Alan] was commissioned to make some wearable, radio-controlled LED strips for the Travelling Light Circus. It has taken some time, but he has recently finished some prototypes, and thought it was a good time to do a writeup on the project. The system is managed by a single controller unit, which communicates with any number [...]
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12:25
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Hack a Day
[Aaron] says in our comments that he also made an LED dog collar. This Christmas themed dog collar uses an ATTiny13a and a hand full of red and green LEDs (28?). While the animations aren’t as complex as the collar we posted earlier today, we though you might enjoy this one as well. From the [...]
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6:10
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Hack a Day
LEDs make everything better, right? What about your dog? [Ken] tries it out on one of his frisky dogs who loves to run whenever she gets out with a LED dog collar. It’s an off the shelf dog collar sporting 5 blue LEDs, and is powered by an attiny2313 micro controller, which makes adding / changing [...]
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11:00
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Hack a Day
[Ben's] introduction to microcontrollers was this fun little gift he calls the “tilty cube”. It is an acrylic box with 3 LEDs mounted inside that changes color based off of how you tilt it. Sounds like a fun toy, and a good project to learn with. [Ben] chose the PIC12F615 as the brains and laid [...]
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12:04
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Hack a Day
This is just an 8×8 LED matrix, but the size and execution make it look marvelous. [Michu] built this module using foam board dividers to separate the cells, a foam board back to host the 64 RGB LEDs, and a sheet of heavy frost diffusion gel that is a stage lighting product. The display is [...]
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5:08
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Hack a Day
We love Pong clocks because they’re showpieces. This particular offering, called the Wise Clock, is the third hardware revision of the project. The LED display is dead simple since they’re using a 32×16 bi-color module from Sure Electronics. If you don’t want to design and build your own multiplexing display this is a somewhat inexpensive and [...]
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4:08
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Hack a Day
[Konstantin] had some extra 27C256 EPROMS lying around and decided to use them to animate an 8×8 LED matrix. He’s not only using them to store data, but driving the display with them as well. The chip holds 32 kilobytes of data which equates to 4096 frames of animation. A 32 kHz clock circuit works [...]
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5:06
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Hack a Day
Next time you throw together a talent show consider using these cards for up and down voting. [Frits Rincker] came up with the idea over the weekend based on the like and dislike buttons of Facebook. They consist of some foam board with LEDs in the outline of a hand. He built a switch which [...]
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14:28
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Hack a Day
A big fan of generative art, [Andrew Magill] wanted to build an LED display for his wall that constantly displayed images from the Electric Sheep project. After discounting the possibility of generating these fractals on the fly, he settled on using prerecorded video clips gathered over a year’s time by Electric Sheep users. With thousands [...]
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11:00
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Hack a Day
[Ben] is getting himself up to speed with microcontrollers. He jumped into the deep end by taking on this Charlieplex LED matrix build. As you can see after the break, he not only made the display work, but coded Conway’s game of life to run on the ATtiny85 that drives the device. What you see [...]
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9:37
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Hack a Day
[Simoninns] is hoping to compete in the Sparkfun Microcontroller Contest with this cool little Microsimon instructible. The parts list is pretty small, at around 20 components. At the heart is a PIC 12F683 microcontroller. The whole project is very well documented with schematics, PCB layouts, code, and great pictures. This is a great project that [...]
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5:00
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Hack a Day
[chromationsystems] put out a couple instructibles on building infinity mirrors. One with an 8×8 array of LEDs and one with a 32 LED ring. These are very well documented covering the construction of the mirror enclosure as well as the circuit and code. The effect is quite nice. The 8×8 array is interesting, we haven’t [...]
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9:00
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Hack a Day
[Ndsit] is having a party and wanted to liven up the place with some blinky lights. He’s a bit new when it comes to hobby electronics, and although we’d highly recommend inviting some resistors to participate, the LED matrix that he built is very nice. It’s 8×8, it’s big, and (as shown in the clip [...]
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6:29
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Hack a Day
[lenny] decided to build a 555-based auto-firing mouse based on a 555 after seeing a similar PIC-based project we posted earlier. Lenny’s version is self-contained in one mouse without requiring a second mouse to act as the rapid-fire button. It uses only a handful of components, costs less than $5 to build, and doesn’t require [...]
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4:53
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Hack a Day
[Onironaut] over at lucidscience sent us a link to his latest project, some IR illumination panels. At first, we were mildly enticed by his usual high standard of photography and description. It was just an array of LEDs though. Still, we kept hitting the “next page” button because he goes into such great detail. Then [...]
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9:31
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Hack a Day
White board beats chalk board, LED marquee beats white board, and an LED white board trumps them all. This hybrid lets you draw on the surface with dry erase markers while Conway’s game of life plays out underneath. [Bert] sent us this tip after seeing yesterday’s office marquee. This version is quite similar in appearance but [...]
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7:03
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Hack a Day
Don’t reach for a sticky note when you need to leave a message for your office mates, write it down on a 12 foot LED marquee. [Kitesurfer1404] built this for his home office, but we’re sure he’ll find fun stuff to use it for. The display has 512 LEDs driven by plain old 595 shift [...]
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13:03
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Hack a Day
[John Riney] picked up three strands of addressable Christmas lights and used them to make a scrolling marquee. You may remember that the G-35 lights were hacked at the beginning of December, and we saw a project or two that involved these fun toys. In order to make the display [John] modified the original packing [...]
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9:00
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Hack a Day
If you’ve ever thought of utilizing a small and inexpensive OLED display in your project [Rossum] has the details you need to get started. In the past we’ve seen him take a tour of available LCD screens and this is much the same, detailing his look at three different models. In the video after the [...]
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11:28
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Hack a Day
Even the most thorough inspection may not raise the alarm that this Rovio has been hacked to include LED headlights. [Adam Outler's] super clean work puts the two light sources on either side of the camera for maximum effect. It may not provide as many Lumens as our external headlight hack, but we were never [...]
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9:00
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Hack a Day
One of the bulbs in the dome light of [Pete's] car burnt out. These were a bit hard to get at for replacement so he thought he’d try something that would last longer, and have no problem standing up to the vibrations that go along with automotive electronics. But plug-in LED replacements cost more money than [...]
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7:00
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Hack a Day
[Johannes Agricola] recently held a workshop at the Peace Mission in Goettingen, Germany where he shared his RGB LED flowers. The small round PCB hosts an ATmega88 microcontroller which is running the V-USB stack so that the unit can be controlled by a computer. Each flower blossom is an RGB LED connected with four enameled wires [...]
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7:41
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Hack a Day
Get out the soldering iron and clear your schedule, it’s going to take you a while to assemble this 8x8x8 LED matrix which contains a total of 512 LEDs. We’ve looked in on a 3x3x3 cube, and [Chr], who is responsible for this one, has assembled a 4x4x4 cube before, but this one is quite [...]
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10:00
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Hack a Day
Here’s a fun video tour of a light testing facility. Admittedly, its not as fun as watching cell phones get abused, but it is interesting. The video is only about 6 minutes long, and is mostly a narrated slide show, but is full of information. There’s plenty to learn about the bulbs themselves, as well [...]
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6:25
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Hack a Day
[Grenadier] had a piece of silicon carbide sitting around that he planned to use when making a primitive diode called a Cat’sWhisker Diode. While probing he noticed that one of the crystals threw off a bit of light. He popped it off and used JB Weld to attach it to a brass plate. The peculiar [...]
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9:24
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Hack a Day
This Christmas [Bill Porter] decided to show his parents that those college dollars were well spent. He upgraded the custom lighthouse light which he originally designed in high school for their garden fountain. He even went so far as to craft some retail-worthy packaging for the gift. We think it’s a wonderful design, on a [...]
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6:55
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Hack a Day
Almost a month ago I started trying to reverse engineer an inexpensive LED color changing light bulb. With your help I’ve mapped out the circuit, and taken control of the bulb. But there’s still a few mysteries in this little blinker. Join me after the break to see what I’ve done so far, peruse the [...]
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6:42
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Hack a Day
[Robert] wanted more out of his GE Color Effects G-35 LED Christmas lights. He reverse engineered and then hacked the protocol the lights use to communicate so that he can control each bulb. A 26-bit frame contains a 6-bit address, an 8-bit brightness value, and a 12-bit color value. The daisy chain topology of the [...]
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13:00
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Hack a Day
[Jacques Lebrac] built a UV exposure box for printed circuit boards using just one LED. He usually makes boards that are just a few square inches and didn’t think building a box that had upwards of 80 LEDs was worth his time. He passed by the low power LEDs for a single 5W unit. Pumping [...]
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11:00
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Hack a Day
[Thibault Brevet] wanted his own party lighting that pulsed and faded along with the tunes. He ended up building a system based on an Arduino and a PC running Processing. The output from a mixing board is fed into a PC and measured by the Processing script. From there, the calculated light levels are sent [...]
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13:00
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Hack a Day
[Alex] wrote in to let us know about this Kinect controlled LED wall that was whipped up at the Tetalab hackerspace in Toulouse, France. The wall, which was built earlier in the year, uses some MAX7313 LED intensity controlling shift registers. Each gets its own board and controls the intensity of sixteen different red LEDs. They’re [...]
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12:00
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Hack a Day
Most of the LED matrix posts we run delve into the hardware design. This time around [J Bremnant] used prefab modules and focused on writing code to address the display. The hardware combines two 24×16 LED boards from Sure Electronics with a Teensy 2.0 to drive the display and provide a USB connection. The firmware [...]
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10:00
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Hack a Day
[Retrobrad's] spinning POV display has long been our favorite. When it popped up on our radar again this morning we were surprise to see we never ran a feature on it! But now there’s so much more to share. Hit the projects icon at the top of his page and you’ll not only get the [...]
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13:14
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Hack a Day
I went to the last monthly meeting of Sector 67, a hackerspace in Madison, WI. One of the things shown off was a color changing LED light bulb that Menards was clearing out for $1.99. Inside there’s two RGB LEDs controlled by an ATtiny13 and powered by an AC/DC buck converter. An ATtiny13 will run [...]
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8:30
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Hack a Day
Yes! A radio control helicopter with a fairly high-resolution persistence-of-vision display is a beautiful thing. [Mziwisky's] handiwork is the result of several steps along the prototyping path. He built up a POV test rig on a breadboard, designed his first PCB for the project, and then went to work building it. After initially being inspired by [...]
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9:36
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Hack a Day
[Stan] built this LED matrix using a 16×16 grid of RGB LEDs. He built the hardware and wrote some subroutines to randomize the colors. He’s not using PWM because frame buffering is not feasible for the 1k SRAM limit of the ATmega168 he used. Instead, shift registers drive the lights which can be mixed to [...]
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10:00
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Hack a Day
This is [Michael Ossmann's] RGB LED stroboscopic guitar tuner. If his name is familiar that’s because we mentioned he’d be giving a talk with [Travis Goodspeed] at ToorCon. But he went to DefCon as well and spent the weekend in his hotel room trying to win the badge hacking contest. Despite adversity he did get [...]
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15:02
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Hack a Day
What takes eight hours to solder and uses more shrink tubing that you thought imaginable? An LED matrix installed in a real pumpkin. When I mentioned that we’d like the LED pumpkin in last Friday’s post scaled up to a full LED matrix I had no idea it would be me doing the work. But [Caleb] [...]
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7:30
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Hack a Day
[George Hadley] developed a nice setup to control the color of a replica Lightsaber. A small PCB houses a PIC 18F2221 and three switching transistors for the colors. A powerful LED resides in the tip of the handle, lighting up the diffuser that makes up the blade. But our favorite part is the control scheme. [...]
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6:47
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Hack a Day
[Johncon] wrote this fantastic instructible showing us how to make an RGB LED headband. This should come in really handy the next time we find ourselves needing one… it happens. He picked up this little RGB LED strip while on a business trip to Shanghai. He had to reverse engineer the chip that controls each [...]
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7:00
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Hack a Day
We all love a good larson scanner. They’re so iconic that Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories makes a kit. However, just getting a kit and building it isn’t enough for many of us. How would we make a larson scanner better? Simply by adding more. EMSL shows us how you can modify their kit in both [...]
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7:00
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Hack a Day
We almost skimmed right past this spooky HDD activity light thinking it was just another set of LEDs wired to the motherboard. However, they explained right off that they didn’t want just another blinking light on their case. They wanted it to change its intensity smoothly based on hard drive activity. While there are a [...]
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10:00
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Hack a Day
[Wilfred's] brother outfitted a snare drum with LEDs for Dutch Carnival. They faded through different colors randomly and were a nice addition to the normal looking instrument, but [Wilfred] suggested that the LEDs change color with each drum stroke. He set out to design a controller circuit to provide the functionality and ended with a small package [...]
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6:15
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Hack a Day
This is the newest addition to [Arren Parker's] Burning Man wardrobe. The full-length lighted faux-fur coats is completely his creation. He started with a pattern that he acquired from Ebay, adding side pockets and changing the hood to a collar. From there he added the 256 RGB LEDs that make it shimmer so appealingly. For [...]
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11:29
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Hack a Day
[Julien] built an input device that uses reflected light detected by some photoresistors. Placing your hand above the device will reflect light from the LED back down onto the cadmium-sulfide sensors. The resistance of those sensors is read by four ADC pins on a Teensy microcontroller and translated to mouse movements. In the video after the [...]
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12:00
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Hack a Day
[Michael Kleinigger] posted a lengthy discussion on Pulse-Width Modulation that goes beyond the traditional beginner tutorial. He starts a bit of background info on PWM and a tip about using a camera to judge frequency and duty cycle of LEDs. From there it’s down the rabbit hole with some testing of power-loss versus frequency. When [...]
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10:00
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Hack a Day
Here’s a Blade Runner umbrella build that is done just a little bit too right. It delivers a double-dose of geekery with its lightsaber-gone-rain-protector look but where we think it crosses the line is at the built-in audio system. When you turn it on it plays recordings of popular lines from Blade Runner, something that [...]
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5:54
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Hack a Day
We spied this pretty LED clock this morning and were impressed with how cleanly it was constructed. It was built to mimic an analog clock, so you have the typical hour markings and a minute and hour hand. The minute hand stays in each position for roughly 2 to 3 minutes. The brains behind all [...]
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12:00
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Hack a Day
[Harvey] wrote in to share the Spindicator with us. The spindicator is a hard drive activity activity indicator built in a ring to resemble a dekatron. Using the pulses from the hard drive activity LED, [Harvey] tested several different methods of interpreting that data for display. The final version, negative edge triggered with a lowpass [...]
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16:51
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Hack a Day
When the tipline popped up with this LED suit, part two, by [Marc DeVidts] we were expecing a simple led version of the previously known EL coat. Well we were right and wrong in the same instance. Correct in that like predictions, the outcome is stonking great. Wrong in that this suit far outpaces EL [...]
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13:30
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Hack a Day
Who knows if this works and should you really want to try to induce hallucinations by flashing colors in front of your eyes? But we do love the zaniness of the project. [Everett's] homemade hallucination goggles come in two flavors, the small swimming-goggle-type model and the heavy-duty trip visor made from welder’s goggles. Each brings [...]
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9:58
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Hack a Day
This 64×48 full color LED display goes much further than we expected at first glance. The display is actually a computer with a Zilog eZ80F91 core utilizing an FPGA for the hardware interface. Some nifty applications currently built include mostly games, but there is also visualizations, network file systems, video streaming, and even a MIDI [...]
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4:49
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Hack a Day
[Roberto Barrios] picked up a surgical microscope to add to those other fun lab toys you seen in the background. These work very well when soldering small components because they don’t have to be as close to the viewed objects as traditional microscopes. But [Robert] didn’t care for the heat generated by the incandescent bulb [...]
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14:00
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Hack a Day
[Mathieu] built this display in hopes that he can play pong on it. You can imagine the headache that awaits when trying to figure out how to drive the 6144 bi-color LEDs. I must have worked out because the thing looks great in the video after the break. The solution he chose was a bit unfamiliar [...]
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14:00
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Hack a Day
[Ytai] let us know about his POV globe, all four parts of its current progress. While he says he was inspired to write up the project from a YouTube clip, we know the real reason. Regardless, the plan is to have a 2 foot diameter globe with 256 LEDs spinning at 50 revolutions per second [...]
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11:00
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Hack a Day
[Kenneth Finnegan's] latest clock makes use of the TI Launchpad for programming and debugging MSP430 microprocessors. We took a look at the Launchpad when it was released and we’re glad to see some hacks resulting from availability of that tool. The clock reads out the time using a bi-color LED. Press the button and a [...]
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5:59
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Hack a Day
We put a temporary ban on posting POV projects after receiving several LED spheres back in May. But we had to lift the injunction after seeing this superb Volumetric 3D POV display by [Wes Faler] and [Don Smith]. Their creative use of several readily available components adds to the alluring setup; the central elements being [...]
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13:14
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Hack a Day
[Kenneth] built this scoreboard for use at a ballpark that lacks such luxuries. We think this a phenomenal application for his skill and his pocketbook. He laid out PCBs for each digit in Eagle and etched them himself, then installed the indicators for home score, visitor score, inning, balls, strikes, and outs in a laser cut case. [...]
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14:42
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Hack a Day
[Norm Santos] whipped up an LED light board that you can draw on through their web interface. We tried it out but unfortunately the live feed is currently offline. That doesn’t diminish our appreciation for the time-lapse build video after the break. Indeed it was a mountain of hot glueing and a couple of days of soldering. [...]
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9:00
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Hack a Day
This LED matrix is arranged in a 24×6 pattern for message scrolling. There’s no etched boards here, making us wonder where [Syst3mX] found protoboard this long. He’s using an Arduino to drive the demonstration (clip after the break) but you can use any microcontroller with this setup. That’s because he’s using three shift registers for [...]
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11:00
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Hack a Day
Think the swirling glow of a Decatron is cool but don’t want to deal with the voltage issues? [Osgeld] sidestepped the problem by developing a fake Decatron. Admiral Nelson (Captain Morgan’s cheaper cousin) provided the enclosure in the form of an airplane sized liquor bottle. The LEDs are common-something (not sure if it’s anode or cathode) [...]
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9:00
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Hack a Day
This elegant looking lamp uses capacitance sensing to turn on and off. [Mikey77] takes us through the process of making the curved circuits and putting it all together. The circuit is built to be modular, so he could use it elsewhere. That’s a pretty good idea for someone who is always tossing projects together. As [...]
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9:00
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Hack a Day
The GLIP project takes the delight of blinking LEDs and combines it with the ingenuity of modular communications. This takes the Puzzlemation concept a few steps further. In that project the modules were programmed through a base station and could be removed and used as a puzzle from there. The GLIP project uses a master [...]
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5:00
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Hack a Day
[Yosh] came through with a link to the Snake playing LED matrix that he read about in our links post from yesterday. It seems that [Arty Fart] actually built three of these in green, yellow, and red. You can see him throw one together (an 8-10 hour job) in the video after the break. In addition [...]
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8:27
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Hack a Day
Precision CRT manufacture Here’s a great video from Tektronix about building a precision cathode ray tube. The tube manufacture method was developed to use in oscilloscopes and we’d guess it dates back to the early 1960′s. [Thanks Bill] Snake on an LED matrix We would have done a full post o this beautifully built LED matrix but [...]
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8:00
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Hack a Day
We all love blinky lights. What we love even more than blinky lights is a very detailed tutorial with great photos. [Richard Kline] has written this fantastic tutorial on how to build a large 5×7 LED matrix and control it with a PIC processor. The bulk of the body is a foam insulation board, covered [...]