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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 [...]

Tags:  different-color battery-life leds led hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  rain show umbrella piezo-sensors playing-in-the-rain leds led hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  led tutorial control led-driver leds slew hacks  

[Will] didn’t pick up a card, rose, and bottle of wine for Valentine’s Day like most guys. Nope, he planned way ahead and built this color-selectable glowing Valentine. When we first saw it, we figured he threw some LEDs together with a microcontroller and edge-lit a piece of acrylic. While that is technically what happened, [...]

Tags:  valentine lot love bottle-of-wine microcontroller leds holiday hacks  

This hard-drive based POV clock is a treasure trove of great design choices. Now, we’ve seen a bunch of spinning clock builds. Several of the hard drive versions use slits cut in the platters to create a display by illuminating an LED behind those slits at just the right moment. This is a similar idea but [...]

Tags:  filter leds clock pov treasure-trove light-filter design-choices hacks  

Although we’re sure they exist, we wouldn’t want to meet anybody that can’t look back fondly on the halcyon days of youth that included playing hide-and-go-seek. Some kids never grow up and continue the tradition with geocaching or orienteering, but that sense of limitless discovery wanes over time. [Kurt] came up with a small scavenger hunt [...]

Tags:  wouldn leds play kurt infrared-leds time-kurt halcyon-days arduino hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  followup physics troll alan wizardry leds explanations led hacks  

[Andrea] built this LED chaser using one logic chip. It illuminates all but one of the six LEDs, with the dim bit moving back and forth along the row in a chase sequence. This is something like an inverse Larson Scanner without the fading tail. But doing it with a logic chip instead of a [...]

Tags:  logic chaser chip andrea larson-scanner logic-chip leds classic hacks  

Normally, 29 men walking around in an endless circle would be the stuff  of an [M.C. Escher] engraving. [Tobias] turned this into a reality with a little help from some LEDs and a 3D printer. Like his earlier project, [Tobias] built himself a nice little strobing zoetrope that maintains the illusion of movement by flashing LEDs [...]

Tags:  circle leds zoetrope m.c.-escher tobias m-c-escher 3d-printer endless-circle video hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  news leds story ben-krasnow krasnow recent-article contact-lens led hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  smother suit leds sander pat-on-the-back burning-man colors led hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  led piezo lighting steven raindrops gift-cards leds hacks  

[Udo] figured out how to turn a bunch of LEDs into a very low resolution camera. The build is based around [Udo]‘s Blinkenlight shield he’s been developing over the past year. The camera operates under the idea that there’s really not much difference between a LED and a photodiode; LEDs can do light emission and [...]

Tags:  camera leds turning udo light-emission resolution-camera arduino hacks  

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week. Our most popular post of the week was about a ball that has a matrix of 256 LEDs encrusted onto its surface, allowing all sorts of patterns to be displayed. Next up is a post about the [...]

Tags:  week post ball leds roundup all-sorts Weekly  

[Emily Daniels] recently snagged a free iPad in the Instructables “Play with your food challenge” with an interesting way to work with LEDs. Growing up, most kids attempted to make, or at least have seen rock candy be produced. [Emily] thought it would be interesting to mix LEDs with the stuff to see what she [...]

Tags:  treat leds candied emily emily-daniels rock-candy play-with-your-food ipad contests  

The answer, of course, is a word clock. This is actually [Eric's] second version of a word clock. Like the first one, it uses 114 LEDs to back light the words on the display. In his first iteration he used an Arduino to drive a Charlieplex array of lights. It was an 11 by 10 [...]

Tags:  word clock leds eric word-clock arduino hacks  

[Mike Shegedin] makes full use of an 8-pin microcontroller with this ATtiny13-based dice project. With a maximum of six I/O pins (that includes using the reset pin as I/O) he needed a couple of tricks in order to drive 14 LEDs and use a momentary push button for user input. We’re certainly familiar with the [...]

Tags:  use hacks attiny mike-shegedin pin-microcontroller reset-pin leds microcontrollers  

[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 [...]

Tags:  led netbook lid mathieu mount-rgb pizzazz surface-mount leds hacks  

[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, [...]

Tags:  led cube attiny tom 4x4x4-cube unique-design leds attiny hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  spinning writer leds david light-writer writer-david uv-light led hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  led helmet viking garrett leds mohawk fiber-optic arduino hacks  

If you want an easy project to spice up your next party, chances are you already have parts on hand to throw together [Mikerbot's] quick and dirty VU-meter lights. The circuit he designed uses the audio input to trigger the base of a PNP transistor, toggling power through a string of LEDs. He’s using four [...]

Tags:  party meter project pnp-transistor audio-input leds digital audio hacks  

[Andrew] recently ordered some lockets to bejewel them with some LEDs but got a bonus small locket for free with the order. Not really having a plan for the small locket it kind of sat around until finally some inspiration hit. Meet the ee-locket which contains a tiny circular pcb with a 64k eeprom, a [...]

Tags:  locket bejewel rom andrew lockets leds HackIt  

[Charles] wanted to put some LEDs in his guitar. He also wanted individual notes to output certain colors, but he couldn’t find any projects with tone-based algorithms to convert sound into colors. After about a year of work, his ColorChord guitar was born. Unlike every other color organ build we’ve seen, the color of a note [...]

Tags:  organ color guitar charles color-organ leds algorithms digital audio hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  led leds headgear nick-schulze nick circuitry hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  led leds scroller led-scroller time-wiring tons-of-time hacks  

After seeing the TIX clock for the first time, [Gweedo Steevens] really wanted one, but wasn’t interested in paying the seemingly high asking price over at ThinkGeek. He figured it wouldn’t be too incredibly hard to build his own, so he decided to give it a shot. The clock relies on 27 LEDs to display [...]

Tags:  replica clock diy thinkgeek asking-price leds hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  led couple turning bob 12v-halogen nightlights leds home hacks  

A few weeks back we ran a piece about the convergence of making and baking in an attempt to create a cake festooned with working LEDs. The moral was that not every creative idea ends in victory, but we applauded the spirit it takes to post one’s goofs for the whole internet to see and [...]

Tags:  sequel hacking leds creative-idea goofs convergence arduino hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  improve dmitry performance project-choice matrix-display leds led hacks  

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. [...]

Tags:  led instructables matrix music-events leds walmart hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  part hacking leds craig research-partners cakes led hacks  

[Andrew] is an electrical engineering student at UIC, and decided that he would build a MIDI guitar for his senior design project. After tinkering for awhile, things were not looking good, and the MIDI guitar idea was scrapped. With his deadline creeping up, he came up with a new idea, the Guitarduino. His new project [...]

Tags:  midi-guitar engineering-student leds arduino hacks  

[Devon] recently repaired a handful of Phillips LCD projectors which he was quite excited to use. The only problem is that he didn’t want to mess with replacing the bulbs after every 2000 hours of use at $100 apiece. He was pretty confident that he could find a better way to drive the projectors, so [...]

Tags:  lcd retrofitting leds devon lcd-projectors home entertainment hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  notch led cube logical-step comments-section leds hacks  

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, [...]

Tags:  led cube nick shift-registers leds cubes hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  relwin picaxe leds light-source heart led hacks  

This water sculpture can stop drops of water in mid-air. This is accomplished by flashing LEDs to illuminate the droplets at just the right time. But it’s not limited to blinky lights alone. The top of the frame has eight nozzles, each fed by its own pump. An Arduino controls the pumps and the lights making [...]

Tags:  water leds sculpture flashing-leds water-droplet drops-of-water news  

DIY ring light setups for DSLR cameras are nothing new around here. While most of them rely on an array of LEDs or a mirror-based light tube, [Wolf] had a different idea. He figured that since optical fibers are made specifically for transmitting light from one place to another, they would make a perfect medium [...]

Tags:  fiber diy ring wolf optical-fibers light-tube leds digital cameras hacks  

Looking for something to do in his downtime, [Mista Sparkle] decided that building a simple stroboscope was in order. He already had a set of six LEDs connected to his Arduino from a previous project, so he added a potentiometer to control the rate at which the LEDs flashed, and dug into the IDE. During [...]

Tags:  easy leds stroboscope arduino previous-project potentiometer hacks  

Only a little bit out of season but better late than never! [Scott] brings us his Black Rock City Navigator. This unique bike mounted GPS device made for Burning Man 2010 features a servo driven array of LEDs. Two LED strips are used to cover the full 240 degrees of the C shaped city without [...]

Tags:  navigator black bit scott rock-city city-navigator burning-man leds gps hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  super led brite micro-controller velcro leds hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  led dog collar aaron christmas-edition dog-collar leds classic hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  fun cube tilty ben leds rgb brains led hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  array infinity led leds instructibles home hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  illumination insane onironaut ir-illumination leds array led hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  led foot office don office-mates sticky-note leds hacks  

[Jeri Ellsworth] has put together a couple of videos that cover how she made her own organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs. In the first video, after the break, it discusses the difference between regular, rigid semiconductor LEDs and organic LEDs. The video then goes on to show how to make an OLED as successive [...]

Tags:  video leds oleds organic-light-emitting-diodes jeri-ellsworth light-emitting-diodes chemistry hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  wall led kinect alex toulouse france shift-registers toulouse-france leds hacks  

Adafruit has a new LED tutorial for people wanting to get started with electronics. It is full of useful diagrams, pictures, and quizzes to help make sure you are understanding the concepts. This is the real basic stuff here: LEDs, resistors, and the laws from Kirchhoff, and Ohm. It starts out explaining the parts of [...]

Tags:  beginner leds concepts laws adafruit kirchhoff resistors Hardware  

[Ah2002] didn’t like the shaky needle in his car’s speedometer so he replaced it with a ring of LEDs. The old speedometer had a cable which rotated along with the gearbox for mechanical speed measurement. By connecting the stepper motor from a printer instead of this cable, a voltage is generated that fluctuates with the [...]

Tags:  needle leds speedometer speedometer-needle speed-measurement mechanical-speed transportation hacks  

Happy Halloween to one and all. Let’s celebrate the holiday with some related links. [Brandon] carved the Hackaday logo into his Jack-’o-Lantern. But that’s not all, inspired by EMSL’s Jack-’o-Lantern, as well as our own offering, he added LEDs. Three of them occupy the flesh behind the eyes and nose, fading in and out thanks [...]

Tags:  lantern hackaday october brandon jack happy-halloween leds hackaday links  

Th If you ever wondered what an eight-core Propeller processor can do for you, [Tom] found one answer. He’s using the multiple cores to individually address serial displays. He has six display modules, and each of them incorporate six 8×8 LED modules. This makes for a total of 2304 LEDs, and since they’re addressed by [...]

Tags:  multiple core propeller tom serial-displays leds microcontrollers  

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 [...]

Tags:  activity right hdd leds motherboard intensity led hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  piezo leds disco wilfred snare-drum controller-circuit different-colors led hacks  

[FlorinC] sent in his DWex Arduino watch, with intentions for it double as an experimenting base. Inspired by the MakerBotWatch, it runs an ATmega328P, DS1337 RTC,and 24 LEDs to display the time. [FlorinC] tells us the (yet to come) case and strap will be similar to Woz’s watch to ensure airport security tackles him. As [...]

Tags:  development dwex florinc rtc airport-security leds clock hacks  

[Scott Harden's] prime number generator exhibits a great way to use an LED matrix to present readable information. The project resides in a hinged wooden box with a grid of holes on the lid for the LEDs. [Scott] has overlaid the matrix with a printout showing powers of two that represent different prime numbers. Inside [...]

Tags:  number generator matrix scott scott-harden prime-number-generator prime-numbers leds microcontrollers  

We never thought about it before, but having the controls on the bottom of a clock is a bit of an inconvenience. [Alex Whittemore] mutes the LEDs on his clock each night and after a while, decided he should make the mute button into a touch strip on the case. You’ll remember that the Bulbdial [...]

Tags:  blubdial clock touch alex-whittemore mute-button whittemore leds hacks  

Wanting to make some unique and interesting gifts for his nieces as well as improve his PCB skills and expand beyond Arduino, [Jay] has made these color changing Ikea lamps. He’s using an ATTiny2313 for the brains, a handful of RGB LEDs plus 3 warm white LEDs to keep the wife happy. you can download [...]

Tags:  lamp rgb leds jay rgb-leds white-leds interesting-gifts arduino hacks  

[Simon Inns] turned out this VU meter with a 16 RGB LEDs. He’s using three 16-bit TLC5940NTG LED drivers for the project. They’re not cheap chips but they do a great job. If you were looking to save on parts [Simon] found there’s more than enough brightness and any loss due to multiplexing would not [...]

Tags:  rgb leds meter simon simon-inns cheap-chips rgb-leds job peripherals hacks  

[Josiah] said ‘no’ to LEDs and instead used blue-phosphor neon lamps to build this binary clock. The ATmega328 inside uses three 8-bit shift registers to control the display. Each lamp needs a high-voltage NPN transistor in order to switch on the 150V necessary for proper illumination. A simple circuit was used to pull a 60 [...]

Tags:  neon leds clock josiah neon-lamps proper-illumination binary-clock hacks  

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 [...]

Tags:  glip project puzzle great-interactive ingenuity leds led hacks  

Got a bag of LEDs handy? Why not build a display with them? We’ve seen a lot of clocks that make use of LED modules but soldering your own is a fun pastime. [Vadim Suhovatih] did just that using 130 LEDs to build this clock. Each segment of the 7-segment digits consists of three LEDs [...]

Tags:  led clock leds vadim-suhovatih led-clock vadim pastime hacks  

Here’s a slick version of a POV globe(google translated). Created by [Riko], this globe has 32 LEDs and is powered by a rotating coil. The layout looks fairly solid in operation, with the POV effect showing up very nicely on camera.  You can get the schematics and source code from the project page. We found [...]

Tags:  version globe led pov schematics leds google hacks  

That’s a lot of LEDs, and a little bit of glass cleaner. [Tobias] spiced up his IKEA coffee table by adding 6144 LEDs. This is a larger realization of SparkFun’s LED coffee table which used 64 8×8 modules. [Tobias] sourced three display boards from Sure Electronics for a total of 96 8×8 modules. These boards [...]

Tags:  table coffee leds tobias sparkfun coffee-table glass-cleaner home hacks  

[Joe] tipped us off about his 112 LED coffee table. This 12-ups the LED matrix from Friday and 31-ups the Shiftbrite table. Driving this grid is an ATmega328 in i2c slave mode. It listens for display data from a second ATmega328 and uses that to set the array of TLC5940 driven LEDs appropriately. Separating the [...]

Tags:  led table coffee joe slave-mode coffee-table leds hacks  

[KopfKopfKopfAffe] just finished a 3-year labor of love resulting in this 10 by 10 LED Matrix. This trumps the Shiftbrite table from earlier today by bringing an actual 100 LEDs to the display. These LEDs cost much less than the Shiftbrites, but since they don’t have their own on-board controller this project requires much more [...]

Tags:  led matrix leds labor-of-love trumps hacks  

[Matthias] swapped out his twin-tube florescent aquarium lights for LEDs. By running tank water through the aluminum LED mounts he’s transferring excess heat into the water in the tank, in turn saving some of the electricity that would have been used to heat the tank. Couple this with roughly 35 Watts saved by moving away [...]

Tags:  tank leds water matthias tank-water twin-tube green hacks  

Here’s a project we’ve been wanting to do for a while. Over at macetech.com they’ve posted an LED coffee table that uses a 9×9 RGB LED grid. For the LEDs, they used the shiftbrite modules we’ve seen before. The table is capable of displaying pre written patterns as well as accepting patterns from a computer [...]

Tags:  table coffee shiftbrite written-patterns coffee-table leds arduino hacks  

[Sprite_tm] brings us another great hack by lighting up the living room. Unsatisfied with just replacing incandescent bulbs with an LED alternative he went with strips of LEDs to illuminate the length of a wall. Starting with a seven-meter strip of the lights, he cut it down to fourteen pieces in order to make the [...]

Tags:  room controllable leds incandescent-bulbs sprite unsatisfied home hacks  

[Davross] pulled off an LED lighting build for his coral aquarium. The module consists of a wooden body holding a 3×16 grid of LEDs. They are mounted to heat sinks which themselves have cooling fans to help keep those puppies from melting. The system is controlled by an Arduino which allows for almost limitless lighting options. [...]

Tags:  salty leds lighting coral-aquarium lighting-options arduino home hacks