Tag Archives: led

Make Your Own Light-Up D20 with 2,400 LEDs

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The brainchild of maker Greg Daville, this is an LED icosahedron crafted using a total of 2,400 LEDs, all placed individually by hand. Wow! I’m not sure if I would have had the patience for that, but I definitely don’t have the know-how to build an LED D20.

The panels of the oversized die can be programmed with different animations, and Greg mentions that in the future he may add wireless capabilities to sync the D20’s patterns and animations with other devices in the room. I smell an LED dance party soon!

So you’re not actually supposed to roll it, but I imagine you could use a random number generator to simulate a roll. That would be cool. Me? I don’t even have a D20, so whenever we play tabletop games at my house we have to roll three regular six-sided dice and flip a coin (heads is one, tails is two) to add up to 20. I think it goes without saying people don’t like playing games at my house.

Check out Greg’s blog for an in-depth read about the build, and if you’re interested in making on yourself Greg has made all the files available on Github here.

[via hackaday]

Endlessly modular smart LED panels turn your walls into dynamic light installations!

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The year is 2021 and wallpaper has just been rendered obsolete. Meet the Nanoleaf Shapes, a series of slim, smart LED panels that come in geometric shapes and can be connected to one another to create a dynamic work of art on your walls. The modular panels can be used to create shapes, patterns, textures, even text, and they add a touch of color to spaces when off, but completely transform the ambiance of a room when switched on!

The Nanoleaf Shapes are infinitely customizable, like a jigsaw puzzle with no real end-goal. You can create the shape or graphic that you want, and the smart LED panels do the rest of the work. The panels can light up in as many as 16 million different colors, and can be customized within their smartphone app. The LayoutDetect™ feature allows the individual LED panels to identify the shape and layout of your design, and enables them to work in tandem with each other, behaving as a singular lighting unit. Once connected, you an use the panels as mere ambient lights, although they’re capable of much more. The smart LED panels work via touch, and can instantly be transformed into an interactive installation that changes hues when you touch any of the panels. Alternatively, they can connect to your smart speaker and change colors to the rhythm of the music you play, or better still, connect them to a television and activate the Match mode to make them light up with hues from your screen, turning your wall green when you watch a football match, blue when you watch an ocean documentary, or dynamically shift colors as you watch a movie! Your walls and room will never look dull again! And with 16 million colors to choose from, they definitely shouldn’t!

Designer: Nanoleaf Shapes

Geek Builds Electronic Counter to Count to a Googol (1 Followed by a Hundred 0’s)

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Think a billion is a big number? Well by most comparisons it certainly is, but a googol (10¹⁰⁰) is so astronomically large that it contains 10⁹¹ number of billions. But did its ridiculously large size stop YouTuber Look Mum No Computer (aka Sam Battle) from building an electronic counter to try to count to it? It did not. Honestly, I can’t even wrap my head around the size of a number that large. Although to be fair my head isn’t very pliable, and my wife often argues it’s hard.

Sam tried to build the counter with “as much redundancy, durability, repairability, and upgradability as possible,” with the intention of keeping it running his entire life. Which, provided he lives a long healthy one, he estimates will end around when the 14th numeral from the bottom right has changed. For reference, the total number of grains of sand on earth is around the 22nd numeral, and Carl Sagan’s estimate for the total number of elementary particles in the universe is around the 80th. Oh cool, my brain just exploded.

The farthest left digit on the third row from the bottom will tick over once every 100-million years or so, and Sam admits that by the time the counter would ever reach a googol our sun will have long exhausted its supply of energy, his machine forgotten. Eventually, it will be discovered by Jawas, who will salvage the machine for parts to repair stolen droids or sell at their next swamp meet. And that, at least for me, is a very comforting feeling.

[via BoingBoing]

Make your own Pixel clock using Ping Pong Balls and LEDs!

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It’s a pretty rare thing for me to talk about something like the DIY Ping Pong Ball LED Clock, because it isn’t a product. It’s a set of instructions that you can follow to make your own! Posted on the Instructables website (owned by Autodesk), this nifty clock comes from the mind of a tinkerer by the username ‘thomasj152’. The clock uses a series of circular pixels, created by Ping Pong balls that have LEDs within them. The spherical shape of the balls means the pixels are arranged in a hexagonal layout (which makes for a pretty unique font style when you get numbers to flash on it), and a wooden frame holds the entire unit together, balls, batteries, circuit board and all.

While I’m not going to lay down the step-by-step instructions here (you can head to the Instructables page to check it out), the process is relatively simple and does involve power tools. The individual ping pong balls need to be truncated (chopped) a little below the midline, before being glued together in their hexagonal layout. They’re then fitted into a frame, and mounted on a backplate that has the LEDs and Arduino board assembled in. The LEDs and Ping Pong balls don’t need to align perfectly, because the diffusive property of the plastic used in the ping pong balls will ensure the entire ball illuminates almost evenly like a glowing orb. Just make sure when you’re cutting up the ping pong balls, you take the logo out, because you don’t want that shining on your clock!

An Arduino Nano microcontroller takes care of the software end, and all you need to do is run the script provided on the Instructables site to get your clock running. Yes, that rainbow background is built right into the code, although there’s one with just the numbers too. Makes for a nice quirk-punk addition to your workspace, or even a very meaningful gift to a family member or a friend!

Designer: thomasj152

Click Here to Make Your Own!

Click Here to Make Your Own!

This ambient LED lamp brings the spectacular gradients of sunsets into your home

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The Arki light plays a fundamentally important role in interior design… far more than what most lamps are designed to be capable of. Most lights are only designed to brighten spaces, not recolor them, but the Arki takes it upon itself to change its surroundings with light, rather than just illuminating them. You see, space plays a fundamental role in design. It’s important for the human eye to see a balance between foreground and background, and while most products in your space play the role of the foreground, your background is almost always left entirely bare, with just the wall color doing its fair share. Arki changes that by decorating your space in a wash of brilliant gradients, making your indoors look as beautiful as the outdoors.

Designed to look like a modern-day chandelier, the Arki comes with four rotating discs with colorful LEDs fitted in. Set the scene using the Arki app and the lamp comes to life, with the discs rotating and moving up and down to wash your walls and ceilings with vibrant hues. The Arki basically uses outdoor settings as cues, so you could turn your favorite sunset into a lighting preset, or even that magical sunrise from your last holiday. The app turns your photos and videos into a 360° panorama and extracts its palette. The lighting discs then orient themselves and illuminate to recreate the magic in your interiors, coloring them with the same hues so you can appreciate the glorious beauty of outdoor gradients in your indoor spaces… because life’s too fleeting to stare at white walls, isn’t it?

Designers: Sohyun An & Hyunji Shi

Oh No, These Programmable LED Face Masks Aren’t Creepy At all

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Are you the kind of person who likes making other people feel uncomfortable? Well, you’re in luck, because now you can pre-order one of these creepy ‘What’s your FACE?’ programmable LED masks from Neon Culture on Kickstarter (provided they meet their $15,000 funding goal). I feel like this is all going to end like a scene from The Purge.

Available in battery-operated and USB rechargeable versions ($75 – $120, price dependent on model and whether you’re an early backer or not), each mask contains over 2,000 full-color LEDs with an 8-to-12 hour battery life. I’m going to be the life of the next virtual music festival!

The mask design can be controlled via a Bluetooth connected phone and comes with hundreds of presets, as well as the ability to create your own mask design with or without animations and custom text. Obviously, I’m going to make a design of my own face, that way I can be handsome both in front of AND behind the mask. I just saw my wife roll her eyes at me but I’m ignoring it.

[Kickstarter via thegadgetflow]

3D Printing meets traditional Italian glassmaking techniques with this innovative lighting design!

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Light fixtures have the potential to give your room the accent piece needed to completely open it up with just the right amount of warm, soft light or bursts of ample, bright light. Designing new and unique light fixtures is no easy feat though and the designers behind HorizON, a suspension lamp with an elliptical form designed and constructed in Italy’s glass-making capital, Murano, took it upon themselves to completely reimagine the future of lighting design.

On the inspiration behind HorizON, the designers say, “HorizON lamp is based on the belief that the industry of the next years won’t only evolve through a constant, technological upgrade of products, but reconsider values such as uniqueness, hand-making, and even ‘imperfection.’” Through HorizON, the creators reconsider design values by transmuting classic, craftsman artistry with 21st-century technological capabilities. HorizON’s final product is comprised of two main parts: a glass bubble crafted through a tried-and-true glassmaking tradition that enwraps its 3D-printed, LED-filled centerpiece.

HorizON’s ultimate glass bubble forms from two separate halves that are individually shaped, ground, and polished by hand in order to resemble two individual, transparent petals. Sculpting the glass petals into their final forms takes upwards of two days to finish. Once the hot glass is shaped and ground into a flower petal, the glassmakers take at least one day for the glass to cool down before polishing it to completion. The glassmaker utilizes CNC-milled molds in order to produce the wavy, dangling glass. CNC-milled molds follow a sculpting process that essentially chisels away at masses of the desired material, which emphasizes both meticulousness through learned craftsmanship and freeform thanks to the human touch. Through this handmade design and construction process, each final piece of artwork is distinct and filled with sought-after imperfections. In between the two glass petals hovers the fixture’s 3D-printed core, which illuminates come night from integrated LED lighting mechanisms.

The bright light emanates from inside golden clouds that meet the outer edges of the 3D-printed core’s semi-transparent, nylon lining. Internal cavities dot the design’s core and offer unique glimmers of light and shadows for your room that change with each manufactured HorizON suspension lamp. Love is in the imperfections with this suspended light fixture design and thankfully, there are as many imperfections as there are reasons for them.

Designers: Arturo Tedeschi, Michael Pryor and Pavlina Vardoulaki


Full Dimension: 460 x 320 mm, Maximum Thickness: 55 mm


LED strip: 3.5 mm/24V/3000K, Lamp’s total weight: 2kg

LED Bow Ties Light Up the Night

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Because nothing says I’m a fancy gentleman from the future like a light-up bow tie, these are the Glow in the Dark LED Bow Ties created by Neon Nightlife and available on Amazon (affiliate link) for $25.  The adjustable ties are available in seven different colors (aqua, green, blue, orange, pink, red, and white) and are powered by a single AAA battery for approximately 10 hours of light.

In addition to the standard ‘on’ mode, the ties can also be set to a ‘slow blink’ mode to ensure you catch the eye of everyone at the cocktail party.

So, do you think James Bond will be wearing one of these in his next film? Because I would if I were him. Of course, if I were him I’d also probably fail to thwart the plot to melt the polar ice caps and flood the world and get fired from MI6. Then what? Then I’m just a handsome devil in an LED bow tie with a battery that died hours ago, sipping a martini the bartender insisted would have to be my last before I’m asked to leave. So yeah, I guess you could say I’d make a pretty great spy.

How to Use 7-Segment LEDs Not as They Were Intended

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Those familiar red 7-segment LEDs are designed to each display an individual digit, or if you’re 8-year-old me, maybe to string together some letters, like “8008135” that I used to think was me being clever with my old Texas Instruments calculator. But it turns out that with the right parts and electronics skills, you can actually turn those 7-segment displays into a screen of sorts.

Electronics wizard Frugha built this cool looking LED display that uses an array of 144 individual 7-segment displays. They’ve been wired together and programmed to display a large digital clock face across multiple smaller displays. Each of the displays has 8 LED segments which can be individually controlled, resulting in a total of 1152 segments which can be used to create images. The display is controlled using an Arduino Nano and 18 MAX7219 LED driver chips. Since each segment can be independently addressed, it’s possible to display custom images on the segments. I’m assuming with a little tweaking, it might be possible to even display video using this method.

It’s a really slick idea, and one that’s already inspired at least one other builder to create their own version. John Bradnam took Frugha’s design and shrunk it down to roughly 25% of the size of the original. He also enhanced the source code to give it an alarm function, and added a configuration screen for setting the time, date, and alarm, and limited support for alternative display fonts.

If you’re interested in building one of these neat 7-segment clocks for yourself, you can check out Frugha’s build details on Instructables, and Bradnam’s version on Hackster.io. There’s also a good discussion thread over on HackADay with more ideas for enhancements.

[via HackADay and Instructables]