Led Cubes!

As someone loving leds, I obviously couldn't nót think about making led cubes. A friend of mine built a 4x4x4 cube a while ago, which I helped programming. (We have this deal that if he needs something programmed, I will do it for him as long as he keeps supplying me with pizzas.) After that, since I already had the code, I built a small one too. (pic 1)

I wanted more than just the small single-colored cube, so I started building an RGB cube. (pic 2). Soldering the thing was terrible though. Each led has 4 pins, only spaced 0.6mm (0.02in) apart, so it was really hard not to accidentally solder some together. It did finish soldering it, but I haven't made the PCB's for it yet.

My friend took the other route, and started building an 8x8x8 cube. (see video). It took him ages to complete, (which makes sense, since there are 1024 leads that need to be soldered), but it was more than worth it. Luckily the same type of hardware could be used, but the old code I used for the small cubes wasn't fast enough for the big one, so I had to rewrite the entire code from scratch. This took quite a while, (and a lot of pizzas), but I'm very pleased with the way the code turned out. I do still have to program some extra modes.

Amplifier

My old amplifier broke down a long time ago, and the one I've been borrowing since died on me too. So I built one!

It uses two power op amps, which I have a course dedicated to at school. So making this wasn't that difficult. The box is made from old laminate flooring, and I used an old processor heat sink to cool everything. Instead of making a PCB however, I soldered all the components directly to the op amps. It works, but turned into a big mess, so I don't think I will do it like this again. The only things I need to really finish it are some RCA-connectors, and a nice big volume knob. Although it doesn't really look the part, it sounds way better than expected. 

Bandportraits

I promised to post some of my photos here aswell, so here is some of my band photography.

Beerlight

I once posted a picture of a beer crate on facebook. Since I tend to put lights in everything I can find, a friend asked whether it was a lampshade or not. As a reply I sent: "Do you want it to be?"

He said yes.

Music video

A friend asked me whether I'd like to shoot a music video for his band. I did! Here is the result.

Lamp

Another sound reactive light I made. It's based on the same hardware I used in the 'light boxes' a few posts down, but has 8 'pixels' instead of 5.

Longboard 2.0

I upgraded my previous led longboard! It now uses an atmega328 microcontroller instead of a ready made led controller, so I don't have the remote anymore. I do now, however, have a hallsensor near one of my wheels. Together with the microcontroller and a magnet I put in the wheel, I can now measure my speed, and make the leds respond to that in any way possible. 

In the video the hallsensor isn't there yet, it's just displaying the modes I programmed for the leds. (I'm pushing the buttons with my foot.) I also used one of the modes as a battery indicator.

Light

I made a new light to illuminate my room. It's an 100 watt RGB led, in a glass ball I picked up at a thrift shop. It, like most things I make, uses an atmega328 microcontroller. 

In the video there is no mode switch yet, it's just cycling through the programmed modes. 

Lightboxes

A friend of mine had the idea to make ordinary lightbulbs react to music, for a large event he was organizing. We put our heads together and a month later we ended up with these.

In each box there is an atmega328 microcontroller, an msgeq7 "spectrum analyzing" IC, two shift registers, two transistor arrays, and five strands of rgb led strip. The spectrum analyzing IC allows the boxes to react to 7 different frequenty bands, but only the lowest two (63hz and 160hz) proved to be visually interesting.

The music we tested them with on the video was most obnoxiously dynamic music we could find. Might not suit a lot of ears, but it suited the lights. We still have to make a better video though.

Longboard

I really wanted to have a longboard with led lighting. So I built one!

Bal

A bit of a random project. I found a nice big glass ball at a thrift shop, and obviously had to put some leds in it. The plan however was to be able to project some sort of vague images in the orb, but the angle of the leds was too wide, so almost everything merged together. This made the led ball more interesting without the glass ball than with, so I set the glass ball aside for another project. As with the previous project, I designed the plastic parts in sketchup, and printed them with my reprap. I am thinking if switching to solidworks though. 

Stairs

The new house I moved to had a pretty dark hallway, so I made automatic stair lighting to avoid falling down the stairs every now and then. I used an atmega328 microcontroller, a bunch of wide angle leds, and two ultrasonic distance sensors. I modelled the plastic parts in sketchup, and printed them with my reprap.

Snake

My first led project! I used an arduino, 256 warm white leds, and four "TLC5940" ICs. It had 4 modes: All on (in 256 brightness levels), the game snake, the game pong, and a graphic equalizer (for music). 

The ICs however ended up causing some "glitching" (random flickering) in the leds. I tried everything I could think of, or find on google, to stop these glitches, but nothing seemed to work. I abandoned the project (and the ICs for that matter), and it has since been serving as a nice ceiling light.