My 3D Led Cube Assembled.

Recently, I buy a 3D Led cube from mainland China, it contains 8x8x8 Blue Leds. It powers up by normal USB +5V source. Also, It comes with a pre-programmed MCU, you get few features build-in (looping some cool 3d patterns, lamp and audio visualizer) .

The audio visualizer is very cool and handy, you can just plug in an audio jack and play music. There is API for you to control the leds via i2c, but I don't have time to try.

 Let's see some photos:

Audio Visualizer Demo:

AVR Love Project

kaas has made a very simple project called "2 hour Love project", it is a very simple circuit, no software programming at all. Recently, I found out that Hesit8 has improved this project and make a very cool : AVR Love Project! With the help of Attiny2313, he made some cool led effects. Let's see the demo video:



also the project link here:
http://hesit8.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/avr-love-projects/

Large "Game of Life".

Another cool project
by http://www.evilmadscientist.com/go/gameoflife

Turn on the Lamp by waving your hand.

This is a DIY project called "touchless touch switch led lamp", it uses a capacitance sensor IC to detect the wave of your hand.



Check out the detail HOW-TO: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/07/how-to_make_a_touchless_switch_led.html

Wireless Internet Access via LED lamps.

Can you imagine while the LED is lighting up your desk and streaming video to your laptop at the same time? Scientist he Semi-conductor Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences designed a wireless internet communication system using only Blue LED lights on the ceilings. The maximum speed is around 2Mbps.

Use Laser pointer to play a LED board game.

The Laser Command by Eiji is a very brilliant project. He used arduino mini to build a complete LED board game, and just one 8x8 matrix led as the game output & also input device. Player can use a laser pointer to point to the led and start playing the game. The author website has a very good explanation of his project, it is worth to read if you are interested how to use LED as input : http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ehayashi/projects/lasercommand/

Laser Command from Eiji Hayashi on Vimeo.

LED Vodka Label in Real.

Love to see how the scrolling LED label comes into a real product, and this time is a Vodka Label. Check out the demonstration video here:

How to Program a Message on Your MEDEA Bottle from Medea Spirits on Vimeo.

Waterpebble reminds you to save Water!

We enjoy a hot shower, and sometimes even forget how much time we spent on bathing:)
It is bad, as we are wasting more water.

A cool product introduced by DryPlanet called Waterpebble. It is a small waterproof device to monitor your showering time. But how it works?

First, it will record the time spend of your first shower with waterpebble. Next time, when you shower with waterpebble, it will measure the water flows and will give you a RED signal if you are overrun!


You can find details here: http://www.dry-planet.com/products_pebble.html

9x9 RGB LED color twitter table made with Adrunio

Developed by macetech.com, a RGB LED table can response to twitter posts. It is gorgeous!

Check it out the demo:

Streaming live video by Ustream

Source code & construction guidelines:
http://macetech.com/blog/node/93#comment-1013

MIT Flyfire, draws everything in the Air!

MIT's flyfire is a micro helicopters equipped with color LEDs inside, when many flyfires flying together, they can form different images up in the sky. The concept is so cool! Here is the concept video:

Home made DIY LED projector.

Getting a decent projector may be very expensive, with limited budget, how about consider to make one yourself? Found an article about making LED projector in Instructables, it is awesome.
Take a look:




Link:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How_to_make_a_small_Diy_LED_Projector/

Geeky Valentine's Gift for Her

Valentines' day is coming, since you are reading my blog, I am sure that you are geek like me:) One project caught my attention recently, it is easy to make one yourself especially the deadline is coming! The project is LED people, 2 LEDs blink when touching each other, sounds fun. Check the demo video here:


and the schematic and photos:
http://www.cibomahto.com/2008/02/thing-a-day-day-13-led-people/

Playful Luminodot.

Luminodot is a puzzle like toy by BANDAI Japan. At first sight, it looks like a big color led matrix display to me. But it is only a plastic panel with many holes for you to put a colorful transparent tube to it. You can make any patterns on the panel and grow it in the dark. Sounds fun? let see the details.


What is inside the box?
1) Black Plastic Panel
2) Few bags of colorful tubes
3) DC power supply
4) Demo pattern sheets (from Disney in my version)


Close up of the colorful tubes:






You can see the tube is very long, so it is easy for you to put it into the hole and also useful for lighting it up.

Check out the black plastic panel:

Front View:


Inside:


There are few high brigtness LEDs mounted on the bottom, when the led lights up, the silver reflector would make the lights distributed through out the box. The colorful tubes will light up too.

How to play:

Put a reference sheet in the middle layer of the box. Reference sheet is a paper with color pattern printed on it, it is a guide for you to put the color tubes.


Now you make it dots by dots:) Work hard.

Finish:


Turn on the power, and now you can have a growing picture frame. There are 9 different lighting effects for you to choose also. More fun:)

Video Demo:


The luminodot website also provides a simulator to make your own pattern and print it out for your lumindot.


More information:
https://www.luminodot.jp/

Growng Dress with 24000 LEDs.

Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, whom made the "Galaxy Dress" with 24000 LEDS. They picked some very small RGB color led (2mmx2mm) to make this dress thin enough.


See the shinning dress:


via http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/led-dress/

LED Plants.

It is nice to see how well the technology can be integrated to your living room:)

More on http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/lighting/magnificent-high-tech-led-tipped-plant-lamps-101115?image_id=884210

Speech to LED matrix marquee (Voice2LED)

Connecting a LED matrix to a computer, so you can program any text from computer to the LED matrix in real time is not new, but Josh got another cool idea combining the use of Google Voice.

Basically, you can dial to the Google Voice account and leave a message, the Google voice engine will convert the speech to text and send back to Josh's LED Matrix:)

The detail explanations and source codes are avaliable on Josh blog.

Cute 10x10 LED Matrix / SHARP LT5003D

Recently, some people ask me where to find the cute 10x10 led matrix showing in my AVR LED egg project.

Photos:

You can see how small it is when compares to the normal 8x8 LED Matrix.


So where did I get it? I bought it from Tokyo, Japan. More precisely, it is Akihabara. Most of the people go there to buy anime, comic or electronic goods. But there are some shops selling electronic parts or even robot parts. Everytime, I go to Tokyo, I will go there to buy some interesting components which seems to be selling only in Japan. Between, the 10x10 Led matrix is SHARP LT5003D if you want to find it.

Photos:




People are busy finding components or parts!

Next time when you are in Tokyo, remember to go there to have a look! May be you can find some good stuffs for your next DIY project!

LED Driving without resistor.

Tinkerlog just posted an in-depth study on what situration that the current-limiting resistor can be omitted when driving a led. If you want to save PCB space or just lazy like me, not going to add a current-limiting resistor between your MCU output and LED, you should defintely to have a look on his study!

Link:
http://tinkerlog.com/2009/04/05/driving-an-led-with-or-without-a-resistor/

64 (8x8) Led Matrix with ATtiny2313V

Tinkerlog presents a 64 LED matrix howto, controlled by Tiny2313 and powered by only 2 AA batteries. Check out the following demo video:


64pixels from tinkerlog on Vimeo.


I really love the simplicity of this project. The ATtiny2313 is a good fit on the back of the 8x8 Led matrix, though not placing resistors in between the LED and IO are a bit risky. But using 2 AA batteries, roughly 3V input and 20mA max output from 2313 should not burn the LED out:)

The source code is also ready on the tinkerblog website, so follow the steps there and build it in the weekend! Have fun!

LED flower vase supplementary note.

Some of the viewers requested for the source codes and also the circuit diagram, kaas is no longer working on his blog, so let me write you all a supplementary note.

Of course, I don't own a circuit diagram, but I can draw you all a block diagram:


Remember, it is only a draft block diagram, power and resistors are not shown in this diagram, please try to add your own:)

The complete working source codes: Download Now (Only tested compilation on Mac OS X with avr-gcc).

Send me your led vase's photo if you successfully made one:) Have fun!