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.

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/

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!

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!

Gorgeous LED Egg

After I completed the LED egg prototype with Atmel AVRtiny13 and a 10x10 LED matrix, I passed the LED egg to kaas, she worked very hard to decorate the LED egg case. It is very pretty now and I am happy to show you here.

For those who are interested in the details of the electronics, please check out my previous post:
http://www.bitartist.org/2008/06/gif2led-released-and-with-my-led-egg.html

Before:


After(click to view full sized image):

Bandai Lumindot for children!

Lumindot is a new kind of toy for children produced by Bandai, it is a Backlit frame with 70x50 holes on it, so you can put the colorful pins in the hole. It is a very cool way to do pixel arts, it looks like a 70x50 Led matrix if you know about electronics.

Demo video:


Links:
http://technabob.com/blog/2008/09/15/bandai-luminodot-like-lite-brite-on-steroids/
http://www.luminodot.jp/about/

Comprehensive AVR LED game console kit.

It is an AVR LED game console kit made in japan. It uses ATmega160 and four 74HS595 chips to extend output pins for controlling a 16x16 dot matrix led panel. It also comes with a speaker and joystick to help you start making a cool gaming console!

Cool demo video:


Links:
http://nicotak.com/avr/ledgame.html(Japanese only)

Fancy LEDS (Led Matrix with PIC)

One simple PIC 16F628, few transistors and resistors, and 36 LEDS.,
Olivier worked with his son to make this lovely project. He also wrote a VB application to generate the LED pattern to ease of the works of his son. In his site, circuit diagram is also included, it is definely a lite project for fun.



Link:
http://users.picbasic.org/projects/FANCY%20LEDS/fancy_leds.htm

Arduino with 8x8 LED matrix

Bryan from HK who did a test run of using MAX7219 LED drivers on Arduino.


He also used camera as input and output the 8x8 Led matrix, of course the matrix cannot output the whole image, but it will be an semi-random pattern.

Link:
http://www.bryanchung.net/?p=177