An Arduino Knight Rider Rainbow dice built using a clock by Davide Gironi: This project implements a Knight Rider / Rainbow effect Random Selector. It uses an Arduino UNO and a WS2812B RGB led strip. A friend of mine needs a random selector for train scale model. I’ve developed this using the Arduino framework, because […]
Category Archives: LEDs
Programming an 8 digit 7-segment display, the easy way, using a Max7219
Allan Schwartz shows off the easy way to interface 7-segment displays using the MAX7219: Previously, in part 1 of my blog posting Programming a 7-segment Display, using just Arduino digital pins (the hard way) we had demonstrated how to hook up a pair of 7-segment displays to an Arduino, treating each individual segment as a […]
Comfort Thermometer display built with 517 individual LEDs
Richard wrote in to tell us about a ‘Comfort Thermometer display built with 517 LEDs’ that he has just finished building: Comfort Thermometer Display built with 517 individual LEDs and the following microprocessors: 1) PiC24FV16KA301 – controlling outer 36 RGB LEDs 2) PIC16F886 – bargraph and pink LEDs animations 3) ATmega328 – controlling 7-segment display […]
LED candle effect: Tear down and decap of a controller
A teardown video from Electronupdate: A dollar store item which implements a flickering candle effect using and LED. A look at the technology: linear feedback shift register or ROM based? Let’s decap the controller and take a look at the silicon die to find out! More details at Electronupdate blog.
Serial seven segment LED display shield
Raj over at Embedded Lab has just finished a new project article about a serial seven segment LED display shield: Seven segment LED displays are brighter, more attractive, and provide a far viewing distance as well as a wider viewing angle compared to LCD displays. This project describes a serial seven segment LED display shield for […]
Wifi enabled 8×64 pixel LED matrix display
Raj over at Embedded Lab has just finished a new project article about Wifi-enabled LED matrix display using ESP8266: This project is a modification of my previous Bluetooth-enabled LED matrix display project, which used 8×64 monochromatic LED matrix (total 512 LEDs) for displaying scrolling text message. The original project used Bluetooth for display data transfer […]
Experimenting with MAX6955
Florin wrote an article about experimenting with MAX6955: My experimenting actually started with MAX6954. After many failed tries due to SPI issues (Maxim uses a special interpretation of the protocol, I read), I switched to MAX6955. MAX6955 is the I2C sibling of MAX6954 (which uses SPI). They both have identical LED driving abilities, only the […]
SNAFU box
A SNAFU box project by Bertho of Vagrearg: SNAFU Box consists of 24 LED strips (12V passive type) of varying size, which are controlled by a set of 74HC595 shift-registers and a transistor driver for each strip and RGB channel. The LED strips are used to backlight the lettering of the box. An additional three 74HC595 […]
Lab LED constant current controller board
Ladvien blogged about his Lab LED constant current controller board project he made using DirtyBoard PCBs: A little lab controller PCB I’m working on. It centers around four high-power constant current circuits meant to be driven by an Atmega328’s PWM. I hate working on anything mechanical in dim light; comes from dropping parts down under […]
Replacement LED driver for AN6877
Dilshan Jayakody writes: AN6877 is linear AF level meter IC produced by Panasonic and it is commonly found on many audio equipment. This chip is no longer manufactured by Panasonic and finding replacement chip for AN6877 is also quiet difficult. The circuit described in this article is design to replace AN6877 base LED drivers and it […]
A connected lamp to wake me up
Limpkin writes, “I’ve always wanted to play with these 10W RGB LEDs! So for some reason I bought 2 IKEA lamps at a flea market. As IKEA furniture has a long history of being hacker-friendly, I figured they shouldn’t be an exception to the rule. My plan? Fit a few 10W RGB LEDs in there […]
Cool room lights
Dmitry Grinberg writes, “Lighting a room is always a complicated task. This is especially true if you’re an engineer. You see, we all love blinking lights, RGB LEDs, really any combination of those things. When it came time to figure out the ligting situation for my room, I immediately knew that lots of LEDs would […]
ESP8266 LED display
Evan writes: This is my proof-of-concept for using mqtt with the esp8266. I saw this LED display sitting around and I couldn’t imagine why no one was using it, the answer was no one knew how to talk to it. Easy, I think. Looking at the board it’s just an 8031, a serial level shifter, […]
Fake TV security light
Marcus Jenkins writes, “I made this gadget which steps up the game from leaving a light on at home when you’re out. Place in near a window to make it look like somebody’s at home watching TV. ” Project details at Marcus Jenkins’ site. Via the contact form.
LED POV fan update
Zach writes: I first posted on how to reprogram a “Programmable Message Fan: Model 45 Series” POV fan a few years ago, and the code I posted no longer works with the current versions of the Octave and Arduino software. The original post still describes how the fan works and how I went about figuring […]
DIY double sided 60W LED UV radiation unit with vacuum pump
Kurt Skauen has been working on a DIY 1188 LED dual sided UV radiation unit: The UV exposure unit is controlled by an ATmega328P microcontroller and have the following features: Single and double sided exposure. Each side radiated by a 594LEDs / 30W UV LED panel (The unit has a total of 1188 LEDs providing […]
1-Pixel Pacman
Mike Szczys of Hackaday built 1-Pixel Pacman and wrote a blog post detailing its assembly: I usually see retro-gaming projects like keno using tiny screens with a fair number of pixels (64×64) but what I really like is the look of making every pixel count. With this in mind I built 1-Pixel Pac-Man, the classic coin-op experience […]
10×5 RGB LED Matrix with only 5 IO pins
Here’s an instructable on LED Matrix with custom code/software by Ole_L: This is the software which you need: -Arduino -Processing Flash the software to your Arduino and open the processing project with… Processing! Now you should change the line “String portName = “/dev/ttyACM~”;” to your Serial port, on WINDOWS “String portName = “COM~”;” Via the contact […]
Graphic equalizer display using ESP8266-12, MSGEQ7 and WS2812
Amir Avni made a graphic equalizer display using ESP8266-12, MSGEQ7 and WS2812: Finally, I’ve created a this project: An equalizer display controlled by ESP8266 with the NodeMCU firmware, where the equalizer colors are controlled via WiFi Project info at whatimadetoday site. Check out the video after the break.
ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 8 of X: Version 2 of the PCB design
Quindor blogged about his ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer project with DirtyPCBs: With the help of kind internet folks I was able to get a fritzing part for the new voltage converter I wanted to use to try and make a smaller board. A few weeks ago I sent my new ‘panalized’ design to dirtypcb’s and I got […]