I made a small LED panel

I was about to comment that I also made a small LED panel, but then realized it was me.

Here's the latest LED thing I'm working on (the design isn't mine): https://immich.home.stavros.io/share/oXerU8gnLn-dNHunPOg8lM8...

spidermanspointing.jpg

Jokes aside this is super cool. I always find LED panels really interesting to look at under the hood. I’m so picky about the ones I like to use almost purely based on vibes when filming. They’re just one of those things that you immediately know you’re going to love or hate in post the moment they hit your subject

What can I say, I'm addicted to LEDs. I tried so hard to not make that cube above, but I failed.

Do you know if the panels can be bodged to be non square? There shouldn't be a lot of fancy wiring to screw up if it's all WS2812. Can you (delicately) chop a few LEDs out and bridge the connections?

(hoping I have seeded this idea, so I'm not the first one to attempt this)

How did you connect the individual smaller LED panels together? I guess the cool color patterns and the individual addressing comes from WLED then?

Sure, you can connect the LEDs together however you like (am I misunderstanding the question?).

There's a photo of the panels connected to each other, each panel has three input and three output pads, and you solder those together. The software just sees one long strip, and you configure the shape of it so it corresponds to what you have in reality.

Nice work! I've done a few LED thingies too ..

https://magicshifter.net/

.. and, I recycled some old scoreboard display panels to make something similar to your latest project, also:

About the panels: https://metalab.at/wiki/Blinkofant/LED-Display_History

The Blinkophant: https://i.imgur.com/3aPytEp.jpeg

Theoretically you can. It's whether it all goes pear shaped when you take a Dremel to the board to make it

    OO    OOOO   OO
    OO    OOOO   OO
    OO    OOOO   OO
    O    OOOOOO   O
    O    OOOOOO   O
    O    OOOOOO   O
        OOOOOOOO
        OOOOOOOO

And how fiddly it is to stitch up the edges. I shall find out in a couple of days when the panels arrive.

This is great! Your TLS cert is invalid, though, so the site doesn't load properly, I think.

Oh that's what you mean! Yes, you can, but you'd have to bridge all the data connections by hand. Much easier to just leave those LEDs off in software.

Pretty cool way to fail

Where did you get the scoreboards? eBay?

All credit goes to https://www.printables.com/model/337027-cubled-led-cube-8x8-...

Perhaps a stupid question but why not just not use those LEDs? Shut down in the software..

I mean... as a lay-person, you've got point-lights and his isolation/diffusion layers in between. If you're 3d-printing your diffusion-thingy, then you've got tons of room to play games with the shape of the final glow. Even moving light via '265μm with 64 Fiber, Optical Grade Plastic Light Guide' if you're not hitting the corners well enough.

I made something close to MagicShifter a while ago, I didn't add an accelerometer, though:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/behold-ledonardo/

I would really like to make it work with an accelerometer, as right now it's a bit fiddly to get the right speed for images, but I don't know if I can make it work.

Not just accelerometer, but magnetometer too. :)

This means you can basically use the magicshifter3000 as a knob. Or, a slider.

Its very fun with MIDI.

:)

Yeah, expired a while ago, its a pretty old site and we have to get the old gang back together to fix it.

Thanks for checking out the magicShifter3000!

I've got a new one designed, currently in prototyping stages .. a bit more powerful and a lot more oriented towards audio/synthesis. Same form-factor, and probably MS3000 and midiShifter will have an ecosystem ..

Donated to metalab through a member connection. Austria/Vienna has a bit of a 'recycle/re-use/repurpose' scene, and this was an early example of a metalab win:

https://metalab.at/

We devoured the panels and did all kinds of funky things with them.

https://metalab.at/wiki/Blinkofant/LED-Display_History

Did you ever try to use LED's as an input device?

My next LED cube project will be oriented towards trying to do that.

Oooh fantastic! That's the kind of thing I really like to see.

If you have the site on GitHub, you can deploy it to Cloudflare Pages with a few clicks, and it will take care of all of that stuff for you.

Also, a few friends and I have a maker Discord server and you'd fit right in, I can send an invitation if you like! My email is in my profile.

How do you mean? Like the magnetometer above? LEDs are outputs, no?

Not always, they can be configured to behave as photodiodes, too:

https://www.codrey.com/electronics/the-led-photodiode-trick/

This is also in my "TODO" list, maybe with the next magicShifter revision, or possible once I get the current new design booted and refactored, a bit ..

https://www.instructables.com/LEDs-as-light-sensors/

Ahh ok, you don't mean WS2812s then, just plain LEDs. I don't really have any ideas for what to do with a photodiode, but I have some of those straight LEDs and I really want to make something with those.

What kind of thing would you want to make with LEDs as inputs?

Perhaps you will understand what this is, then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syP8_lccIQA

:)

Haha, amazing! Is it based on the accelerometer, or do you have a microphone connected somehow? I can't tell whether you're tapping the desk they're on.

Then again, the right ones light up more than the left ones, so I think you're tapping on the right edge of the desk. Very cool!

I think you'd be far better off to make a custom PCB in whatever shape you like from the like of JLCPCB, PCBWay, or others.

The WS2812s here all connect to each other in series, so if you cut the board down, you'll have to replace the cut connections with bodge wires. To my mind, that plus the cutting is way more work than just making a PCB in exactly the shape you want.

You can get cheap PCBs for $5-$6 for qty 5 100mm x 100mm boards delivered to your door in the US. Add on LEDs at $0.03 to $0.05 each and I'd way rather make than modify here.

Because you want the panel to fit a non-square shape, with no room for "leftovers" - think making it round to fit in a doorknob hole or oval to go in place of a car brand badge, etc.

MIDI things. :)

The accelerometer and the desk, being tapped by me offscreen just to be sure things were responding .. alas, they are kind of hard to keep in one big pile, but yes very fun to play with en masse! :)

(This was some years back, note.)

Server: not my department. :)

But yeah, we'll probably reboot magicShifter soon ..

In that case, it would definitely be much cheaper to design a custom PCB and get it assembled. It would probably take you much less time than all the cutting and soldering.

That... is a really good idea. I was thinking of cutting a flat piece of diffusing material to shape.

My intuition is that there would be pain in 3d printing a diffusion structure because slicers etc. would not be optimised for producing a homogenous solid. I would guess that 100% infill is actually something like 99.98% with tiny voids that stick out like a sore thumb when you shine a light through. I might be wrong about that, I'm not a 3d printing expert.

The principle of reshaping I think is awesome though. It might just be an issue of modulating brightness to counter any uneven distribution. It's got me thinking about a Faceted approach. 3d Print a faceted basin and then print a thin edge divider to sit in it. Fill it with something that sets solidly enough and makes a good diffuser (this too sounds like a war with bubbles). Take it out of the basin when set and you potentially have a nice faceted surface with each facet individually colourable.

you're right at re-inventing "prismatic acrylic flat sheet replacement light cover" stuff.

https://www.fluorolite.com/buy-now/f12-100-2347flatsheet/

for a cheap test, put wax paper between two grids/grilles and see how it looks (ie: double-diffusion). ie: [ LED | <grid> | <wax paper> | <grid> | <wax paper> ]

...the first grid isolates the color, the first wax paper diffuses the LED, the second grid "receives" the isolated color (diffused, not spot/point) which then gets finally diffused for viewing.

Surely you can look up how to avoid bubbles on a semi-transparent resin pour.

>Surely you can look up how to avoid bubbles on a semi-transparent resin pour.

I know how that's done (usually a combination of careful stirring and a vacuum chamber). The principle is easier than the practice. I am dispraxic and generally shouldn't be allowed near physical objects, but I like them so.

Poke at blender / sketchup!

https://blenderartists.org/t/how-do-i-put-a-soft-glowing-led...

...all the joy of creation with none of the cost or danger of losing fingertips! :-P