"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete"
Earlier this week, a curious video was shared in the Adafruit Google+ Community by Robert Hart featuring an intriguing flicker of lights. Following Robert’s link, it was an 81 Pixel Hodoscope, an instrument for detecting cosmic rays (muons)!
Here’s a video (on YouTube, on Vimeo) discovering Robert’s project at the Adafruit Google+ Community (over 30,000 members!) — all filled with exciting projects appearing there every single day. We’re looking forward to seeing what’s next, join up now!
Adafruit’s Digital Addressable LED Strips are quite versatile – they’re flexible, capable of displaying 2 million colors per pixel, and their LEDs can be controlled individually – allowing for countless project possibilities.
In this tutorial, we’ve inserted the strips into a clear plastic tube to create a thin column of LED lights, and then connect them to JavaScript GUI sliders through Spacebrew.
The LED tube could be used as one “bar” of a digitally controlled bar graph installation, as part of a sculptural feature, or – my favorite – a makeshift light saber. Follow the steps below to make your own!
These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.
I imagine I’ll be adding to the animations over the holidays and will hopefully get some video of the tree in action. In the meantime it’ll be accompanying me on my holiday traveling and visiting.
I’m happy w/ the crafty look of the tree as it reminds me of a wooden tree my mom made for me some years back with traditional incandescent string lights. Next year I’ll start work earlier on some fancy laser-cut versions
RGB Pixels are digitally-controllable lights you can set to any color, or animate. Each RGB LED and controller chip is molded into a ‘dot’ of silicone. The dots are weatherproof and rugged. There are four flanges molded in so that you can ‘push’ them into a 12mm drill hole in any material up to 1.5mm/0.06″ thick. They’re typically used to make outdoor signs. We also have flat-backed pixels that are essentially the same, but are not as long and thin.
I got a 5-meter reel of individually-controllable RBG LEDs for my birthday this year. Their light is gorgeous, especially the super-saturated blues and greens. But other than stringing them up around the office I haven’t done much with them. Christmas LED project time!
These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.
Yay, assembled a MENTA and ordered me an FTDI friend, along with a digital temp sender a 1.8 tft display and some various stuff.
Love this thing, I have it up and running ( from Linux and Windows XP ) and have run the example codes and the adafruit LCD graphics examples.
Managed to cut and paste my way into running the thermometer and the LCD at the same time and now have a really clunky digital thermometer. Even played with display size and rotation.
Loving the ease of access to this platform and dearly love the MENTA, Thank you Ladyada et all for the wonderful products and tutorials.
About to spring for a couple boarduino’s I think so I can keep my menta for playing with and dedicate a few to working projects.
Introducing the MENTA, a portable minty Arduino-compatible project that fits into a common mint tin. We took our super popular Boarduino series, and wrapped it with a prototyping area into a rounded PCB that slots directly into an Altoids-sized metal tin.
I just finished making a clock for my work area using a 7 segment display,RTC (real time clock) and the RTC library. The nice thing about using this RTC is that it has a backup battery so if you lose power, it still maintains the time.
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Fairly easy setup. Both the RTC and the 7 segment display use 12c to communicate with the Arduino. Because they have different addresses this is ok. Adafruit has this handy chart of a lot of sensors and things and what their addresses are. The 7 segment display I used has an address of 0×70 and that is not yet on the chart, but can be found in the library RTClib.
Nothing spectacular here aside from getting the wiring right. The Livid Brain is taking MIDI notes from the computer and lighting up LEDs. I’m just tapping the keyboard to change notes.
These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.
Adafruit customer Kenton Harris used a reverse geocaching box to propose to his girlfriend (she said yes). After the project build and successful proposal, he shared how he built the reverse geocache box with us. We thought others may be interested in building a similar box for their own proposals, or for fun!
A reverse geocaching box works similar to other geocaching devices. It will guide you to certain coordinates on earth and instead of finding a geocache located at those coordinates, you carry the box with you, and it opens for you at a predetermined destination. This is also a great way to do a scavenger hunt (making someone go to multiple locations before the box opens).
Thanks again Kenton for sharing your story and tutorial with us!
My editable email notifier is fully functional! It successfully indicates the new number of emails by spinning and dropping M&Ms into a glass. Then, once the emails have been read, an LED lights up to indicate that you may eat the M&Ms. The coding was in two parts: a Python code and an Arduino code. This was my first time working with python, and it was an interesting process of trial and error. The code consisted of: checking if the arduino is plugged into the computer, then logging into Gmail (with provided email and password), checking the number of unread messages, sending a certain letter to the arduino indicating the number of emails and repeating it every 20 seconds.
Earlier this year I started to investigate how I might go about implementing the circuitry and communications between a computer and a micro controller for my long term split-flap display project which seems to have taken over my blog of late!
The setup I finally settled on was to use a simplex (single direction) serial protocol called RS-485, the ‘bigger brother’ of RS-232 used in almost every computer, commonly known as ‘the serial port‘. Using RS-485 would require some special circuitry which could convert to a signal that an Arduino could understand so I went about building a converter circuit which I had built up as a small PCB, my first proper PCB, designed by me alone, and it worked first time!
Next I worked on some software which is designed to receive six byte commands from a master control board allowing full control of all modules together or each module individually.
I recently installed 278 RGB LEDs on the exterior of our house. 204 above the garage door and 72 above the front door. I choose the digital individually addressable LPD8806 type strip from adafruit. Right now, it’s controlled by a USB BoArduino on a breadboard powered by a lab power supply.
I already made simple programs for for our son’s first birthday and Halloween. I had to put this investment to good use on election day too. I wrote a quick program that allows you to increment or decrement the electoral vote results over the serial port. There is currently no support for independent votes, but there is also a simple pattern for the winner.
These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.
On one hand ‘Cloud’ is an Arduino controlled, motion triggered lightning & thunder performance. On the other it is a music activated visualizer & suspended speaker unit. The cloud is made by felting hypoallergenic fiberfill to a sponge casing which forms the frame of the cloud and holds the speakers and componentry. The felting tool used is a custom made felting tool made from the left over sponge and 4 felting needles. To control the functions of the cloud there are three tactile switches scattered around the base. The concept references real clouds which constantly change shape through the switches requiring constant exploration to find the right switch to turn the right feature on or off.
Adafruit Pi Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi – Now that you’ve finally got your hands on a Raspberry Pi® , you’re probably itching to make some fun embedded computer projects with it. What you need is an add on prototyping Pi Cobbler from Adafruit, which can break out all those tasty power, GPIO, I2C and SPI pins from the 26 pin header onto a solderless breadboard. This mini kit will make “cobbling together” prototypes with the Pi super easy. Designed for Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 1.0.
The Adafruit Pi Cobbler is compatible with both versions 1 and 2 of the Raspberry Pi Computer – for version 2 computers, note that the GPIO #21 has been replaced with GPIO #27 and that the I2C pins are now I2C port #1 instead of #0. All other pins are the same.
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