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I made a small LED panel
- mytailorisrich 1y agoThe diffuser really makes this. The resulting effect looks great.
- stavros 1y agoIt really did! It looked much better than I hoped, I really liked the result.
- stavros 1y agoI 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-dNHunPOg8lM8jmQLbPqfYgCLWEiqmCUjifQlF_R0L4R0dgf1CKGAxTag https://immich.home.stavros.io/share/oXerU8gnLn-dNHunPOg8lM8...
- Forgeties79 1y agospidermanspointing.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
- stavros 1y agoWhat can I say, I'm addicted to LEDs. I tried so hard to not make that cube above, but I failed.
- Forgeties79 1y agoPretty cool way to fail
- stavros 1y agoAll credit goes to https://www.printables.com/model/337027-cubled-led-cube-8x8-matrix-384-leds https://www.printables.com/model/337027-cubled-led-cube-8x8-...
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoDid you ever try to use LED's as an input device? My next LED cube project will be oriented towards trying to do that.
- stavros 1y agoHow do you mean? Like the magnetometer above? LEDs are outputs, no?
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoNot always, they can be configured to behave as photodiodes, too: https://www.codrey.com/electronics/the-led-photodiode-trick/ 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/ https://www.instructables.com/LEDs-as-light-sensors/
- stavros 1y agoAhh 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?
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoMIDI things. :)
- Lerc 1y agoDo 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)
- stavros 1y agoSure, you can connect the LEDs together however you like (am I misunderstanding the question?).
- Lerc 1y agoTheoretically 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.
- stavros 1y agoOh 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.
- tiku 1y agoPerhaps a stupid question but why not just not use those LEDs? Shut down in the software..
- bombcar 1y agoBecause 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.
- 1y ago
- phil42 1y agoHow did you connect the individual smaller LED panels together? I guess the cool color patterns and the individual addressing comes from WLED then?
- stavros 1y agoThere'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.
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoNice work! I've done a few LED thingies too .. https://magicshifter.net/ 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 https://metalab.at/wiki/Blinkofant/LED-Display_History The Blinkophant: https://i.imgur.com/3aPytEp.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/3aPytEp.jpeg
- stavros 1y agoThis is great! Your TLS cert is invalid, though, so the site doesn't load properly, I think.
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoYeah, 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 ..
- stavros 1y agoIf 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.
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoServer: not my department. :) But yeah, we'll probably reboot magicShifter soon ..
- tecleandor 1y agoWhere did you get the scoreboards? eBay?
- scottbez1 1y agoOn the topic of small LED panels, Jason of Evil Genius Labs has been making some really small LED panels [0] with addressable 1mm x 1mm LEDs (yes, individually addressable AND only 1mm on each side!). Fitting 128 onto a 1" circle is pretty sweet. I keep meaning to design some PCBs with them [1] but it's too far down my ever-growing list of projects to see the light of day... [0] https://www.evilgeniuslabs.org/one-inch-fibonacci128 https://www.evilgeniuslabs.org/one-inch-fibonacci128 [1] https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5349953.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5349953.html
- stavros 1y agoWhy are you doing this to me
- karlkloss 1y agohttps://spotpear.com/shop/ESP32-S3FH4R2-Matrix-8x8-RGB-LED-WiFi-Bluetooth-QST-Attitude-Gyro-Sensor-QMI8658C-Arduino-Python-ESP-IDF.html https://spotpear.com/shop/ESP32-S3FH4R2-Matrix-8x8-RGB-LED-W...
- zokier 1y agoThose look like normal 2.5-3mm LEDs, that is big difference to 1mm² LEDs. The circle disc from OPs link has 2.5x higher LED density, and they could be probably packed even more densely in a grid.
- 1y ago
- nikkwong 1y agoThis is neat! Any notes on the algo for controlling the output of the ws2812s?
- Tempest1981 1y agoMaybe WLED plasma effect (number 97)? https://kno.wled.ge/features/effects/ https://kno.wled.ge/features/effects/ https://github.com/wled https://github.com/wled
- stavros 1y agoYes, it's probably something like that. WLED has a ton of patterns, it's really nice.
- Lerc 1y agoI have a bunch of these 8x8 panels on their way from AliExpress right now for an art project that a part will look remarkably like the video. V1 will probably be a 32x32 just like it. I still haven't decided if I want to have a partition grid between the panel and the diffuser to make square edge pixels. It's definitely going to have a rp2350 inside. PIO is the best thing ever.
- karlkloss 1y agohttps://kno.wled.ge/ https://kno.wled.ge/
- MrGilbert 1y agoSpeaking about small led panels, I also recommend the "Fluid Simulation Pendant" from mitxela: https://mitxela.com/projects/fluid-pendant https://mitxela.com/projects/fluid-pendant
- Havoc 1y agoTried my hand at this too. Except more janky and was aiming at lots of output. LED get freaking hot fast at higher wattages and quickly found myself dealing with heat sinks etc.
- stavros 1y agoDo you need to run them at max brightness? I run them at 10% or so, they're really bright.
- Havoc 1y agoDon't recall percentage but was pushing a lot of power into it around 8W. That heat obviously needs to go somewhere. Think the LEDs I had were pretty crappy though, so they probably produced more heat per unit of light than they should i.e. was more brute force than colour & control
- stavros 1y agoHm that's about 256 LEDs, must have been a 16x16 board. Sounds about right, good point.
- smusamashah 1y agoI dont understand it. The resolution is only 8x8. How does the animation at the end looks so smooth and way higher resolution?
- stavros 1y agoThe diffuser fakes the resolution, basically, by blending the colors together physically.
- smusamashah 1y agoI believe you, my brain doesn't. Those movements are so smooth. The line where two different colours merge have no sharp edges and look perfectly curved. Only thing edgy was the very last blinking animation where there weren't any colours. Thinking more, if there were only 4 LEDs I can imagine how they would look like diffused. Initially I was thinking if 8x8 can show all those smooth details and motions, can it be used to show any other higher resolution imagery instead of just moving colours.
- stavros 1y agoI think the thing that fools us here is the fact that we're used to pixels being discrete, so it doesn't "look" low-res because the colors blend into each other. If you imagine that each LED produces a small circle onto the diffuser, and that this circle overlaps the ones around it a bit, it gets easier to see through the illusion. It's much easier to understand when you can change the distance of the diffuser to the panel (which I did when testing), because then you can see the lights go from little squares with lots of dark space around them, to this, to big blobs of one color.
- dekhn 1y agoA diffuser is basically applying a convolution to the underlying pixel array (moving the diffuser away from the LED increases the convolution width, but unfortunately also reduces the intensity). I don't think you can exploit that to show something higher resolution than the original pixel array,
- masto 1y agoLED matrix panels are tons of fun! I strung a bunch of them together to make a marquee across my basement soffit: https://youtu.be/W0_3rzvq9Ks?si=aTT_uOZfOYh9NLUi https://youtu.be/W0_3rzvq9Ks?si=aTT_uOZfOYh9NLUi I have to resist the urge to tile every surface with blinky lights. I think part of the appeal goes back to why I enjoyed writing programs on my C64 to bounce my name around the screen. It’s a limited playground, and limitations inspire creativity.
- stavros 1y agoThis looks fantastic. Your basement really has a nice aesthetic to it, and that marquee looks great in it!
- cantalopes 1y agoI wonder what material is diffuser made of
- stavros 1y agoIt's just this: > a two-layer white square out of PLA
- foofoo12 1y agoFor the diffuser, there's a nice one or two in all LED/OLED monitors. More stuff in there too, acrylic/polycarbonate glass and a Fresnel lens. Worth scavenging if you come across a broken one.
- stavros 1y agoOh that's a great idea! This also reminds me of the video where the guy took out the LED panel and used just the light and the Fresnel lens to make a window with very natural-looking light.
- mortenjorck 1y agoI think you mean "LCD/LED" monitors (where "LED" is commonly used to mean an LCD panel with an LED backlight, and "LCD" is used to differentiate old CCFL-backlit LCD panels). OLED screens do not have a backlight and thus don't have a diffuser.
- foofoo12 1y agoWhoops, guilty as charged. Thanks.
- Nevermark 1y agoFor a second I thought this was about custom LED construction. But apparently, LEDs require advanced processes unlikely to be available for makers, anytime in the near future. However, Zinc sulfide phosphor mixed into epoxy can be used to make voltage activated luminescence. For some interesting guidance on "doping" for color, I present a 1953 patent: > zinc" sulphide' activated by both copper ad manganese in accordance, with the present invention is strongly electroluminescent, the addition of. manganese to the copper-activated material resulting in a shift in the color of luminescence toward the red end of the spectrum. Thus, the materials of the invention, when excited by a fluctuating electric field, show colors of luminescence ranging from bluish-green through shades of bluish-white, pinkish-white and yellow to orange. [0] Looks like some level of RGB was possible from the get go. [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US2743238A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US2743238A/en
- jononor 1y agoCool! What kind of voltage ranges are we talking, and how toxic is Zinc sulfide phosphor?
- Nevermark 1y agoNot that toxic, unless inhaled (take precautions) or ingested, or heated to high temperature, which produces a toxic gas. Doping of course can change that. May require 100+ V AC at 500-2000 Hz. So probably not the right element to implement 4k in! Or for an early education science experiment, unfortunately. I don't know what the currents would be, proportions or dimensions of epoxy, or much else. Some more research would be required. But in terms of resistive heating creating gas: measure and be careful!
- jononor 1y agoSeems within reach of a hobbyist maker, at least the slightly unhinged kind (in the best meaning). Since considerable energy is needed but also avoiding excessive heating, integrating temperature measurement into the bulb might be prudent. Or at the very least having regulation on current+voltage. There might be risk of thermal runaway, if conductivity goes up when voltage is applied to the epoxy mixture.