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Star-Blinken

Star-Blinken

I’m still gathering material, but this is a project I’ve got planned for the Dark Room at Maker Faire Milwaukee that is titled “Star-Blinken”. (Enjoy the conceptual rendering above.)

I still need to construct the frame (probably from scrap wood at Milwaukee Makerspace) but there is a sheet of steel about 36″ x 29″ that will be covered in flashing LEDs each powered by its own battery and attached with a binder clip and a magnet.

I’ve seen a single LED blink, and even a few blink at once, but this will consist of over 200 LEDs all blinking at once, and at different rates… Star-Blinken!

This is just one post in a series, check out the other posts as well:

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National Maker Faire

DSC32D_1189W

It’s been quiet around here, but it’s not due to lack of activity! As previously mentioned, I attended National Maker Faire in Washington D.C., and met with producers from Maker Faires around the country. It was great to connect with others and meet with a government official to discuss how the Maker Movement is affecting the country, and what is needed to make it do even more in the coming years.

Amanda

I ran into Amanda from Circuit Breaker Labs before the Faire started. She was still busy setting up so I didn’t want to bother her to much. I did have to get a photo of her circuit dress though. (And hey, she’ll be at Maker Faire Milwaukee this year!)

I also stopped at the Vintage Robot booth and after a brief discussion convinced them to come to Milwaukee as well. It’s great to see people traveling half way across the country to attend our event.

Gold CNC

I didn’t get a ton of photos because I got really busy doing things and talking to people, but here’s a shot of some CNC work that looked like gold.

House

A tiny smart home created by a young maker. I always enjoy seeing what kids come up with, and love it when they share their creations at Maker Faire.

BOSE

The folks from BOSE were there with a nice display showing how speakers work. They were doing demonstrations and had hands-ons stuff to play with, and they’ve got a speaker kit that is suitable for kids to build, which is a neat idea. It’s interesting how music seems to tie into the maker world. I may have had a brief talk with Dale Dougherty late one night about how punk rock played a part in the DIY/Maker Movement. (He was in agreement and mentioned the work of Patti Smith.)

I ended my time at National Maker Faire by speaking on a panel about how different organizations do Maker Faires, which was fun and educational, and at the end a bunch of Maker Faire Producers sang “Happy Birthday” to me, which was weird and also fun.

Oh, and my Maker Profile went live on the Week of Making web site.

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Decagon Light (Part II)

DecaLight

When we last saw the Decagon Light the scale model wasn’t functional… Well, it is now functional!

I spent a bit of time at Kenilworth Open Studios getting things wired up and writing some code. I wrote a bunch of functions to run different patterns. Each function can be called with two parameters, the delay (which specifies how long the light is on) and the number of loops the pattern should run. Right now there are just four functions, but they can be called differently, and put into iterative loops. (I’m sure I’ll write more as this project progresses.)

DecaLight

For this test I’ve got the DecaLight powered by a Teensy with one of my Teensy BOBs. There’s also a USB battery pack from Brown Dog Gadgets supplying portable power. The final version will probably use the Teensy but use an AC adapter for power.

Back of DecaLight

I reused a bunch of JST connectors that were chopped off some other wires to plug the LEDs into. There’s also plenty of pieces of wire and heat shrink holding it all together. At some point maybe I’ll build this into a much nicer looking unit.

Teensy + BOB

The combo of an OSH Park purple board with the SparkFun Pink Teensy 3.1 (Anouk Edition) makes this one of the most colorful PCB project I’ve worked on yet.

Here’s a quick video of the light in operation.

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Decagon Light

decagon

One of the projects I’m working on for Maker Faire Milwaukee is something I call the “DecaLight” which will (hopefully) consists of a decagon-shaped structure with ten light bulbs that are controlled by a set of relays and can turn on and off in pre-programmed sequences. For those unfamiliar with the Decagon, it’s a 10-sided polygon (sometimes called a “10-gon”) and this specific model is a 9-simplex.

Design

Etched Wood

While I started with building a quick and dirty prototype I also decided to build a scale mode. I used the laser cutter at Brown Dog Gadgets to etch and cut a piece of 3mm Baltic Birch plywood.

LED bulb

While the full-sized version will use light bulbs, the scale model will use 10mm LEDs. I just drilled holes for the LED leads since I never got around to adding holes to the laser cutting file.

Painted

Sometimes printmaking techniques come in useful when not making prints. I spray painted the wood and after it dried I rolled on some black ink to make a pure black and white version. For the full size version I’ll be using a CNC router to cut grooves (pockets) and then paint those white while the top surface will be black.

Wood

Here’s the bigger prototype I worked on, which just has a piece of plywood with lamp sockets attached. I got the sockets for cheap from ebay, but they’re terrible.

Sockets

I later spotted some nice ceramic (rather than plastic) lamp sockets at Menards that were just a bit more than the crappy plastic ones, so I’ll probably switch to those.

Hopefully I can get the prototype working in the next week or so. I’ve still got plenty of time to complete the full-scale version, but even with 174 days until Maker Faire Milwaukee, that time will go fast!

A video posted by Pete Prodoehl (@raster) on

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Apple Watch

Apple Watch

I presented a video piece at Maker Faire Milwaukee I called “Apple Watch” which consisted of a Raspberry Pi Model B connected to an Apple Monochrome Monitor from 1988.

The power of component video was harnessed to make a 2012 computer talk to a display that is 27 years old. (Also, Apple used to make solid hardware that lasted a long time!)

The video that plays (after the Raspberry Pi boots up Linux) is the old black & white wristwatch from early versions of the Apple Operating System. The video loops forever and just shows the cursor with the watch hands spinning around infinitely.

You can wait for something else to happen, but it won’t. You can imagine this would fit on your wrist, but it won’t. If the power goes out and comes back on, the Apple Watch will just start up and attempt to run (forever) again. That’s all it does. Really.

Wiring

Raspberry Pi

1988

Apple Watch