Over at Brown Dog Gadgets Josh asked for a large sign in the entryway and since we’ve got a large laser cutter (basically 5 foot x 4 foot cutting area) I designed and cut a large wooden sign, stained it all, and then added NeoPixels.
I designed it in Inkscape with finger joints for assembly. The large back piece is the same as the front, just cut without the lettering/logo. I basically made two open boxes that would fit together, sort of like a traditional shoe box where the inside is slightly smaller than the outside. Same here, with the inside being the part that mounts to the wall, and the outside being the cover the slides into place over it.
Here’s the back side glued up and with the NeoPixel strips added. There are just two strips running in parallel along the top and bottom.
The NeoPixel strips connect to a Crazy Circuits Robotics Board running some Arduino code. There’s also a RTC (Real-Time Clock) module so it can turn on and turn off at scheduled times each day. (Which sometimes does not work, so occasionally we have to unplug/replug it.)
I made a few grid lines on the back piece as guides for the mounting hardware. Here it is all lit up and ready for the front cover to be put in place. (You can see the simple fade animation happening. It just repeatedly transitions between colors.)
Here’s the front cover in place! There’s a sheet of light diffusing plastic inside. Actually it’s a bunch of smaller pieces cut up and glued into place as needed wherever there are holes in the front. (It appears I failed to get a photo of this.) You can see a Mini USB cable hanging out the bottom which goes to a 5 volt USB wall wart to provide power.
Here’s a side view showing the thickness. And now for the hack. It did not sit completely flush and sort of tilted a little bit on an angle, perhaps due to warping since it’s suck a large piece of wood.
I ended up drilling a hold and placing a pin (well, a bolt) into the side of the sign to hold the cover in place a bit more securely…
Adding the first pin made the opposite corner pop out a bit. So let’s add another! I colored the bolt heads with a black Sharpie marker so as not to be so distracting since it is silver hardware. Basically we just need to remember to pull out these two pins before removing the cover if we ever need to do any maintenance. It’s been running for four months now, and besides the whole RTC clock not always working right it’s been solid, and it does look nice.
The sign is 1016mm x 508mm x 95mm (or 40″ x 20″ x 3.75″ for you Imperialists!)