NYC Resistor

Adam and I upgraded Hexascroller to control 5 m of Adafruit RGB LED strip through a spare serial port connected to a Teensy 2.0 that drives the strip via SPI. Now when a new message is displayed, the accent lights switch to a bright flashing mode to attract attention, then they will return to soothing, slow color changing mode.

Click the “Read more” to see additional photos of the installation and setup. Read more

Inspired by Ranjit’s instrument-a-day (Make coverage), I’m writing a new wrist watch face every day for my progamable inPulse watch (more background). The full sources are posted online for others to build on.

Day 1 was a fixed point 3D rendering engine with a rotating Utah Teapot, day 2 was a rolling odometer or aviation altitude ticker display and day 3 is a 24-hour analog clock. This last one still needs some work.

Saturday May 7th! Come one, Come all!

NYCR will be hosting our super duper Interactive Show.

The theme this year is ANYTHING INTERACTIVE. That’s right, ANYTHING… INTERACTIVE. That includes people, peoples!

Music? yeah, we got it.
Blinking lights? hello? c’mon, you know we got that covered!
Stabby things? why do you think we have an 18+ policy?

So come and be creative, come and grab a drink, come and meet the Resistors. Screw it, it’s a Saturday night and we like to have an excuse for a blow out kind of party so just come!

$10 tickets in advance, $15 tickets at the door

Tickets now on sale

During Hackday I worked on a display for the Stabby ID.

I have six or so HDSP 2111 units lying around. They also come in green and red led models.

Read on for Schematic and Demo Arduino Source
Read more

SLED v1.1 Serial RGB LED Lamp

Greetings! This is my last hail-mary #AwesomeAugust post before we roll into the decline and death of Summer here in the Northern Hemisphere.  Not that I mind, the last few weeks have been a bit hot and humid, and I don’t get my summers off to lounge around like some of you whippersnappers.  Behold!  The E-Mail Waiting Light! Yes, you’ve seen others, and there may be many like it, but this one is mine.  And it can be yours as well, if you follow the instructions posted on our Wiki.  This little gem will show everyone whether you are INBOX ZERO – or not.

Check it out here: http://wiki.nycresistor.com/wiki/E-Mail_Waiting_Light

Two fun things are happening this Sunday: A cheap and cheerful blinky workshop for Arduino users and a fun and crafty class in making glowing LED jewelery. Come on by!

Ever wanted to grow grass in your cubicle? I did. But the grass kept dying. So I made a custom grow light out of LEDs, and now I have the nicest lawn on my block. Build photos, schematic, sourcecode, etc. are on the project page.

Here at Resistor, other people’s technology cast-offs show up on our shelves.  Occasionally we take one down and give it a good thrashing to see whether or not it’s useful.  This time, we have an animation controller manufactured by the strange little company “Gilderfluke” that specializes in robotics controls for the sort of thing you might see at a kid-themed pizza restaurant.  Given that they have an Orlando office, they probably also do business with the big D.

The Gilderfluke device is a heavy I/O, heavy serial process logic controller.  It has facilities for time synchronization between devices, and the company sells add ons to facilitate passing audio over long distances without losing sync as well as driving DMX-equipped theatrical devices.  It’s clearly overkill for Resistor, but only in the sense that we aren’t planning to build a theme park, because otherwise we *love* overkill.  Why use a class 2 laser when you have a perfectly good class 4 available?

This PLC is interesting both because it is a new rabbit hole of neatness, but more importantly because it has lots of LEDs.  Although we are in the age of the organic LED display, where rich text and video can be placed on near about anything – the romance of the LED, the sheer eye-candy of monochromatic lighting will continue to delight us for years to come.

Will keep you updated as we dig out the RS422 adapters and start talking to the world inside these things.

SLED in Cyan color with diffuser

The “SLED” or, Second Life LED (just one L for clarity) is available as an open source, CC’ed design. It is a USB-attached, Arduino-based RGB “lamp” which can be used to indicate various information from the PC, or simply used to brighten a room with a little color.

My goal in building this device, in conjunction with my friend and colleague Andy Fundinger, was to provide a visual indication of activities within the popular 3D online world of Second Life. Many of our friends and peers had business activities within Second Life and wanted a convenient way of keeping an eye on trends or specific events without remaining logged in or while they were away from their desk. While SMS and e-mail notifications are easy to do, none were so reassuring as simply having a blinky light to tell them when something needed attending – such as a vendor or a shop proximity sensor.

The code for the Second Life component is under construction, but you can build this device today! Either grab the Arduino sketch below and load in your own Arduino developer board, or for a smaller design, run off a few of these customized PCBs and enjoy a little SMD soldering. In the future, I intend to build a batch of these for my less technically-inclined Second Life friends, but for now, I’d like to share it with the community. I’ll flesh out the information as time progresses, but the files provided should allow anyone familiar with Eagle, Atmega and Arduino to get their own done for whatever purpose.

SLED circuit boards in the nude

The design is released under a Creative Commons license.
The schematic, board, and bill of materials are here.

The Arduino sketch is here.

(This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Arduino team, but they’re awesome!)

Jack Bauer apparel for the modern Cyber Terrorist.

Don’t get caught wearing this in Boston, or on line for your next flight. But the latest in hacker apparel makes sinister use of the ageless dark art of LED matrices. Anyways I am bringing my jacket to defcon to announce to the world, that the gauntlet has been thrown down… who will be first to legitimately drop a Pants Status: Pwned.

In terms of Technical Details, the Jacket uses a MAX 6952 LED array driver and is being written to via SPI.. and a boarduino.