Smooth Animations, Slick Bar Graphs, But No Custom Characters On This 16×2 OLED

Sometimes, finding new ways to use old hardware requires awesome feats of reverse engineering, software sleight of hand, and a healthy dose of good fortune. Other times, though, it’s just as …

Micro:bit Brings 3D Printed Magic Lanterns To Life

[Elenavercher] loves engaging her primary school students, inspiring their imagination as well as teaching them the design thinking process. She has found that the very accessible rapid prototyping…

IOT Message Board Puts Fourteen-Segment Displays To Work

We’re not sure, but the number of recognizable alphanumeric characters that a seven-segment display can manage seems to have more to do with human pattern recognition than engineering. It tak…

Three Way LED Bulb Gives Up Its Secrets

You’ve probably seen three-way bulbs. You know, the ones that can go dim or bright with each turn of a switch. [Brian Dipert] wondered how the LED version of these works, and now that he tore…

A Hacker’s Introduction To DIY Light Guide Plates

Last year, I found myself compelled to make a scaled-down replica of the iconic test chamber signs from the video game Portal. If you’ve played the game, you’ll remember these signs as …

PCB Makes 7 Segment Displays

Of course, there’s nothing unusual about using 7-segment displays, especially in a clock. However, [Edison Science Corner] didn’t buy displays. Instead, he fabricated them from a PCB us…

The Curved Nature Of Time Clock

While we’re told that space-time curves, we aren’t sure that was what [andrei.erdei] was going for when he built a great-looking curved LED clock. The LEDs are courtesy of a strip of 84…

Sailing On A Sea Of Seven-Segment Displays

The amount of information the humble seven-segment display can convey is surprising. There are the ten numerals, dead-ringers or reasonable approximations for about half the alphabet, and even a fe…

Pingo Is An Analog Clock That Uses Colors Instead Of Hands

The purpose of a clock is to show the time, obviously. But if you’ve followed Hackaday for some time, you’ll know there are about a million different ways of achieving this. [illusionma…

Put A Constellation In Your Dining Room

We love lamps here at Hackaday, especially if they imitate natural light sources. [Scott McIndoe] used his love of lamps to fashion a chandelier replicating his favorite constellation, the Southern…

LED Filament Lamp Is Subtle, Warm, And Elegant

Hackers have loved LEDs from day one, back when they gave us little more than a dim spot of colored light in the darkness. These days, they’re big, bright, and beautiful, and can be used to c…

Homebrew Ball Drop Machine Rings In The New Year

The New Year’s Ball Drop in New York City stems from an old English naval tradition. These days, it’s more of a celebratory thing, and [Jon Gonzalez] wanted to bring a bit of that joy t…

LED Displays May Get Vertical Integration

If you zoom into the screen you are reading this on, you’d see an extremely fine pattern of red, green, and blue emitters, probably LEDs of some kind. This somewhat limits the resolution you …

Build A Circuit Sculpture-Style VU Meter For Music

One of the coolest things any sound system can have is some kind of musical visualization. Thumping level meters that pump with the volume are a great example, and were particularly popular in the …

Surgery On An LED To Preserve Vintage Aesthetics

[Chris Jones] recently found himself in a pickle. An indicator LED off an old piece of stereo equipment had failed. It was a strange rectangular type for which he could source no modern substitute.…

Illuminate Your Benched Things With This Death Stranding Lamp

[Pinkman] creates a smart RGB table lamp based off of the “Odradek device” robot arm from the video game “Death Stranding”. [Pinkman] adds a XIAO BLE nRF52840 Sense device, …

Creative Vandalism The KITT Way

It’s probable that most of us have at some time dreamed up a witty and subversive way to deface our city, but that few of us will have followed through on the idea. [Matt Gray] then is someth…

Addressable LEDs From A Z80

If you buy WS2812s under the Adafruit NeoPixel brand, you’ll receive the advice that “An 8 MHz processor” is required to drive them. “Challenge Accepted!”, says [Shiel…

LED Driver Circuit For Safety Hat Sucks Single AAA Cell Dry

[Petteri Aimonen] created an omnidirectional LED safety light to cling to his child’s winter hat in an effort to increase visibility during the dark winter months, but the design is also grea…

Smart LED Curtain Brings Sprites To Your Windows

Anybody who has ever seen a video wall (and who hasn’t?) will be familiar with the idea of making large-scale illuminated images from individual coloured lights. But how many of us have gone …