IoT Archaeology Leads To API Resurrection

What happens when someone’s personal project is turned into a startup which becomes something of a publicity darling, then collapses with very little product shipped and takes all its custome…

LEDCard: The Pocketable Ring Light

How many times have you found yourself fumbling about with lighting while trying to get a clear up-close shot of an object? Although smartphones come with pretty nice cameras these days, properly l…

Spinning Holographic POV Christmas Tree Of Death

[Sean Hodgins] really harnessed the holiday spirit to create his very own Giant Spinning Holographic Christmas Tree (of Death). It’s a three-dimensional persistence-of-vision (POV) masterpiec…

3D Printed Light Pipe Turns Overly-Bright LED Into Design Harmony

There are a number of ways to efficiently and elegantly limit an LED’s brightness, but [Tommy] found that using a light pipe or diffuser can integrate better with a device, especially when th…

LED Christmas Lights Optimized For Max Twinkleage

Old-school filament-based Christmas lights used to be available in twinkling form. LEDs, with their hard-on and hard-off nature, aren’t naturally predisposed to such behavior. To rectify this…

Serial Cistercian Digit Module

There’s no doubt that the 7-segment display is a gold standard for displaying lighted digits. But what about a throwback to an older system of displaying numbers — Cistercian? With thir…

NE555-Based Electronic Dice

It has become a bit of a running joke in the Hackaday community to suggest that a project could or should have been done with a 555 timer. [Tim] has rather taken this to heart with his latest Elect…

Nano-Sized 7-Segment LED Display On A Surface Mount Module

Inspired by a prank tweet, [Sam Ettinger] endeavored to create an SMD seven-segment display.  The NanoRaptor NanoSegment implements a panel of seven-segment display modules sized at “0806&#82…

Turn Your Furniture Into A Light Show With Hyelicht

There’s something about the regimented square shapes of the IKEA Kallax shelf that convinced [Eike Hein] it could benefit from some RGB LED lighting, and while he could have simply used a com…

LEDs Put New Spin On A Sonic The Hedgehog Costume

[Wentworthm] couldn’t say no to his son’s plea for a Sonic the Hedgehog costume for Halloween but also couldn’t resist sprucing it up with LEDs either. The end result is a surpris…

Homebrew LED Bulbs Keep Your Circadian Rhythms Steady

There was a time when LED light bulbs were a premium product that commanded a premium price, mainly because of limited supply and the usual marketing tricks. But now is not that time, since you can…

Tidy POV Display Using The ESP32

Chinese Youtuber [corebb] presents the second version of his POV display. The earlier version used 5050-sized SMT addressable LEDs, which didn’t give great resolution, so he rev’d the d…

Surface-Mount Light Breathes Life Into Your Project

If you’ve ever seen those gadgets with the “breathing light” LEDs on them and wondered how to do it, then [DIY GUY Chris] can show you how to design your own surface-mount version…

The Great Resistor Embiggens The Smallest Value

With surface-mount components quickly becoming the norm, even for homebrew hardware, the resistor color-code can sometimes feel a bit old-hat. However, anybody who has ever tried to identify a rand…

LED Diffusers Confusing? Organize A Practical Contest

We all want a nice and shiny LED strip that doesn’t actually look like it consists of individual LEDs – a bar of uniform light is just that much more attractive. There’s all kinds…

Be The Star Of The Evening With This Light Up Prom Dress

[Kellechu] went full parent beast mode by creating a prom dress for her daughter. This incredible build is a tour-de-force of DIY crafting, combining sewing, electronics, 3D printing and programmin…

This Infinity Dodecahedron Build Shows All The Tricks

The infinity dodecahedron is one of those super eye-catching builds that many of us hardware hackers have on our ‘build one day’ project list. The very thought of actually doing it stri…

This Headboard Contains An Artificial Sun

Despite the proliferation of artificial lighting, humans are still highly dependent on sunlight for regulation of our circadian rhythms. Accordingly, [Sector 07] has built a futuristic headboard th…

Thrills With An LED “Thriller” Jacket

[Louise Katzovitz] has created a light-up jacket in the style of the jacket worn by Michael Jackson in the 1983 music video for “Thriller”. [Louise Katzovitz]’s Thriller jacket is…

Hackaday Prize 2022: This Interactive Air Quality Map Makes The Invisible Visible

Air quality can have a big impact on your health, but it isn’t always something you can see. [Ahmed Oyenuga] wanted to make air quality something more tangible and developed an Interactive Ai…