Scratch built E1.31 80 pixel Starburst

[elnino]

Hi all, I know this is not necessarily groundbreaking but I thought I would post it here for others to see.


I bought a bunch of WS2812b LEDS (bare chips) on a whim some time back and then realised just how tedious and annoying it is to try to wire them up. However, I have a bit of time on my hands at the moment so I went about making a starburst.


The first thing to consider was how to mount the LEDS. The first thing that came to mind was some transparent 'strip' that I could superglue the leds face down on to and then manually wire the back. I couldn't find anything appropriate laying around in the shed but came accross some 4mm black fibreglass rod I salvaged from an old damaged kite.


I cut them to 8 lengths of 20cm and made up a jig on my CNC machine to perfectly place the LEDS, smear some CA glue on the board side of the leds and then stuck them on:





I grabbed a bunch of cheap ceramic 0.1uf caps for each of the LEDS - At the time I got these because they were cheapest (11c each) but It actually turned out quite convinient. I bent down one leg on all of them, held that to the back and soldered it to the gnd pin of each LED.



I then flipped it over and soldered the other leg to the diagonally opposite 5V pin:



After trimming off the remaining length of the capacitor legs, I used them to link the data pins:

TBC...

 

[elnino]

After completing all of the links, I then stripped lengths of wire and soldered them down the sides of the capacitor legs for the power:



Finally, After making all 8, I made up a hub on the CNC machine from Acrylic and mounted them. Some more wiring and...




View: http://youtu.be/ekL2u8TyuLQ

 

[David_AVD]

You have way too much time on your hands.

Looks good lit up though.

 

[AAH]

Looks good. No video of the CNC machine in action though
I agree with David though. You have too much time on your hands. You do appear to be making good use of it though.

 

[elnino]

The CNC machine is nothing too special but i use it soooo much! It's a great tool to have. It generally only takes a few mins to draw something up in cad and 'print' it out. One of my best investments that's for sure.


I use it for making circuit boards as well as stuff like above.
Cutting Carbon fibre sheet (G27 Paddles for larger wheel):



Speaker panel in a Mini Arcade machine:



and more recently, as a 3d printer...




FYI, Mine is a 3040Z but mine does not have the rotational axis that one comes with (and I paid a fair bit less for mine ~3 years ago)

 

[damo1271]

Fantastic work. Is it running from your arduino?

 

[elnino]

Correct, It's running from a UNO with ENC28J60 module there but I am in the middle of swapping it to a Pro Mini.