Gearfuse

What’s a programmer to do. Buy a hard-to-find LED strip? Most likely. He’ll then probably spend weeks hacking it so he can interface it with an Arduino. Afterwards, the LEDs will fade in and fade out for weeks to come, as our hero desperately tries to make sense of all this. After meeting with a friend, our hero and his companion work together to release a library for said LED strip. The day ends and they both breathe a sigh of relief. They hack to live, they live to hack. Hit the link to see it in action.

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Alright, alright, you got me. The base is made out of concrete but these lamps are still cool as hell. Perfect for ambient lighting in your game room or for a nightclub/bar. There’s even a guide on building your own should you be up for the challenge.

The body of the lap is formed by two thin rods folded in half, stuck in holes in the base, with a lycra sleeve slid over them.

Seems easy enough. Give it a try with all those vacation days you’ll be using this week.

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The name is a bit odd, I have to admit, but this looks like one fun toy for the DIY enthusiast out there. It’s called the Meggy Jr RGB and it’s a programmable handheld console that features an 8×8 LED matrix made up of wonderful colored lights. It uses an ATMega168 microcontroller, similar to that of the Arduino. In fact, you can use Arduino code to program the Meggy Jr. With six buttons available, you could end up making a game or an audio interface with this thing.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has a whole write up on it and how it can be used. It’ll be available next week.

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Japanese artist Mutoh Tsutomu has created the raver’s wet dream room. The Optical Tone installation is a combination of art, technology and science. Clad with LED light spectrums in conjunction with sensors that interact with inhabitants of the room, Tsutomu uses a special algorithm to display RGB colors. This interactively examines the problems in human perception and the recognition of dynamic characteristics of light that can’t be experienced in everyday life.

The experiment could lead to further explorations for improvement in environmental light of the digital age and research on understanding of human color perception.  In turn, this will open up a new history of visual expression and communication that not even a trip on mushrooms could prepare you for.

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