hey everyone it's norm from tested and to wrap up this week i have a quick and simple show and
tell uh maybe even a consider a tool tip that's a follow-up uh on my recent projects making use
of some led lights so a couple weeks ago i did a project showing how to make uh these faux
neon lights uh using a laser cutter although you can use cnc or even carving by hand with
some off-the-shelf uh silicone tube lights that have the effect of uh neon glow and i
was really pleased with this project uh seems like you guys out there liked it as well and
i read in the comments a really wonderful idea someone asked to make it look more like a neon
light could i wire in a way so maybe not all the lights were connected together um in series maybe
they could have there could be one light that was flickering or i could do it in a
way to create like a neon animation the way you see neon lights sometimes have tubes that run
in some type of sequence to create the illusion of multiple frames of animation and totally you
can absolutely do that it's great idea and so in looking at ways to control or maybe create
some different effects with led lights you could do it very simply with a board like this so this
is adafruit's trinket board it's super cheap it's under 10 and really powerful allows you to connect
ground power has a gpio and runs arduino codes so you can go into their libraries
and if you want to do some light programming you can script out you know addressable leds
i don't need the functionality of this in fact i don't even need any gpio for the type of led
strips i'm using because they're basically dumb led strips they're not individually addressable
all i need is power and ground and so doing a little bit more research um i
happened onto a company that makes this this comes from prop and scenery lights
they're a company out of the midwest i believe michigan and they make uh lighting products for
theatrical um installations and presentations for theater essentially which they often do need
lights and they have an off-the-shelf turnkey connector here that is a barrel connector and
much like you would have for example a dimmer that could be connected that connects from your
power to what you would plug into your led strip uh you could also string along this which has
a built-in controller as well as buttons that then give you the ability uh to have a variety
of effects and they saw i believe three different versions of this uh i bought a few to try them out
there's one that allows for more like flame lights flame like lighting effects so if you want your
led lights to simulate the kind of pulsing glow of you know embers and the flame or you know a
candle light or a campfire you can plug this into just the barrel connector so here i have
power 12 volts to a dimmer standard dimmer and then this connector here and i'll plug it into
my neon light and i'll bring it up to you now the exposure of this is that is such that it's pretty
bright already but i think you can see some of this pulsing effect and if i press the different
mode buttons there you go that's a different pulsing effect for sure and there's also a speed
button so i can change between different speeds i believe 10 different speeds
and also a dedicated brightness button as well if i want to just tune the brightness without having
to use that dimmer but this is a super neat little off-the-shelf plug-and-play device that has the
functionality that i might want to create just a little more life into these lighting uh lighting
projects for example i have my lightsaber stand that i made a couple weeks ago as well and if i
plug in this other plug-and-play connector this one is one for more blinking and strobe effects
which i thought could be cool i can plug that in and you can get what looks like you know a shorted
electrical signal or you know a strobe light and just like the other connector there are three
buttons on here you can change your different between different modes so here's a more steady
strobe as well as a second button to adjust the speed of the effects so very slow blink to
a much faster blink and can cycle through and this one has pulsing effects as well
which i think is super cool i love the idea that this connector which goes for under 10
you can buy them in multiple packs and if you pair them with like a a barrel connector splitter
uh then you can wire up your lighting projects so that different parts of your lights and your signs
your signage that you're making or whatever you're making can have different effects and while it's
not programmable it's not as robust as if you go with a microcontroller it is something that just
works immediately and for my purposes it's just something that's nice to have for all types of
prop and diorama projects and speaking of dioramas and signage i was trying to come up with a new
project that would let me test and have fun with this controller and i ended up wanting to do
something in sixth scale because that's that's my jam uh and i wanted to also try instead of
using the silicone led lights doing something that would be a smaller scale so i turned to the cob
chip on board led strips i talked about a couple weeks back as well and the idea that i settled on
is inspired from the world of blade runner and if you remember toward the end of the film deckard's
fighting with roy batty and they're on a rooftop and behind them the backdrop they're beautifully
lit by the side of the building which has this tdk electronics company in the logo in a neon light
i've always loved the look of that sign i think it makes a really interesting recognizable uh
backdrop uh in that world so i went to the laser cutter and cut out a couple pieces of acrylic
uh designed in illustrator and what i ended up doing was then kind of taping the cob led strips
and doing a little bit of that led strip origami and routing them around the shape of the letters
this is the k of that tdk and i found red and also white colored led strips so that should be
just fine and then to get that neon shape because it's not very malleable here and you can tell that
the corners are kind of ragged i decided to do was just create a mask so also laser cut the shape
then that's going to go on top and allow only the light i want to pass through also wired it
with a couple different inputs so then i can mix and match these little controllers and i have
basically four different inputs we'll try some flickering we'll try some pulsating lights again
trying to give some life to this neon so it's not just a static light at different brightnesses so
let's do some photos let's capture some video i'm going to grab some six scale stuff that might be
thematically in this realm and appropriate and head over to the photo set
so
do
you