Planet Arduino

Have you ever stared up at your ceiling and wondered how to make it a bit more interesting? Well, creator Centas has and decided to bring a piece of the galaxy into his room using a fiber optic star display.

The installation is powered by an Arduino Mega, and features approximately 1,200 points of light along with sound-reactive LED strips around the perimeter.

User interface is handled by a second Arduino and a pair of nRF24L01 transceivers, while PCA9685 boards are implemented to control LED brightness levels. The system can even pulse with music, thanks to an MSQ7EQ chip.

You can see it in action in the video below and find more images over on Imgur. Note that the constellation lines were added in video production for clarity.

Apparently not content with looking at a map in a book or on a computer screen, YouTuber ShareAHack.com decided to CNC cut and mount a projection of the world onto his apartment’s wall! 

The build was completed in sections and pieced together to form the model, with moss-covered land masses and cities represented by fiber optic LEDs.

Illumination is provided by a series of LED units, which combine white and yellow light that is transmitted to small drilled-out holes via a large number of fiber optic strands. An Arduino controls the lighting via N-channel MOSFETs, allowing it to randomly vary the output for a pleasing and realistic effect. 

Files for the project are available here, though be warned that it took around six months to finish!

Glue sticks are great for attaching electronics and other bits to projects, but as Jon Bumstead shows in his latest work, they can also make pretty cool light diffusers. 

His project takes the form of a wooden box with plexiglass panels, allowing observers to see 64 vertical illuminated glue sticks inside. Hidden within the cube are 128 WS2811 LED modules, melted into the top and bottom of each stick. 

Everything is built around an Arduino Nano, using only a pair of its outputs to control each LED. User interface is provided by a button and knob to adjust speed, color, and patterns.

In this project, I created a “fiber optic” LED matrix using WS2801 LED strip and glue sticks. The light displays have a different look than similar LED cubes and a few advantages. First, you can’t see the actual LEDs in the display because the glue sticks guide the light away from the LEDs. Second, the device requires much fewer LEDs to make up the volume. Because the top and bottom have different LED strips, the fiber optic cables can take on two different colors that mix in the center. There are tons of different color displays that can be achieved with the device. I also added a button and knob for controlling the speed, color, and type of light display.