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
