Looks as awesome as we imagined, and this is just 16 of them. End goal is 800+ in a ~1.5 x ~1m wall of pixels displayed in the window of #BallaratHackerspace.

#ProjectLog #DIY

This will be the thread tracking the development and construction of “The Pixel Wall” at #BallaratHackerspace which is a modular RGB LED system for making (very) low resolution video walls. More for retro pixel art and general artistic purposes.

Below is a very early prototype just to get the scale of the cubes right and start playing with ideas on how to connect them and do the wiring etc.

They’re 50mm cubes made from laser cut MDF with laser cut 3mm acrylic as the diffuser, and running off WS2811 LED strings controlled via WLED on an ESP32.

Threw together some laser-cut toy storage at #ballarathackerspace for the kids to categorise their little collectables and toys. They stack perfectly on their bookshelves and can be taken individually to the loungeroom/wherever to play rather than the big toy boxes. Nothing better than quick-win #diyprojects.

This will be the thread tracking the development of our DIY electromagnetic coil winding machine, aka “We wanted to make a pinball machine then realised actuators are expensive so how hard could it really be to make our own actuators and electromagnetic coils in general?”… aka Spoolio for short.

#BallaratHackerspace #ProjectLog #TotallyNotMakingACoilgunOfficer

We started off prototyping the idea using an old Prusa clone as the chassis to easily get some of the moving axis we required, and whipped up a laser cut adapter on the bed to add a rotating (spooling) axis. First we just wanted to see if the stepper motors even had the torque to wind magnet wire off a roll or whether we’d need to start looking at gearboxes etc.

What's a good # we can standardise for sharing projects on here? #projects or #projectupdates or something?

I want to start writing up some of the #BallaratHackerspace projects we've been working on and put all the pics I've been taking.

(I know this might be wiped, but I'll keep a copy to repost later if so).