Mild is a humorous factor. It will get all bizarre and flexible, which can lead to some fairly unintuitive results. Mix that with the way in which that our minds understand mild and you may create enjoyable illusions. Erin St Blaine turned that to her benefit to design this Star Phantasm that you could construct your self.
This phantasm right here is one among motion, regardless that nothing within the meeting really strikes in any respect. As a substitute, it flashes lights in altering colours throughout a stack of edge-lit laser-cut acrylic panels. Star shapes are lower into these panels, however every is barely offset (each in dimension and rotation) relative to the one earlier than. With the precise LED results, the visible result’s one among a star form of shrinking and twirling in a hologram kind of means.
To construct this, you’ll clearly want a laser cutter. Or, doubtlessly, a CNC mill. You’ll use that to chop each the clear acrylic panels and the sections of the wooden enclosure.
Then, to carry it to life, you have to an Adafruit Mini Sparkle Movement, which is an ESP32-based improvement board constructed particularly for driving LEDs. That can run WLED firmware, which has a helpful internet interface for configuring the LEDs and altering results. The LEDs themselves are on a basic Adafruit Neopixel strip.
The wiring could be very straightforward and solely requires soldering three wires. To assemble every part, you merely stack the acrylic panels, glue the LED strip in place, and put all of it within the wooden field you chop.
This may make nice vacation décor, however would additionally look superior the remainder of the yr.
