Collaborate Disseminate
Inspiration can strike a maker at any moment. For [Laura Kampf], it happened in the desert when she saw a tumbleweed. Tumbleweeds roll through the western United States, hitting cars …read more Continue reading Cisco Ball is the Tumbleweed Opposite of a Disco Ball
Although disco music and dancing may be long dead, the disco ball lives on as a staple of dance parties everywhere. [Tim van de Vathorst] spent a considerable amount of …read more Continue reading RGB LED Disco Ball Reacts to Sound and Color
Old Civil Defense survey meters like the V-715 are interesting conversation starters, but of very little practical use today. These devices were intended to be a sort of litmus test that survivors of a nuclear blast could use to determine …read more
Disco balls take a zillion mirrors glued to a sphere and shine a spotlight on them. But what if the ball itself was the light source? Here’s a modern version that uses addressable LEDs in a 3D-printed sphere that also hides the electronics inside the ball itself.
Check out the video below to see the fantastic results. It’s a Teensy 3.6 driving a whopping 130 WS2812 LEDs to make this happen. (The sphere has the highest surface area to volume ratio!) There’s even a microphone and an accelerometer to make the orb interactive. Hidden inside is a 4400 mAh battery …read more
Continue reading Disco Ain’t Dead: Blinky Ball Makes You Solder Inside a Dome
Even if you don’t like disco, you might like the slick moves that went into this project. [W&M] built a miniature motorized mirror ball inside of a standard incandescent light bulb, and the results are something to dance about.
Short of blowing a glass bulb, building a motor, and growing the wood, this is about as scratch-built as it gets. Much of the woodworking is done on a metal lathe, and this includes the base of the mirror ball itself. As with all good thing-in-a-bottle builds, the ball is too big to go in the bulb, so [W&M] quartered it, …read more