Posted by ketyung
on Oct/18/2007
at 8:56 pm
LED technology is definitely the cheap and easy one to be incorporated in our everyday objects. For those who have plenty of time and good knowledge of microelectronics, you could also prepare yourself some LED accessories for the coming Halloween. Here comes a DIY project, an LED hat, which is simply fun to have for this coming Halloween. But there is a bit of complexity involved. If you can’t make it for this coming Halloween, then reserve this idea for the Halloween next year or perhaps you’d probably find such a product available for purchase a year later. More info and demo video for you after the jump!
To make this LED hat, you need good knowledge of microcontroller. The LED hat here was built using the AVR STK500 programmer board, which can be purchased from UK Farnell. The programmer board consists of an ATmega16 and an ATmega8515-8PC microcontroller. Of course, you’ll also need to pick up the microcontroller’s instruction set and hook it up to your computer via the RS232 interface and start writing some code that controls the flashing patterns of the LEDs. There would be a little obstacle here, which you can hardly find an RS232 port with today’s computer. So, you’ll need an USB to RS232 converter for that.
If all these sound too complex to you, then you’d have to forget about to make it for this year. As mentioned, you could probably reserve for the Halloween next year, which I assume a year should be sufficient for you to master the microcontroller and some complex instruction sets. It should be lots of fun and this simply reminds me the projects that I had always been involved during my degree course.
LED hat,Halloween,LED art,LED technology
Technorati Tags: LED hat, Halloween, LED art, LED technology
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