LED skunkworks: Wish list/brainstorm.

Like quite a few of you I've been bitten by the LED bug, and while I've managed to create a few nice poi I would like to take if further. I've spent the last two days reading documentation and spec sheets, and now I'm 100% certain I've absorbed at least 1% of the information I'll need to in order to produce PIC controlled poi and staff.

But what to do? I've had a few ideas since seeing FlameOz perform recently, but I'm sure others out there have bucket loads of ideas they wouldn't mind sharing with the HOP community, in the interests of giving the geeky ones something to do if nothing else.

SO
If you could wish for anything in your LED toys, anything at all, be it simple or complicated, humble or part of some fiendish plot to take over the world, please post it here!

Some thoughts.
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Synchronization.
poi and or staff following the same lighting sequence, in unison.

This would require either physical contact via a conductive surface (located on the tips of staff/poi heads) to transfer the sequence and establish a heartbeat, or wireless communication to do the same or transmit the sequence real time from a controlling source (master staff/poi).

I figure this would be good for group performance, or to unify a group of individual spinners.
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Audio sequence triggers.
lighting sequences (as simple as a single pulse) being triggered by audio input. ie flashing to the beat.

This could get quite complicated I suppose, as different frequency ranges could trigger different effects (spectrum analyzer in your poi/staff anyone?)
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Programmable sequences.
the ability to key in a lighting sequence via the staff/poi.

applies to setting the tempo as well.

few problems with producing enough user feedback here, ie 'are we tapping the sequence for blue or red???'
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Lighting effects.

Strobe

colour fade: fade from one colour to another, or through the rainbow with three LEDs

others?
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ViM

BASS reactive

Blue beamers. (one of the main reason I don't own a pair yet)
Softer beamer like things, I really like the shape of the beamer, I would assume there almost like sock poi only much harder and heavier.

Pulsating: There's plenty of strobing and ribbon effects around, how about something where the light gets brighter and dimmer in waves? Could be quite interesting combos using this:
red, fades out, fades back in, fades out, BLUE fades in, out, in, out, GREEN, etc.

Glow staff with fire ends? Many many many issues to be worked out, but I was thinking keep 8 inches between the inside edge of kevlar anda firewall between the glow components and the fire to keep melting to a minimum

Colors that change depending on speed, or strobe more quickly as the speed increases, or both.

Colors that change on impact. I know that Proballs do this, never touched Glometeors, but it'd be quite fun doing wraps and having them change colors after each wrap, or even change modes after each wrap.

My ultimate LED poi would be able to strobe multiple colors with a pulsating effect. I'd love a pair of those... I have 7 color strobing Electroglos, they're QUITE nice, but a pulsating effect would make me smile.

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BASS reactive

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I looked into this a little and it looks like it's going to be difficult to differentiate bass from treble so how about just reacting to volume? I assume that flashing to the top 10 or 20% of the volume range (running average) would do the trick.

Would this work for the music you listen to?

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beamers

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are those the pain-on-a-chain thingies like these?

I made some soft LED poi out of some hollow rubber balls found at a local discount store. They were a bit small at only about 1 1/2 inches but light diffusion was very uniform and they left a lovely crisp trail. The problem would be finding the correct material from an inexpensive source. Synthetic rubber can be produced with a huge range of tolerances, but getting it produced to spec in small quantities is beyond my limited budget (read non-existent) but will hopefully be taken on by someone as soon as they think there is the market base to support the investment.
The balls I used would not have lasted long as they didn't have enough tear resistance.

Blue LEDs seem to lag behind other colours in brightness, but I think they are catching up. I hope so, because blue it's my favorite glowing colour at the moment.

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MillenniuM

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Pulsating vs colour fade(my description above) vs ribbon effects.
could you please describe the ribbon effect? I'm guessing that pulsating and colour fade are the same. ?
I see the fading as being fairly fast, leaving only a small arc of dim light during each rotation. does that sound right?
*i guess the tempo should be selectable or dictated by the music/impact*

the problem so far has been locating a digitally programmable potentiometer or voltage regulator that doesn't cost more than all the other components but together.

Glow staff with fire ends
ooooh!
but if the end of the staff where left hollow and one installed a copper heat sink (fins), and a fan in the middle of the stick...
seriously though- if the middle (LED lit part) were poly carb tube, the fire ends could be connected via non-conductive ferrules.
could be done I think.

Colors that change depending on speed, or strobe more quickly as the speed increases, or both.
I'm working on this one. It's not so hard with staff, but any sensor I can find isn't going to know what's going on once poi heads start pulling G.

Colors that change on impact.
same as above.
*hmmmm, perhaps an accelerometer....*

but a pulsating effect would make me smile. now if only more people would smile the world would be a better place! Consider the challenge accepted!


thanks for the responses so far people! I know I've gone chasing some impossible dreams here, but at the moment thats the point so please keep the ideas flowing and comment on my posts ( oooh, did I write all that? ).


ViM

Ribbon effect describes a strobe which has no lack of light between each change of color. The effect is quite amazing, if you took a long expose of it it would be a single band of light which changes colors periodically, instead of a bunch of individually shaped bands of light. It requires the ability to switch one color on at the same time as the other is shut off, or just an extremely high frequency of color change, giving the effect of a ribbon.

Yes, the pulsating would be mostly bright but with quick insertions of lower brightness.

Would any of this stuff be for sale by any chance? I'm extremely interested in a cost-effective alternative to Aerotech gear, I'm simply not willing to spend 300+ dollars on a pair of poi that I'd only use if fire was out of the question. My friend got a single Proball, and it ended up being, with a charger and all, 180 dollars Far too much, in my opinion.

Hmm, other ideas (This is so much fun, it's very rare you come up with crazy weird ideas and have someone actually consider them and make them seem sensible )

Color morphing (Colors change to other colors by fading one in while the other fades out, or with crazy color changing LED stuff I don't know about)

Strobe patterns (Difference in length between strobe times, either random or calibrated, preferably programmable, although that'd be a bitch.)

Rechargable instead of battery powered... been done by Aerotech, but most other LED poi use CR2016 or similar batteries.

ah, cool. the ribbon would be fairly easy and inexpensive to do, might make that the first prototype just to make sure I'm thinking straight.

so sort of like the ribbon, but with a fade.

hehe. The thought had crossed my mind, but at the moment I'm just doing it for fun. Might need some testers tho!

I saw a staff recently that was going for AU$200, it was a ribbon effect that changed only as it moved. I figure I can probably replicate that for less than AU$20 in electronics, BUT I've not tried so I can't be sure. Even if it does only cost that much (or less, as I'm paying retail) you have to consider the time it takes to put these things together.
I think for the most part it's still a 'cottage' industry so the cost of production is high, which is and evil situation because as soon as there is enough demand you're likely to see $50 all singing all dancing toys out of China, though who can guess at the quality.
Cost also rises rather fast as we start looking into more complicated effects, such as we have discussed here. ie while the ribbon effect is easy (just on off) the pulse will require voltage or current modulation, and so far that looks like it's going to cost something like AU$15 PER LIGHT. It will also stretch the basic PIC brain a bit so add AU$10 to the cost of a staff and AU$20 for a set of poi for a bigger brain. I'm very interested in programmability, but that will require a lot of headroom, so lets say $AU20 for a staff or each poi just for the brain... and so on.
It's all quite depressing really, but I've only just started so I hope to find cost effective alternatives along the way.

Chargers and batteries. I think rechargeable is a must, but: you can't beat lithium for storage capacity, which is why they are used. Rechargeable lithium-pol cells are actually quite inexpensive (dropped like 300% in the last six months) and a charger will only cost around AU$60 now. But using these cells in poi is stretching their ability to take a knock, and they CAN explode when damaged. so I'm back to looking at NiCad and NiMh and while AA cells are not that expensive anything that is small enough to go in a poi takes you into laptop land and the prices are just stupid for cells that small.
So I think I'll be using the evil button cells to start with, but I'll keep looking for rechargeables that fit in poi.

HUH? I've not seen anything crazy mentioned here yet?!

Morphing should be achievable with the same setup as the pulse, just control the mix or Red Blue and Green and you have a lot of colours to play with.
Do you think just a plain set pattern morph would be fun to spin, or would it have to be reactive in some way in order to be more than just passingly interesting.

I think programmable strobe/pulse (or morphs for that matter) patterns would be much fun, as you wouldn't be stuck with 'factory' presets. This is very much on my list, and although it's a bit expensive component wise I think its achievable. The problem is more a matter of user interaction.
The simplest method I can come up with goes something like this.
1. start recording (hold button down for 10 seconds or press it 10 times or something)
2. record pattern for light 1 (pattern recorded by tapping it on the button - light flashes as you go)
problems - how long do we record for? until the tapping stops? what if the user wants a 10 second delay on that light? Even if recording only lasts a set number of seconds it's going to be frustrating to work out a pattern that doesn't do something ugly at the end when it loops.
3. record pattern for light 2 (as above, while the pattern for light 1 is played)
4. record pattern for light X lights.
problems - how do you implement an edit function? A couple of these problems can be solved by adding a second button, but that adds to cost and is a space problem with poi.
big problem with poi, how do you sync the poi!?
You're right, it's a bitch (in leather, with a whip in one hand and and ugly lookin hood in the other)
I'm working on it tho any ideas?





ViM

PS, sorry if I rant a bit/lot/excessively. You're now getting my brainstorm _LIVE_. please join it!.

I really think morphing effects are key... I was just thinking, and a constant, extremely slow morph would be absolutely beautiful. Imagine a constant morph (It is always changing from one color to another) that takes about 5 seconds to change from one LED being 100% to 0%... it'd look absolutely stupendous. Those would be my personal favorite LED poi, programmable or not... even as simple as different speeds of morphing would make it much much better, not even programmable.

If I were you, I really wouldn't worry about programmability. It's a very secondary feature... Aerotech's aren't actually programmable, they just have a multitude of preset patterns you can choose from. By programmable, I really just meant different factory settings... if you include enough (I doubt they take up too much memory, eh? It's probably only a few K for a bunch), I doubt it'd be complainable.

I can't really help much but Malcolm says the reason why beamers are so hard is because the biggest problem with LED toys is durability so you may want to keep that in mind.

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I looked into this a little and it looks like it's going to be difficult to differentiate bass from treble so how about just reacting to volume? I assume that flashing to the top 10 or 20% of the volume range (running average) would do the trick.

Would this work for the music you listen to?

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deyum skippy

The onlyt way I could see programming(at leest for ease of use) would some sort of computer interface to some nice software where you could choose light color, placement, frequency, and length, then mebbe be able to test it out..I'd love to help out on that if ya need, that part would be easy..The low level drivers(to allow say like a USB interface to the staff/poi), storage of the programmed sequence in the poi/staff, and execution of that sequence would be way over my head tho, not to mention drive the price of this thing up astronomically most likely..Sounds like a fun project tho

Of course, you could use that USB interface to charge the device too... double purpose is nice and cost effective.

I too have been thinking of building some PIC-controlled LED Poi (Check out the thread here). I've got a load of ideas about cool strobing, pulsing effects - you've got most of my ideas there already!

I use 3 or 4 AAA batteries to power the set I've built. I was hoping to get away with over-driving the LEDs, but it seems I must've gone a bit overboard. I'd tried with 4xAAA's (series) and 4 LEDs (parallel) and it seemed fine - nothing got too hot... until I charged the batteries . You should've seen how bright they were (for about 30 seconds)! Sadly, this blew one of the LEDs so I'm waiting for some more to arrive (with a resistor or two so I don't blow any more up).

I reckon that you could use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation - switching the LEDs on and off very quickly) to control the amount of current each LED gets. I'm planning to use 4 red, 4 blue and 4 green LEDs in each head (all super-bright of course). Then, by changing how much each is flashed, you should be able to reproduce almost any colour!

Now we talkin'
I had a thread going of all kinds of ideas inc. some LED poi with USB which confused a few people. I'm glad that others are now onto it. There's some talk similar to this on the Glow Swords thread.
Also check out the Tekno Turtles video thread for the LED poi Shok made himself. Lots of wraps and hits and work poifectly throughout. Add to a design like that programmable colours and patterns and we have the ultimate.
Please if anyone ever ends up making sellable product, do the right thing and sell them through HOP shop.

ello!

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I found a source after much phoning around; £14.50 for 1m of poly carb tube which is 33mm O/D, 31mm I/D.

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PC is still proving hard to get hold of here. The only source so far will cost AUD$121.00 per 3 meter length (31.8 x 28.6mm)!

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I reckon just a load of pre-programmed modes would be enough to be honest. If you take a look at Myke's PIC Page, he recommends a new chip that's come out (no idea how much they are) which allows a program to write to it's own program code. I thought that sounded like it might be a way for people to write their own stuff.. ?

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Thanks for the link. I decided that I really really didn't want to go back to programming in ASM, so the PICAXE chip from http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/ began looking very nice. They are programmable in basic so as long as the circuit includes a download jack anyone can use the free software and hack away. _if_ these where going to turn into a marketable product this would also allow the community to share code and create new stuff.
Last night my little brother was creating sickening strobe patterns within 15 minutes of being shown the basic commands.

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I found that running the LEDs with a little extra current seemed fine

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oooh. It's so tempting to exceed spec on these things, they're so bright!!! Got my hands on 15 or so different types of LED so a few burn in tests might be in order On the other hand there are some 10000 and 20000mcd LEDs just becoming available if you can afford the 100mA each

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I've got the El-Cheapo PIC programming pcb - just need the components and I'll be able to make a start on some flashing POI. Look out Aerotech, here we come

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hows it going?




_Finally_ got hold of most of the electronics a few days ago!

All the effects are easy to do, but the circuit it very simple at the moment and tends to flicker a little. I think I know how to fix that, but it will require more components so it'll be another few weeks

One downside of using basic is that it's very inefficient and the 08 chips only just hold enough code to do one type of effect. I think the 18X will be the ticket, though it's more expensive.

(http://www.skylineruk.co.uk)

IMHO the hardest part of LED poi is getting the mechanical reliability and brightness sorted. These things have to be able to stand being smacked into the ground, dropped, soaked in paraffin/mud/beer etc etc. Its all too easy for your good work to be undone in a single session. Getting the brightness is also a major challenge, ive just finished my new LED poi using Luxeon Emitters but they require some serious development work to keep the heat down!
One cool effect is to use a solid-state accelerometer in each head that will vary "something" the faster or slower you spin the things.

Due to having too much work (Uni and regular paid work) I've not got much further. My Poi seem reasonably indestructable even after several high-speed collisions with each other and the ground, they seem fine. One of them flickers very slightly sometimes - still not sure why that is although I suspect I just need some tougher springs in the battery compartment.

I looked into luxeons a while back, the problem with those (besides heat) is the enormous amount of power they require - 1W each

I'd been thinking accelerometers would be cool - with a PIC in each head, there's a lot of possibilities!

Chiron - can i ask, what are the glowing units in your Avatar?

I've played around with DIY LED poi... whacked together some nice colourchangers using SauceLights, but Luxeon LEDs and custom controllers are the way forwards - and a bit beyond my electrical skills!

They are Luxeons!
Ive just finished designing and building them, I will try to post a few pictures as soon as i have enough posts to get a folder. ( 20 i think )

been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for an order of components. The company finally got back to me after a month saying they are having trouble getting digital potentiometers. They are still on backorder from the manufacturer but I canceled that part of the order anyway
Don't know what I am going to do now as without them there is no way I can do a decent pulse in more than one colour.
On the hunt for another supplier.

Hi Chiron.

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IMHO the hardest part of LED poi is getting the mechanical reliability and brightness sorted

These things have to be able to stand being smacked into the ground, dropped, soaked in paraffin/mud/beer etc etc

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agreed re the mechanical reliability.
There are plenty of 'perfect' solutions to be dreamed up, but in the end I'm finding it hard enough just getting 'off the shelf' pieces. Any idea how hard it is to get hold of soft end caps when you live outside the big city?
I've used acrylic for my prototypes just because it's inexpensive and have been surprised at how well it takes a knock. Then again with three 2/3A (28mmx17mm) batteries at a total of 60g in each poi one is quite careful

My aim is for water resistant. If it weren't for having to leave the rechargeable batteries accessible for replacement every now and again I think water proof would be achievable. I was just going to fill the end with the electronics in it up with a non-reactive filler . Though with the luxeons I'm guessing you need all the airflow you can get!

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Getting the brightness is also a major challenge, I've just finished my new LED poi using Luxeon Emitters but they require some serious development work to keep the heat down!

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woah! thats some serious illumination! how do you manage to stop them burning out!? would love to know more... how long do they run for on a charge/battery... are you using a controller with them? ... ...

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One cool effect is to use a solid-state accelerometer in each head that will vary "something"

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apparently such devices exist, I've read the specs, but I've yet to find any for sale.

to do...
find soft end caps
make own printed circuit boards
look into using lithium rechargeables again
get hold of digital pots and accelerometers

How bout a staff that packs enough UV light to spark up it's own tails.

Most of us are now accustomed to that new club toy thats a soft transluscent ball on short (1 ft.) pliable stick and finally connected to a handle with on/off and mode buttuns. The ball blinks in all different colors and modes. It gives awesome light shows for doing absolutly no work or executing any skill. I'd like to see these converted to poi. just lengthen and strengthen the chain and leave the mode button accessable while swinging. (These things are available in the toy section of Fred Meyers for US$11)

GraY: nice idea, I have some UV LEDs on order. Any idea if just any old fabric will glow under UV?

Been trying to find someone who will make soft rubber poi heads, but nobody wants to talk unless you're talking 10000 pieces

The only problem with putting controls in the handle is getting the signal past the swivels. I can't think of a way to do this that will last, and I've not been impressed with poi that don't use swivels (sock poi are fine, but the grips don't leave themselves open to incorporating controls imo) I've not that much experience with different types of poi, if you can think of a way to do this I'll give it a try.

Lots of things still in the works, but it looks like I'll have access to a camera this weekend so I thought I'd take a few pics of prototype #1 (#2 was just ugly) and post them here. It only uses low output LEDs and the colours are not balanced etc etc, but...

what would you like to see? It can be programmed to show any sequence or combination of Red, Blue and Green (and nothing), though it is not able to control the intensity of each colour.

As for getting past the swivels: I know it's getting super complicated here, but why not send it wirelessly through RF or something similar? Just like you would control a RC car. The components are quite small.

nice idea!
ties in with the stuff above re synchronization as well.

I've found small and simple transmitter circuits, but so far receivers have been big and complicated. Still looking though.

don't know about frequencies and such in different countries. you might get all sorts of MIB turning up something else to look into.

One advantage of using a directly connected solution though would be that it might be possible to locate the batteries in the handle. I'm trying to make the poi head lighter for safety reasons and the batteries currently account for a lot of the weight.

Certainly not any old fabric, cleaning up after my last warehouse party I found about 15 feet of this neon green fabric ribbon, looks like gift wrap ribbon. That stuff glows hella bright, and you can probably find it at any craft store. Or, you can just by UV tails anywhere, HOP for instance. In my experience; the lighter it is the better it floats and the longer it is the better it looks. I use about six feet on each end of my 5ft staff.

Where do you like your swivels, head or handle. I prefer cables over everything else and there are electric swivel couplings, the question is can we find them in the right size and will they suit our purpose. Also I don't know that they were made to be load bearing. We're on the track of something really fu*n awesome here kids. I'll go call the industrial electronics store.

As for your demonstration, I'm not even clear on what you have there, lets see what you got.

screw the swivels i say, i dont kneed em.

T