Craft Pixelated Home Lighting Accessories [Instructables How-To]

Most of us are used to staring at pixels all day on the computer, and a recent design project from Russian designer Amirko aims to take the 8-bit aesthetic off the screen and move it into your living room. The prototype is essentially a customizable wall installation that lets you display any kind of pattern, text, or 8-bit wonder by swiveling the individual prisms of the wall.

Though the concept, Change It!, is still being developed, this Instructables How-To caught our eye as a potential DIY version of Amirko’s wall design. Not to mention, it kind of reminds us of the colorful and flashy digital artworks that Brazilian designer Ricardo Carioba is known for. The matrix lamp is not only beautiful to watch, but it’s something you can make at home… that is if you have a spare 30 hours and enjoy programming and developing software in your spare time. While this how-to may be a bit too advanced for most of us, get your geekiest friends together and you may just be able to pull it off. The main points are highlighted below.

Before you get started, some of the parts and materials you’ll need are 64 5mm common RGB LEDs, an ITead Studio Colorduino with an ITead Studio Colors Shield, a large piece of foam board to make the grid, an x-acto knife, glue, matte drafting film, 30AWG kynar-insulated wrapping wire, and a 5V 1A power supply. If you want to synch your lamp to music (see video) you’ll need additional parts.

The first step is cutting the slits in the poster board to assemble the grid. Each of the 64 LEDs will be contained in a 2×2×2″ cell, and there will be 14 grid pieces to form the core of the matrix. Don’t glue together yet!

Instead of soldering the LED strands together, the author recommends the ‘wire wrapping’ technique because there’s no risk of overheating or exposure to toxic fumes. You can read a great introduction to wire wrapping on Wikipedia. When you’re finished you will have eight strands of 8 LEDs each.

Now you will thread the LED strands through the grid and wire up the rows. You might find it easier to connect the anodes of the LEDs to the wires before weaving through the slits in the grid. The wires for each column should run out the bottom, and the row wires should spill out down the side. Then you will connect the wires of the matrix to the Colorduino, test for shorts, and make sure each LED is working.

Once the wiring and testing is done, you can construct a stand for your lamp, and cut two 18×18″ squares of drafting film to provide the “frost” for your lamp. The author recommends using Elmer’s glue instead of hot glue to give you more time to iron out wrinkles.

Then you will program the Colorduino, downloading the instructions for the project provided in Step 17, and upload to the Colorduino. If you decide to animate your matrix, you will need to download and run the host software, RGBmtx, a Processing sketch which you will also use to set the white balance of your matrix in order to display the best possible colors.

The final (optional) step is synching the matrix to music by building a circuit and connecting the matrix to an audio source as outlined in Step 21. Then plug in and enjoy your own pixelated mini-installation!

Visit the Instructables How-To for further instruction, more detailed photographs, and tips on where to buy materials.