A Glimpse of the Light-up Projects at #Seeed10 Annual Party

Hey community,

It has been some time since my last update on Making at Seeed. Today after a long relaxing CNY holiday, I would like to share the light-up projects that we made for the Seeed10 Annual Party on Jan 26th, 2018.

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It has been a tradition for us at Seeed to make a light-up project to get our entry pass to our annual party. It sounds not so good, but I do personally love this “rule” as it always pushes us to think and make something. Year 2018 marked the 10th anniversary of Seeed, so many Seeeders put much effort in making their light-up projects to put on a runway show at the party. Now, let’s take a glimpse of some of the amazing projects.

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Interactive Greeting Display  by Lakshantha

How would you greet someone at a party or event? Just say “Hello, nice to meet you. Have a great evening!”. But how can you make this greeting more interesting? Well….The Digital Greeting Display is the solution. It can light up and show a greeting message when you give a handshake or high five to someone you meet. The touch sensor attached to the palm of your hand can trigger the display when it comes in contact with the other person’s palm. Pretty cool hah!

Modules Applied:

• Seeeduino Lotus V1.1
• Grove – LCD RGB Backlight
• Grove – Touch Sensor
• Grove – RGB LED Matrix w/Driver
• Grove cables

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Mac and Earl – Chinese (and Christmassy) Lion Dance Lions by Carmen

Meet Mac and Earl, together they make MacEarl – Maker. They are what I consider my debut project as a Maker! The heads are PCB boards designed using KiCad and the SVG2SZ plug-in, then decorated with cotton wool and a pair of rainbow LEDs. Mac’s body is actually an old Christmas hat that you can wear like a puppet with an Arduino nano controlling two WS2812 LED strips hidden inside.  You could also learn more details of the project here.

• Software & Materials:
• KiCad
• SVG2SZ plug-in
• Arduino Nano
• WS2812 LED Strip

Magic Ball by Milo He

I used an Arduino to control the Wiimote 3-Axis Accelerometer module ADXL330 and the WS2812B Digital GRB LED Strip. Then I attached the LED strip into a pre-3d-printed ball, and put the other electronics into the ball as well. When I shake the ball, the lighting pattern will change accordingly. 

Materials:

• WS2812B Digital RGB LED Flexi-Strip 144 LED – 1 Meter
• Wiimote 3-Axis Accelerometer module ADXL330

An Owl with Light up Eyes by Lily

I signed up to be a macrame workshop tutor to teach Seeeders to knot a macrame owl. Then I can’t stop thinking about equipping this lovely owl with some tech, and making it light up. Kill two birds with one stone, why not？However, the creative process took me much time, and then someday came quite suddenly an idea when I was checking a new product: Grove – RGB LED Ring. It could be very interesting to make these two rings light up as the appealing eyes of the owl. More step by step tutorial of the project here.

Hardware components

• Arduino UNO & Genuino UNO
• Seeed Base Shield V2
• Seeed Grove – RGB LED Ring (20 – WS2813 Mini)
• Seeed Grove – I2C Hub
• Seeed Grove – Button

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x.factory Sensing Light by Anson He

This is a simple light-up project with the help of using Seeed’s Grove sensors. In this case, I have chosen an Ultrasonic Ranger as my input and a RGB LED strip as my output.  At first, a certain distance range is pre-set in the Arduino, and LED strip remains light up at a lower brightness. Once an object is in front of the Ultrasonic sensor (i.e. Detecting a distance), the LED strip brights up. All of the components including an Ultrasonic Ranger, a LED strip, an Arduino Nano, and a portable charger can fitted in a laser-cut wooden box.

Modules:

• Arduino Nano
• Grove – Ultrasonic Ranger
• RGB LED Strip

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A Dance-with-Voice Lamp by K

This is a lamp that could change the lighting patterns with the voice.  As the collected voice gets stronger, the brightness and the color of the lamp will be stronger as well. A microphone ADMP401 MEMS Microphone, an Arduino and a LED RGB strip were applied to power up the lamp, while a recycled Ikea glass tube was turned into the lampshade. Thanks to the code shared by Hansjny, K saved time in coding from scratch. And here is the link to Hansjny’s code on

GitHub:https://github.com/hansjny/Natural-Nerd/blob/master/arduino/soundsread2/sound_reactive.ino

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A Light-up Swan by Jenkin Lu

It’s a really graceful swan decorated with sparkling LED feather. There were different types of LEDs applied to display the texture of light, including Grove LED strip, Grove ChainableLED, and Grove RGB Stick. The most lovely part is the blinking number 10 at the base, celebrating the 10th birthday of Seeed. All the lighting electronics were powered by a Seeeduino. Super cool, right?

Lighting Goggles by Jack Shao

Chaihuo Logo Bag by Alison Yang

It’s a knitted bag, with yellow and red yarn knitted as a Chaihuo logo. The technology that makes that bag light up is very simple. An Arduino to control one LED strip, and pre-program the Arduino to control the lighting pattern.

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Apart from the above mentioned projects, there were many other amazing blinking projects that we made. For example, the engineers at the R&D team was asked by our HR team to design a unique Seeed10 trophy to reward the outstanding employees and teams of 2018.

Last but not least, as a special celebration for our Seeed 10, we together with 252 Seeeders made a huge Together-to-Make-a-10 installation that could light up. To make it not a really long post, I’ll put the making story of the Together-to-Make-a-10 installation and the Seeed10 trophy another new post. Stay tuned and see you next time.

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