The Crystal Monster is an art piece created by Beverly Tang and Tod E. Kurt (me). It’s on display in the Continental Gallery on 4th & Spring St in downtown Los Angeles. The shape and structure of the Crystal Monster are Beverly’s design. I created the lighting and the electronics. It’s made from over 400 sheets of laser-cut acrylic, more that 240 feet of LED tape (>2200 RGB LEDs!), and around 500 steel rods and other steel hardware. It’s approximately 12 feet long and 10 feet wide and hovers 10 feet above your head. It’s got an Arduino brain and 18 BlinkM MaxMs (one per segment) to let it flutter color patterns up and down its length.
Some of my photos (click on any to go to the Flickr set):
It was first installed at the Ball-Nogues studio in Downtown Los Angeles as part of their participation in Downtown L.A. Art Walk, and lived there for a few months.
Then it moved to its mostly-permanent location at the Continental Gallery at 4th & Spring in Downtown Los Angeles.
It’s right on the corner, so you can really see it just from walking by on the street.
The electronics consist of 18 BlinkM MaxMs driven by a single Arduino, all powered by an ATX power supply. The Arduino has an IR remote control receiver so the Monster’s behavior can be controlled from afar.
I recently got a case for my iPhone and it’s the kind that precludes the use of the dock. I kind of like the dock concept, but instead of taking a Dremel to the existing dock, I spent a few minutes drawing up a replacement that could be cut from acrylic scraps on the laser cutter. Here’s the result: (click for higher-res)
It is made of four slices of 1/4″ acrylic (actual width 0.22″). The top two slices have an oval opening just snug enough to fit the ipod connector and keep it in place with friction. The third slice has a channel for the cable to escape out the back, and the bottom slice keeps the cable from falling out and provides some pushback when the iphone is inserted. It’s held together by four 1″ 2-56 machine screws with nuts. I was a little concerned with the nuts scratching the table, so I’ve since added little hot glue feet to the bottom of each nut.
I didn’t add an additional layer at the top to provide lateral support of the iphone because I didn’t have long enough screws. And besides, it doesn’t seem to need it. If I get longer screws, I might make one that has the extra layer, which would also make the dock bigger, to encompass the bottom of the iPhone. And that would be good because it adds more mass to the dock, making it more stable.
If you want to try making one yourself, here are the files:
I have one of those USB-based logic analyzers that needs Windows software to make it go. I had been doing Windows-in-a-window with VMWare, but it’s kind of a pain. If I were to use a real Windows laptop, I’d need a shelf or something for it. I wanted it above my oscilloscope, which meant a laptop stand that was taller and wider than most. Time for the laser cutter!
(click for larger)
My design requirements were:
- assemble without any tooling or fasteners
- fit on a single 1′x2′ sheet of the 1/4″ plywood I already had
- be stable enough to hold a 7lb laptop
- be wide & tall enough for the oscilloscope to fit underneath and be usable.
The 1/4″ (0.20″ really) plywood is cheap, from a big box hardware store. I think I paid $10 for a 4′x8′ sheet of it, and they nicely cut it down to 2′x4′ sheets for me.
It ended up fitting pretty exactly on the 12″x24″ cutting bed of the laser.
I’ve been working with a super minimal Arduino setup recently. After seeing Alex’s awesome Arduino/ATmega breadboard header, where he notes there’s no room on the PCB for pin labeling, I wondered if it would be possible to make a small sticker that goes on the ATmega chip, labeling the pin names.
Here’s my first attempt:
And in use:
This was created by printing on a full-page sticker then laser cutting it to shape. I could have also just cut out the sticker with scissors, or used regular printer paper and double-sided tape.
My friend Syuzi Pakhchyan had a nice long segment on Make:TV this week. She visited the todbot lab to have the laser cutter cut the designs for the switches in her garment. There’s a 1-second shot where the camera pans over the lab and to the cutter. For about 2 frames, you can see me. Wooho, my Hollywood career has begun.
Random experiments, circuits, code, rapid prototyping examples, sometimes things to buy, and occasionally tunes by Tod E. Kurt.
Reach me at tod [at] todbot.com
Yay BlinkMs!
BlinkM is a smart LED. Imagine an LED with a tiny computer inside, one that can be any color and have a life of its own. You can buy them now from one of our global distributors.
ThingM
A device studio that lives at the intersections of ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, industrial design, and materials science.
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