This begs for something 3D Printed for the french cleats
I can tell you some reasons that I would not “take the lead” on this, as a hypothetical example. First, I don’t know that you have the authority to make changes to the physical building, even if it is trivial.
Second, I don’t see anything tangible in it for me in terms of recognition. i.e. is there a badge
or something that I can earn by being part of the “someone should” program.
Otherwise it means that I have to totally buy into your vision to be motivated just by the experience
itself of the doing itself, which would be a rare thing.
Someone should implement the someone should program into the VHS portal/system and VHS regulations.
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I’ll take a look at the laser tubes tonight. I have some MDF that I can use to make a couple brackets and a backboard to mount them on. Then the whole thing can get stuck on the wall somewhere…
If it looks viable I’ll add a ESP8266 some WS2812 leds to make laser like light animations and mebbe some laser sounds (pew… pew…)…
It can be the new greeter at the door…
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Totally fine if you are not interested. I do not necessarily expect anyone to “totally buy into my vision” and complete my project for me. Consider this an idea that I’m throwing out there for further bike-sheding, which is of course our favourite sport around here. If it motivates someone to implement the idea, great! If they take it in their own direction, great! If it motivates them to motivate me and we collaborate on it, double-great!
Great idea! I’ve mocked up some plaques which we could hang beside each tube.
I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. I am interested in both ideas. The bracket idea is pretty
simple but I am interested in making the bracket, not so much in using dead components
as interior decoration.
The second is also interesting and I just added to it otherwise it seems to be putting a brand
name on something that pretty much already happens.
Here is an update for the laser tube display/sculpture/monument/…
If you recall I tried sticking a strip of WS2812 LEDs behind it and the result seemed pretty good:
However this was laying on blanket in my workshop and probably not practical for the Space…
So I went about making something to mount it on…
But first I had to deal with the big honkin stickers on the tube:
Luckily they came off with some lacquer thinner, razor scraper and elbow grease:
I thought about various options for a mount and figured that it would look best displayed vertically as that hides the LED strip but allows the best viewing angle. I also wanted something minimal but offering some protection and support of the flimsy laser tube. I had some MDF scrap in my garage so started cutting it up:
Glued it up, clamped it together and fixed a botched cut in the wrong place:
Then I gave it a couple coats of white primer (which in reality will be the finish coat also):
I ended up with this:
This gave me a base for mounting it that had room for a power supply and electronics. Now I just had to make brackets to hold the tube. Unfortunately I got a bit carried away at this point and did not take any pictures. I made the brackets out of doubled up 1/2" plywood. I cut the round bit for the tube out with a jig saw and them trimmed it to shape with a small drum sander mounted in a drill press. Since I wanted the tube to be vertical I was worried about it sliding out of the brackets. So I added a couple metal L brackets on each end. The end result is this:
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As you can see I also added some alum angle brackets at each end to mount it all to the wall. And I cut out a bit on the bottom to allow for a small alum panel for the power cable, switch, usb port and reset switches for the controller I will probably use something ESP8266 based (most likely a PartyCat or a NodeMCU)
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jaw on floor 
The aluminum channel down the middle will be used to mount (and hide) the WS2812 led strip. I will use a 144 led per meter strip for this to give lots of light. The intent is that this channel will almost touch the tube when it is mounted. I will then secure it to the tube with a thin bead of silicone. That and the various brackets will nicely secure the tube (though not really protect it from flying objects). The wiring will be hidden through holes in the base:
I wanted a power switch and also need to break out the reset switches and a USB connection for the controller. This will allow for easy firmware updates as my programming skills are limited and others may be able to come up with something a lot better. Allowing access this way avoids having to take the thing down and open it up for future firmware updates:
I also allowed for a led power indicator. I used shielded cable for the reset/flash switches as they are directly connected to the ESP8266 pins and are about 3 feet long (and pass by a switching PSU) so hopefully this will avoid interference. This panel mounts on the bottom end.
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If you look at the back of the panel you’ll see I used some sealant (I use nail polish I steal from my wife) as a way to lock the various screws, etc into place. I will also squirt some hot glue into the led holder as I don’t find they hold the LED very well. Hot glue, clear silicone and nail polish are my “go to” glues and sealants…
Since this is meant to mount on a wall, I wanted it to have a long power cable. I also wanted something more substantial than normal lamp cord. However heavy rubber cable is really pricey and decent plug ends are also kinda $$.
I find using an extension cord is a cheap way to get something decent. Something like this doesn’t need a lot of power so 18 gauge is fine. I looked for something in white but had no luck. However I did find this at Lees:
They also had a matching cable gland that made for a nice installation:
This gives the project a long reasonably heavy duty cord…
The first thing to wire up is the power supply. The ESP-8266 doesn’t need much (max draw is approx 300 mA @ 3.3V) but the LEDs can draw a lot. I will be using about 138 of the WS2812 devices. They can draw up to 60 mA each and 5 V with all 3 leds at max brightness. This is over 8 Amps. In a perfect world I’d use a 8 Amp power supply but I found this one in my garage. It has 5V at 5 A and 12V at 2A. Don’t need the 12V yet but future additions may be able to use it.
Time will tell if the power supply can supply the needed amperage. As long as I don’t fire up all the leds at max brightness it should be fine. If I end up using the FastLED library for controlling the WS2812s it has a config to limit the amperage used. If I use the NeoPixel library I will just have to be careful.
I replaced the output cable with seperate 18 gauge wires. I was tempted to remove the AC connector to allow the AC wires to be directly connected but decide against it. I used the end of a computer power cable as shown below:
I will run a bead of silicone around the connector on the power supply to ensure it can’t fall out after time.
Now onto installing the LED strip in the aluminum channel, mounting some sort of controller, writing some test firmware and then I can fire this baby up. Assuming all goes well I can then mount the laser tube and try to come up with some laser’ish lighting animations…
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Wow! Very nice!
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this is awesome Bob!
Time to mount the LED strip. I’m using a 144 per meter strip with but will cut off 6 for a total of 138… I was going to cut the connector end off (cuz it was too big to fit through the hole in the bracket) and solder on new wires when I realized I could just pop the pins out of the connector and be able to slide the wires into the hole.
Was thinking larger wires would be better but it has two runs of 22 gauge so this will work.
Now I’m wondering if I need to bother with feeding power at both ends. It a pain to solder on more wires but it will be a much bigger pain if I have to do it after the fact (if I get too much power loss through the LED strip). Better safe than sorry and over engineer things… I may still rewire both ends so the cables are long enough to reach the power supply and controller board without needing a connector.
Also thinking that the data feed to the LED strip might benefit from shielding as it will have to run about 3 feet and go past the power supply…
The 144 count LED strip are a bit harder to cut with scissors as the gap between the WS2812 chips is quite small. My first cut was crappy in that it didn’t leave enough to solder on the extra power wires. Had to shorten by one more WS2812 and now only have 137 LEDs.
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Have now mounted the LED strip permanently. I cleaned the alum channel with alcohol first and then used the peel and stick adhesive on the strip:
I used a little hot glue at each end to keep the wires in place and to stop it from coming loose:
Now it’s time to wire up and install the controller. In the photo above I’m using a LED tester to generate the signals to make sure all the leds were working before I glued it up. I made this up a while ago for this purpose cuz I got tired of having to rig up an Arduino to test the LED strips. It’s an Arduino NANO clone running some NeoPixel test code. I added a DIP switch to allow various selections for the NeoPixel library options:
For the controller I had thought about using a PartyCat. I wanted to have a USB connection on the case to allow for firmware updates. I have some cheap USB/TTLSerial adapters coming from AliExpress but no idea when they will show up. So I’m going to go with a NodeMCU (v0.9) that I have kicking around. I am going to mount it on a large proto board to allow for the various required subsystems like the 5V to 3.3V power supply and the level convertor require for the Pixel strip. I also want to have room for future additions like a sound module and perhaps other lights and such (I did rig up that mirror ball a while back for a purpose).
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awesome
With the LED strip mounted I found I didn’t like seeing the individual LEDs through the glass and wanted to add some sort of diffuser.:
I had previously used some LED strip channels from Lee valley so I knew they had difusers:
I used the corner mount “Opal” diffuser as it fit the aluminum channel I had used. You can see it hides the individual LEDs:
I have to make up the strips to hold the tube in place. I will use 1" wide thin aluminum and will try to place a layer of thin white foam (like they use for packing sometimes) between the tube and the brackets/strip. I’ll also use clear silicone to secure each electrode (located at the ends) to the L brackets. Then finally I’ll run a bead of silicone along each side of the aluminum channel and the tube.
But first I have to build the ESP-8266 based controller board and get it installed cuz working on the insides will be quite difficult once the tube is mounted.
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