Gavan Fantom decided that new-fangled electronic LEDs weren’t enough for his office Christmas festivities. So, he came up with this beautiful 8×8 electro-mecahnical display. Each pixel is controlled by a 3D-printed mechanism that is screwed back and forth to change it from “solid” to “empty”. This mechanism is turned by a servo and there are 64 of them, requiring Gavan to use three Pololu Mini Maestro servo controllers. The entire system uses 448 3D-printed parts and 128 nails to hold it all together and the Python code to drive the servos is written in Python. The results, which you can see in the video below are astounding. You can read more and see the code on his blog
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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