New Blog: www.murphlab.com!

After much neglect, and some changes in what types of blogs are supported by Blogger, I'm officially retiring the Blinkybug Blog. You can follow the progress of my various creative and geeky efforts at Murphlab.com

LED Art instructions featured Instructables

I just posted instructions for building my LED Art Kit at Instructables.com, where it is currently a "Featured Instructable."

This Instructable is based on the instructions that accompany the LED Art Kits available on Make Magazine's Maker Shed. It can be used with the kits, but also includes information for finding the parts yourself.

Poor Man's Light Tent

Here's a quick-and-dirty light tent I assembled. I needed to take some pictures of a project that weren't completely awful, so I took the lid of a shoebox, cut a window in it, and taped a piece of velum over the window. I used a couple clamps as "legs."

Eric from Instructables talks about Instructables book and Blinkybugs on ABC News

Eric Wilhelm from Instructables is doing the rounds promoting the very cool Best Of Instructables Volume 1 book. Here he is on ABC News, with a bit of footage of me assembling a bug.

LED Art Kits available!

I've finally got more LED Art Kits available, through Make Magazine's online store, the Maker Shed, for a mere $15. This is the kit version of my LED Art pieces, which display shifting patterns of light and color on a framed, translucent screen. See this older post for more info and pics.

The Best of Instructables Book

The awesome folks at Instructables and Make Magazine have released a new book: "The Best of Instructables Volume 1," featuring a bunch of projects from the site, including Blinkybugs. It debuted at the 2008 Austin Maker Faire, and you can order yourself a copy at the Maker Shed.

Here's a promo video for the book, with a little bit of yours truly yammering about the bugs...

The Best of Instructables: Volume 1 (Full Length) from Instructables on Vimeo.

LED Art Kits

I'll have these new LED Art Kits (Flickr set) ready for the upcoming Austin Maker Faire (Oct. 18th + 19th), where I'll be doing demos and workshops for these (as well as Blinkybugs).

They're really easy to make, and use color-changing RGB LEDs to cast slowly shifting patterns of light on the translucent "canvas."

They should be available for sale online soon.

Some more pics:

2008 Austin Maker Faire

The Blinkybugs and myself will be at the 2008 Austin Maker Faire. Again, I'll be doing a couple presentations and workshops with the Blinkybugs in the Maker Shed area. Hopefully I'll have some LED Art kits ready as well.