Author Archives: RussD

With the Orb working it was time to start working on the programming. Which would involve turning it on and off repeatedly. Well, we needed a power switch to actually use the Wizard Staff. Might as well go ahead and … Continue reading →

After an hour or so of playing with various settings and effects there was nothing left but admitting defeat. The LED strips on the bottom of the railing were great accent lights and terrible Christmas lights. As I sat sulking … Continue reading →

Tis the season again. Pick a (somewhat) “warm” day and get all of the Christmas decorations up. To my pleased surprise I found all of the pieces of the Mega Tree, put them together, and everything worked! How did that … Continue reading →

WLED can treat a string of LEDs like a TV and display complex images and animations. Basically it treats a string of LEDs like a two dimensional matrix. It does this by arranging the LED string in a serpentine pattern. … Continue reading →

With the CAD work done and parts in hand the next step was to actually assemble the Orb. Of course the electrical engineer had some last minute changes. Batteries kept falling out of the battery box, so he selected a … Continue reading →

With the controller in place the next question was how to power it. The electrical engineer determined that we would need four 16650 Lithium Ion cells and a voltage regulator to make this work. He identified the parts he wanted … Continue reading →

As Halloween approached the electrical engineer freed up time to start working on the Wizard Staff again. With all of the pieces for the dragon paw and orb done I assembled it to check everything out. And discovered several things … Continue reading →

The first question is how big to make it. The only way to decide is to make different sizes and see. Fortunately this is easy: starting with the existing 4″ design simply scale it 125% to create a 5″ version … Continue reading →

A bit of background on 3D printers: hundreds of different filaments are available in a wide range of colors and materials. The cheapest and most widely used is PLA, so I’ve been using white PLA for the prototyping. The plan … Continue reading →