DIY LED-Illuminated Sleep Chamber

Bulldozer2003 writes "'Finally something both nerdy AND sexy engineers can do.' It sounds like an oxymoron but this guy took a cue from The Vos Pad and decked out his own dorm room bed with Light Emitting Diodes. They're even fully adjustable 'allowing me to create every color of the rainbow.' Total cost, according to him in an email: 'Around $25, the LEDs cost me about $0.25 a piece in bulk, and the potentiometers cost about $6 a piece from digikey. I got the LM317 voltage regulators as a free sample from Texas Instruments. Lots of companies will ship you free samples, its a good deal for college students.'"

Comments

The LED Pimp Bed...

[truesaer]

...guaranteed to be sex free, no doubt!

Re:The LED Pimp Bed...

[Muhammar]

nah, he is probably gonna write a paper about adjustable LED spectrum influence on man performance. That's why he put there all these potentiometers.

Re:The LED Pimp Bed...

[Saeger]

I just knew that when I viewed the comments for this story that at least half of them would be lame jokes about the 'nerd' not getting the alllllll-important poontang. All hail the genetically "successful" horny primates with no time for thinking!

--

Re:The LED Pimp Bed...

[chrisbw]

He's wearing sandals with socks... he's completely guaranteed to be sex-free!

Re:The LED Pimp Bed...

[khrtt]

..all these potentiometers.

You mean potentionmeters?

Re:The LED Pimp Bed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wearing socks + sandals is definately not going to score you any sex.

As seen here https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/bkpeters/www/LEDBed/imag epages/image10.html

What's the point?

[jmerelo]

DIY psychonautics without chemistry?

with all those lights...

[hax0r_par]

it makes me wanna have a RAAAAAVE!! *raves* *gives light show*

Re:with all those lights...

[Bitsy Boffin]

The Cheat throws a pretty good rave.

Re:with all those lights...

[Anonymous Coward]

it makes me wanna have a RAAAAAVE!! *raves* *gives light show*

Rave? Get with it. It's almost 2005.

Re:with all those lights...

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't get through to the website because the system is down.

Re:with all those lights...

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't get through to the website because the system is down.

Man, of all the luck. Why can't it be down all the time?

Too cool

[mr_tap]

DIY just beats the heck out of getting someone to do the job for you

Re:Too cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a male geek /.er with no GF....

Re:Too cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Try DIY with your left hand (if you're right handed). It feels like having someone doing for you but you're in control. :)

It's simple...

[hwoolery]

Step 1: Light up dorm room with ludicrous light display.

Step 2: ...

Step 3: Women!

Re:It's simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 2: Tell women about your groovy pot stash and invite them back to frob the big knob.

Re:It's simple...

[ocelotbob]

be silly, shy, geeky, and playful. It worked for me. If only the politics of threesomes weren't so tricky...

Re:It's simple...

[Class Act Dynamo]

In the end, I think we are all just smart, primate versions of the bowerbird.

Re:It's simple...

[SenseiLeNoir]

Well said....

Just be yourself.. seriously, i dunno why many people try to be someone else just to score, when just being yourself can get some amazing time....

Re:It's simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Light up dorm room with ludicrous light display.

Step 2: Take down ludicrous display

Step 3: Women!

Re:It's simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for some people "just yourself" happens to mean being a weak-kneed SOB who'll let people walk all over them, which isn't very attractive. As an example.

So that might be why many people try to be someone else. Not that I do that of course, nor am I a weak-kneed SOB. Except for the AC part! Funny!

Re:It's simple...

[Ralph Wiggam]

Step 2: Be Rich.

-B

Re:It's simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Light up dorm room with ludicrous light display.

Step 2: Take down ludicrous display

Step 3: Women!

Too fucking funny

Electric bill?

[Lord_Dweomer]

As a college student who just moved out of the dorms and now has to worry about an electric bill, can anybody give me a ballpark figure on what something like that would cost to keep running?

Also, I'll bet it wouldn't be too hard to hook this up to a computer or to pick up sound waves and pulls or shift color to music.

Re:Electric bill?

[CrackedButter]

I don't think he should worry about the electricity bill, from what I know, LED's don't use that much energy in order to emit light. I think...

Re:Electric bill?

[Gordonjcp]

Practically nothing. The whole thing probably draws less power than one low-energy lightbulb.

Re:Electric bill?

[Al Dimond]

Yes, one of my professors talks almost every day about how it won't be long before all lights are LEDs because of the low power. They just have people working on how to make them suitable for lighting rooms.

Re:Electric bill?

[Lisandro]

Very little. LEDs are very efficient power-wise and suck relatively little current; normal LEDs light at maximum with about 10-15mA, after that
they burn out pretty quickly.

The power depends on the voltage, but, say, if you use a 12v power supply and light a 100 of those you'd be using just a tad under 20 watts. That's less than a cheap bulb, and trust me, it would light just a bit brighter ;)

As a matter of fact, LEDs are quite a neat lighting solution; they're cheap, awfully efficient and have a long working life. The thing is that, atleast until recently, clear light LEDs were unavaiable. Those are hard to make, and even then, white light LEDs are not very pure, color wise. Flashlights are beggining to carry LED diodes, for one.

Re:Electric bill?

[spdt]

Most LEDs operate at a relatively low current (~20mA) and voltage (~3V). This amounts to maybe .06 Watts (60mW) per LED. It looks like he has 5 panels of 4 LEDs and a 6-LED reading lamp, from the pictures; this makes 26 LEDs, consuming around 1.5 Watts in total. This is 1/40th of the power consumption of a single 60-Watt light bulb. If we say that electricity costs $.06/kWh ("US Federal Average"), then it would cost approximately $.09 to run these lights for 1000 hours.

The kinds of LEDs will probably have different operating characteristics than those I have in my head (like those UV LEDs, which are higher frequency -and energy- than I'm used to).

Whatever it is, it will not exceed the power output of the wall wart he's using.

Re:Electric bill?

[martingunnarsson]

[...] than those I have in my head [...]

You have LED's in your head? OMFG! Way cool!!

Re:Electric bill?

[Gordonjcp]

The big problem is, they throw a narrow beam of light. If you cluster them around in a big sphere, you get a very funky pattern, but it's still spotty and takes as much power as an ordinary low-energy bulb.

Of course, as we all know, "low energy" compact fluorescents are a waste of time *anyway*, because their power factor is so awful that twice as much energy again must be dissipated at the substation to compensate...

Re:Electric bill?

[CitizenJohnJohn]

Would those even be light-emitting LED diodes?

Re:Electric bill?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Ever took a closer look at a led? Basicly the light source in it is a very small dot. The plastic around it turns it in a bigger dot (or square, triangle, whatever). Why not use a simular methode to build a spotless LED-bulb?

Re:Electric bill?

[Hognoxious]

The big problem is, they throw a narrow beam of light.

There's these things called lenses that can affect the width of a beam, and some other things called diffusers that you can use to, well, diffuse the light. Oh, and there's reflectors too.

Re:Electric bill?

[flatface]

>Would those even be light-emitting LED diodes?

Light-emiutting light emitting diode diodes? Yes they affirmatively would not wouldn't be.

Re:Electric bill?

[Ligur]

[...] than those I have in my head [...]
You have LED's in your head? OMFG! Way cool!!

It.. It can't be!
Lieutenant Commander Data??

Re:Electric bill?

[kazoosandinstruments]

Light-emiutting light emitting diode diodes?

Almost like aitch-tee-tee-pee-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot- org ?

Re:Electric bill?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the reason that LEDs seem to be more efficient than incandescent bulbs is because LEDs are more or less "directional." The epoxy envelope is curved like a lens, focusing the light to about 20 degrees or so, compared to the full 360 of your tungsten filament. Compared to a typical bulb, a white LED is about the same efficiency.

Lighting Efficiencies:
* 32 watt T8 fluorescent--85 to 95 lumens/watt
* standard F40T12 cool white fluorescent--60-65 lumens/watt
* compact fluorescents--low 30's to low 60's lumens per watt, usually 48-60
* T3 tubular halogen--20 lumens/watt
* white LED--15-19 lumens/watt
* standard 100 watt incandescent--17 lumens/watt
* incandescent night light bulb (7w)--6 lumens/watt
* incandescent flashlight bulbs--dismal, less than 6 lumens/watt

from http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_lighting.html

The true fantasy light of the future is those that use LDs (laser diodes.) Average LD efficiency is about 60-80%, absurdly higher than anything currently used.

Re:Electric bill?

[Gordonjcp]

Yes, but these only spread the fairly small spot of light about. Now as anyone who has ever done basic high-school physics will know, if you spread a tightly focused beam of light, you will get a big patch of dim light. Not exactly ideal.

You can use a cluster of six or so white LEDs as a reading light - good for offgrid applications because it takes about 12v if you wire them in series.

Re:Electric bill?

[pz]

LEDs are one of the few semiconductors where electromigration is a directly observable effect, and where there's a nice, measureable relationship between operating conditions and lifetime that the casual scientist can see. LEDs are specified with expected initial brightness and a fall-off curve of brightness with age which often drops to 1/2 of the initial luminosity. Run the lamp with less current, and the lifetime curve flattens out; run it with more, and it steepens. All of this because the efficiency depends on the integrity of the P/N junctions which degrade as dopant atoms migrate. Migration, in turn, happens at a rate which depends on applied current and junction temperature.

But, IANASSP (I am not a solid-state physicist) so I might be misremembering my college coursework.

Re:Electric bill?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I never expected someone to moderate this as redundant...

Re:Electric bill?

[Phreakiture]

Of course, as we all know, "low energy" compact fluorescents are a waste of time *anyway*, because their power factor is so awful that twice as much energy again must be dissipated at the substation to compensate...

1. Even if you count VA instead of watts, a compact fluorescent bulb still draws half the VA of an incandescent bulb.

2. If that's not good enough for you, high power factor compact fluorescent bulbs are available.

3. You probably pay for Watts, not VA. Your electric meter will not charge you for reactive power.

4. If 3 is not the case in your case, you can install a power factor corrector. An active one would be preferable, but a passive one should get you some improvement.

5. There should be power factor correction at the substation, assuming that there isn't some somewhere along the line. I can point out several locations in my neighbourhood where there are power factor correctors on the poles.

Re:Electric bill?

[Pulse_Instance]

If you want it even brighter, without affecting the life of the LED itself, you can use Pulse Width Modulation. I built some LED replacements for some microscopes at a lab I worked for and it works you can run the LEDs at twice the current which would mean moving up to 40 watts but I think it is worth it for the extra brightness.

Re:Electric bill?

[irrelative83]

Correct in theory, but not exactly in practice. Though the LEDs themselves don't take much power to light up, he has also said that he uses an LM317 voltage regulator -- there aren't schematics but being familiar with the part, he's probably using them in a current source configuration.

LM317 are LDO devices -- low drop off -- but if you have a 5V voltage source (probably from a power source or something) then your power becomes ~20 mA * 5V because there will be a voltage drop across the voltage regulator.

Not a huge difference certainly, but it's important to consider all components when calculating power, not just the end component.

Re:Electric bill?

[Daniel Rutter]

> As a matter of fact, LEDs are quite a neat lighting solution; > they're cheap, awfully efficient and have a long working life.

Well, kinda, but if you actually want to light your house with the things, you're going to be disappointed. Coloured LEDs have efficiency rather better than that of incandescent bulbs, but fluorescents still beat them. White LEDs are only up there with the better halogens in lumens-per-watt terms. Their colour rendering is actually very good (certainly when compared with high efficiency triphosphor fluorescents), but there's not yet any practical way to get useful light levels from them over more than a small area.

For reading lamps, accent lights and flashlights, regular 5mm LEDs and the high power "super-LEDs" (Luxeon Stars and their clones) work well. If you want to replace a lamp with a rating of tens of watts in incandescent terms, LEDs ain't there yet.

Re:Electric bill?

[Grayswan]

...normal LEDs light at maximum with about 10-15mA, after that
they burn out pretty quickly.

If you put enought current through a LED, it will become an LER (Light Emitting Resistor).

Re:Electric bill?

[Gordonjcp]

But what bothers me is the *waste of power*, whether I pay for it or not. Of course, if you're offgrid and running it all from a 24VDC supply, it's not an issue.

There are other problem with compact fluorescents, though. I can't put up with the flickering, and even the most powerful ones put out such a pathetic amount of light. Not to mention the really ugly, sickly greenish colour temperature that makes everything look like The Matrix.

Re:Electric bill?

[Hognoxious]

Now as anyone who has ever done basic high-school physics will know, if you spread a tightly focused beam of light, you will get a big patch of dim light.

Earlier on you wrote "The big problem is, they throw a narrow beam of light". Now it's the luminous power output. Perhaps you should make your mind up instead of trying to give physics lessons to people who don't need them?

Re:Electric bill?

[ibennetch]

Flashlights are beggining to carry LED diodes, for one.

I, as a consumer, totally agree. How cool would it be to have a flashlight bulb that draws less power, is brighter, and never burns out.

Now think about the flashlight people's perspective. I don't know the breakdown of how much of their (say Maglite's) revenue comes from new flashlight sales versus replacement bulbs, but I bet the bulbs are a prety big moneymaker. LEDs threaten that business model. Like razor blades, right? Why are they still making flashlights with incandescent bulbs? $$$

Re:Electric bill?

[Phreakiture]

But what bothers me is the *waste of power*, whether I pay for it or not.

Then you should be using CF's, not incandescent. Say you were using a 100W incandescent bulb. Since the bulb is a resistive load, 100W = 100VA. An equivalent CF will use 24-26W, and, unless it is a high power factor model, it will use about 50VA. That is still way less than 100W.

Even if you use low power factor models, the utility will still absorb the reactive power in your neighbourhood. If you really want to focus your attention on bad power factors, you might do better to examine your computer and any motorized appliances you own, because they tend to have very bad power factors.

Of course, if you're offgrid and running it all from a 24VDC supply, it's not an issue.

Actually, it becomes a bigger issue, and power factor correction becomes critical. Inverters are rated in VA rather than Watts. While a 3600VA inverter can, in fact, deliver 3600W, it can only do so if the power factor of that load is 1.

I can't put up with the flickering, and even the most powerful ones put out such a pathetic amount of light.

When did you last try them? 1980?!? I've seen noticeable improvements just in the last year, and I've been using them with satisfactory results for over ten years. There is not flicker, and light output is high. Not only that, but the newest one I put in (replaced one that got smashed a week ago) actually comes up to full intensity immediately.

Not to mention the really ugly, sickly greenish colour temperature that makes everything look like The Matrix.

The colour temperature is slightly different from incandescent, sure. It isn't that far off, though. The sickly green colour is a thing that was left behind in the mid-90's, even in the cheapest of cheap.

I think you are just afraid.

Re:Electric bill?

[Gordonjcp]

Of course, if you're offgrid and running it all from a 24VDC supply, it's not an issue.

Actually, it becomes a bigger issue, and power factor correction becomes critical. Inverters are rated in VA rather than Watts. While a 3600VA inverter can, in fact, deliver 3600W, it can only do so if the power factor of that load is 1.

Not if you're using 24V lamps. What's the point of generating power and storing it in batteries, just to kick it up to 240V for use in lamps?

Reminds me...

[flatface]

Reminds me a lot of this guy's projects. He made some damn cool things out of LEDs there, complete with howtos.

Re:Reminds me...

[krymsin01]

The cloud lamp he has on that page seems very interesting. Will have to think about making one ;)

Re:Reminds me...

[Pleione]

Love the fibre optic feces. :)

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the USB Turd.

What the guy is probably thinking....

[Neo-Rio-101]

"Why should I go to a club when I can stay at home, avoid long queues, drink cheaper alcohol, set up my own light show, and have the chance to choose your own music?"

ummm.......

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[nijk]

I think I fail to see your point, but are you talking about the lack of girls?

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Lumpy]

actually, I did this in the theatre room in the basement for my daughter. spent less than $1000.00 and got enough club effects lights to make it look exactly like a dance club, espically with a xmms vis running on the 10 foot screen.

It's great, the kids all want to come here, I know where she is and I know that there is no booze or other naughty things going on.

(OMFG! I am opressing my daughters right to illegally drink, do drugs and have sex! I am so fricking evil!!)

I remember being a teen, and if my parents made the basement cool at home I would have spent more time there instead of other people's parties.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[aussie_a]

(OMFG! I am opressing my daughters right to illegally drink, do drugs and have sex! I am so fricking evil!!)

It's okay. The first step is to admit you have a problem. It'll be painful, but now you're on your way to recovery.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually shes having it in her own bed.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[lachlan76]

OMFG! I am opressing my daughters right to illegally drink, do drugs and have sex! I am so fricking evil!!

Sex and alcohol are just things that teenagers do naturally.....do you think that the hormones are made to be repressed? And yes, I intentionally skimmed over drugs, because I happen to agree with you there.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[liquidsin]

So you intentionally skimmed over "drugs" because you don't think teenagers should be doing them...but you think alcohol is ok. I'm not entirely certain you understand the concept of a "drug".

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the moron friends. Get shitfaced and then drive home. The biggest losers were the jocks that trashed the place and then drove over the bushes after getting trashed and weaving home... I remember that many were dead by graduation.

only complete and utter dipshits drink and drive and that is 90% of teenage drinking. (what you got places wher eyou can drink and stay the night? HA! I know better... I was there.. I was the kid that always had a portable scanner and would silently leave when he heard the address on the dispatch channel so I didnt get busted with the rest of you. I also did not drink except for maybe 1 or 2 beers, but would screw with the drunks big time. there was one jock that bragged about his ability to hold his liquor.. we got him so shitfaced he was puking for 2 hours. (ok that was stupid, but funny as we videotaped it and spread it around)

as for the sex part, I know of 6 guys that were cool and got lots of ass in highschool. All of them never went to college as they either had to pay lots for child support for their illigitmate kids, or are paying it now after divorcing that chick they knocked up and married at 18. Why? too damned stupid to use protection, and the girls too stupid to get on the pill as soon as they turn 13.

Oh yeah, allowing rampant sex and liquor is a great idea with the largest group of immature people on the planet who do not think before they do anything...

I agree with lumpy, teaching your kids values plus giving them a place to hang that is cool plus safe is the best thing to do.

Although, I'd do the webcam thing the person above mentioned.... let the kids have a webcast of their parties so those that could not make it can get insanely jealous.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Kombat]

I'm not entirely certain you understand the concept of a "drug".

Oh gimmie a break. I love you people who want to call everything bad a "drug." Crack is a drug. Heroin is a drug. Is alcohol? Tobacco? Caffeine? Sugar? Carbs? They all tangibly affect your physiology and produce measurable outcomes, so are they all "drugs?"

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[inkdesign]

yes.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Dr. Evil]

I disagree about the immaturity and stupidity part. People forget what it was like to be a teenager. Teenagers do more living between 15 and 16 than most people do between 30 and 40... and I mean that.

The biggest difference between teenagers and adults is that kids have nothing to live for. Yes, nothing. They have some vauge "future" people talk about, but they've always had that, they didn't have to earn it, and it's many times their current adult lifetimes away.

Imagine if you had no money, no house, no reputation, no education, no kids, no spouse... nothing in your life which you've had to earn, nothing in your life which you'd be afraid to lose. Now multiply out your horomones, shrink your freedom to nearly zero... what little shelter, food and money you haev is entirely dependant upon the whims of your parents.

Hiding from unreasonable parents becomes suddenly very important. Suddenly getting a condom or taking a pill becomes very dangerous to your immediate well being... well, for your forseeable future anyways (it's unreasonable to see past 5-10 times your adult life out to age 25 or so)

Giving your kids a place to hang out is great, I think it is a HUGE help. Make sure that if you have multiple kids, you aren't going to create conflict if they don't like hanging out around one another, and as tough as it might be, you've got to accept that they will have sex down there... else they'll just go into the back seat of their friend's car, or to the drunken party down the street. Not supplying condoms down there is using the fear of pregnancy or disease to keep them absinent. That doesn't work.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Kombat]

Context. The guy was talking about keeping his kids from using "drugs." Obviously, he was referring to the common usage (if not the strict definition) of "drugs." That is, the obvious "hard" illicit narcotics, and soft drugs. Basically, the illegal ones. I'm sure he didn't mean he sought to prevent his daughter from consuming sugar.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[empaler]

Noy just for fun... Also for profit!

Check out our website at:

www.myunderagedaughtersnaughtyfriends.com

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[StudyOfEfficiency]

or other naughty things going on.

So you hang out in the basement with your daughter the whole time her friends are there? At you are not stunting her social and mental growth.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[LWATCDR]

Yes alcohol is a drug. Tobacco is at least one drug nicotine. Caffeine is a drug. Sugar is a nutrient as are Carbs. Just as you can do harm by consuming too much Vitamin A you can do harm consuming too much sugar over a long period of time but it is not a drug. BTW I know that eating too much sugar over a long period of time will do damage. I have to stick myself twice a day because of it.
Sugar is not bad when it is part of a balanced diet. So it is not even under your everything bad category. Yes Tobacco is a drug, as is Caffeine, as is Alcohol. If you can not live live with out them then you have a drug addiction and while some addictions are worse than others wouldn't it be best to be in control of your own life and not give that control over to substances?

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, they're still dropping X there anyway. You just *think* your daugher's happy to see you. Really, she's just rolling face.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Knara]

They're all chemical compounds that have physical effects. When does something chemical become a "drug", exactly? Especially considering how many "drugs", in the medical sense, are rooted (or entirely composed of ) non-human synthesized materials?

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[liquidsin]

Hey now, don't go putting words in my mouth. I never called anything bad. I just said that alcohol is technically a drug. I love "you people" who want to blindly follow the government's edicts that tobacco and alcohol are just fine (and heavily taxed) but marijuana is a terrible drug and the cause of many social ills. How can you say with a straight face that teenagers will be teenagers and it's natural to drink so that's ok, but "drugs" are bad? Most studies on the matter will show you that alcohol does more damage to the body, is more intoxicating, and more prone to addiction and abuse than marijuana and even many other illicit drugs. Personally I'd prefer that my kids trust me enough to talk to me about drugs and alcohol and sex so that they can get the REAL information they need rather than whatever bullshit their school chums feed them and they can make informed decisions on their own. Thankfully I have many years until I need to deal with that.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Brigadier]

"OMFG......"?!?!? dude you hang out with our daughter entirely too much.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[FFFish]

What is alcohol, if not a drug?

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Lost Dragon]

Sure, sure - whatever. My basement is set up for LAN parties and I never have any sex down there!

I bet that'd make my parents happy though..

Oh yeah...

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/bunny.php

I really do have a girlfriend. Seriously. Maybe not after this post.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[Brendor]

Dr Andrew Weil and Winifred Rosen wrote A Book called "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything you need to know about mind altering drugs" which defines a drug as any substance that has mind altering effects. One of the main points of the book is that the user, not the substance, defines the usefulnes of the substance.

Back on topic, I work as a graphic designer in the New York City sign industry and we've been puhing Light Emitting Diode based illumination systems for our signs for about 18 months now. Why? All the reasons other posters have mentioned: efficency, durability (compared to previous bent glass tubes (neon)) and size.

Finally, I also think that there are plenty of young women who would not be opposed to an up close and personal lightshow. But on slashdot thats an opinion that will get drowned out quicly.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[LWATCDR]

"Why? All the reasons other posters have mentioned: efficency, durability (compared to previous bent glass tubes (neon)) and size."
What about cost and power ouput. I know LEDS have gotten better but could they match the power output of neon tubes?
Also as LED age they get dimmer. Which does add to the cost. Just interesting in there usfulness in your app. What Would like to see is multiable solidstate lasers on a chip for use in an optical projector.

Re:What the guy is probably thinking....

[lee7guy]

Well, you can't be sure. He might be a dentist.

And we rate it...

[cold fjord]

Great for parties... wouldn't want to live there.

TI sample page down

[Anonymous Coward]

go figure:

"Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a005e'"

Did they see us coming?

Obligatory Pun

[nijk]

So do you mean free as in speech, or free as in beer?

Re:Obligatory Pun

[eclectro]

So do you mean free as in speech, or free as in beer?

The ladies see the bed and head for the freeway.

Nothing spells NERD like a bunch of bright colored LEDs decorating your living space when it's not Christmas.

Except maybe for that Linux pc in the corner.

Re:Obligatory Pun

[Anonymous Coward]

obligatory use of the word obligatory

Re:Obligatory Pun

[Jaycatt]

Nothing spells NERD like a bunch of bright colored LEDs decorating your living space when it's not Christmas.

I'm proud to be a huge nerd, then. I have a two-story house with an upstairs hallway that, when lit with all the lights on the switch, is bright enough to do surgery with. Sometimes, you want that kind of brightness, but not at 2am as you make your way to the stairs for a late night snack.

So, rather than switch out the bulbs to lower wattages in the evening/morning, I hooked up about 6 strands of LED Christmas lights and ran them around the door/wall frames, set on a timer for dusk/dawn. Works great, and since the power consumption is so low, I leave them on all night, 365 days a year. Plus, it gives the hallway a very festive look year-round.

They are just bright enough to see by in the dark, and they also run up and down the stairs, so you can see the steps and not trip.

It was pretty tricky finding these strings of lights two years ago, but they're probably much easier to locate now.

Re:Obligatory Pun

[TFGeditor]

I did the same thing on the inside of the pantry door frame. The Christmas lights are bright enough to allow the wife to distinguish canned beans from peas and beets from asparagus, yet the installation was simple (staples over the wire, pre-wired in-line switch) and the operation inexpensive. Best of all, it got the wife off my back without dovoting half a Saturday to running wires and installing fixtures.

One of these, days, I will add the improvement of an automatic door-activated switch a-la refrigerator.

Re:Obligatory Pun

[Anonymous Coward]

staples over the wire

Smart move Smokey.

"sexy engineer"

[JaJ_D]

Looking at the guy's facebook site, "sexy engineer" is the last ajective I'd use

Apparently Huggy Bear has ordered one!

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." - Ian Malcolm (Jurassic park)

Jaj

Re:"sexy engineer"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, like most engineering types, he seems to have a scat fetish.

At least he doesn't have that ugly-ass Unix beard that so many geeks try to sport these days.

Re:"sexy engineer"

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself, I think he's damn sexy (once he cleans all the mud off of course).

Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotting an SSL link. Way to go.

HTTPS?

[nick0909]

Are they trying to shoot themselves in the head by using HTTPS?

Re:HTTPS?

[Al Dimond]

As a U of I student myself, I wonder the same thing. The whole "netfiles" WebDAV system (which replaced the good ol' unix accounts we used to have) is all https, even for webpages.

This means that if you have image references on your webpages to external sites web browsers bitch about having some secure and some non-secure elements on a page, for one thing.

But, in short, yes, we at the U of I are trying to shoot ourselves in the head with this, just as we're shooting ourselves in the head with our new web-based registration system that's not designed to handle half the number of students we have and makes getting permission to register for certain classes a lot more work for everyone involved.

Re:HTTPS?

[MikeFM]

Exactly what I thought. A great way to keep from gaining any benefit from caching proxy servers.

Re:HTTPS?

[karniv0re]

We here at UNOmaha are also using the WebDAV shite. And you can bet sure as hell Firefox can't use it. So if you want your netfiles, gotta use Explorer. I like having a folder I can get anywhere, but there are better ways.

Fortunately for us, we've been using web-based registration since I've been here in 2002, and it works quite well.

Re:HTTPS?

[Southpaw018]

Thankfully, Penn State uses a nice proprietary system they "creatively" (sarcasm) call eLion. I can point to many, many stupid things PSU has done in reference to technology and the monkeys with typewriters at the Office of Telecommunications, but eLion has always been solid.

Re:HTTPS?

[tzanger]

I like having a folder I can get anywhere, but there are better ways.

Better ways to access folders than standard-compliant DAV? Do tell.

Re:HTTPS?

[peawee03]

I'm also a student here, and I do customer support as well... NetFiles is just about the only new service to replace the "cluster" (imagine a shitload of ancient mainframes running every student and staff service you can imagine) that has been deployed without a hitch (the https thing being the only issue. However NetFiles runs flawlessly with Firefox)... our Express Email system (from Mirapoint) had severe service problems when it first started getting heavy usage last year (and still doesn't employ a spam filter), our web-based registration system is almost as insane as the ancient IBM terminal based system that was recently retired (Come on... "R" for "Thursday"???), and the campus internet connection dies on an almost weekly basis (with nothing on the system status page to say at least "Yeah, we know, we're working on it" until it's fixed... sometimes). I'm not too pleased... can you guess?

Re:HTTPS?

[t_pet422]

UIUC's Netfiles has a dedicated SSL accelerator box that sits between it and the world, limiting the impact of SSL's overhead. You can lock down files and directories on Netfiles to specific people, so requiring SSL means that you'll never transmit your active directory password insecurely. It's a good thing, really. FWIW, I'm staff at UIUC.

Re:HTTPS?

[Al Dimond]

If WebDAV doesn't work in Firefox, there definitely are unix commandline tools that allow you to connect to WebDAV and basically use it like ftp. There might even be a way to mount WebDAV directories, though I'm not sure (at UIUC we have a universal web interface for the WebDAV system also, and since I don't use the thing too much I always just use that). It's not some proprietary thing, and it actually works pretty well. It's just silly that to access student websites you need https.

Re:HTTPS?

[Al Dimond]

I've never seen anyone be confused by R for thursday. In fact, I LIKE R for thursday, it's easier to read ESPECIALLY in the context of it being in a fixed-width font in a terminal window. That old terminal system gave logical-looking schedule outputs that could be easily read and used. I still type up my schedules in approximately that format for my own use. Yeah it was a pain in the ass sometimes, but it was faster than the new system and it must have been easier to override (a friend of a friend got kicked out of some wierd double major program because the new computer system didn't allow it, and when she went to get it resolved they said they had no way of letting her do that even though she'd been planning to do both majors since before the UIntegrate system was in place. I know that's more the fault of the administrators in her college than the computer system, but those kind of things really should be figured out before a system is deployed. They cause a lot more pain than having to remember that 'r' = thursday)

And I'm off campus this year, and I think my internet connection is worse here than it was in the dorms. Don't know if it's better or worse this year there, but...

Re:Electric bill? -- Burnin' down the house

[PudgeMaster]

I wouldn't worry about the electric bill, but I wonder how long it will be until he burns down the dorm? If you look at the pics, he mounted all the LED's through cardboard with the wires soldered to the back. PS: If he's doing this to get women, he might want to try just cleaning up his dorm room :)

Well the guy is brave.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting pictures of your custom bedroom interior designs to Slashdot takes some guts.

It sounds like an oxymoron...

[sexysciencegirl]

and it still is, take my word as a girl for it :-)

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[JaJ_D]

errr what? "Sexy engineer" or " sexysciencegirl " :-]

with tongue firmly in cheek
Jaj

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[InfiniteZero]

As oxymoronic as, uh, your nick?

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[SenseiLeNoir]

Not ALL geeks have issues getting women! ;)

Make sure you differentiate "Geek" with "Nerd" ;)

But back to the point. I do enjoy lighting, and i know for a fact girls do love discrete lighting such as this. I have used blue Cold cathodes in a similar fashion shining up onto the ceiling, together with carefull use of blacklight and ultra violet reflecting paint in certain areas can give an intresting look, and can certainly increase "the mood" when its, ahem, "needed".

Being a "geek".. i do have my computer in my room. But its a more an entertainment system, for TV, playing DVDs, Music, when its not being used for "work" and is pretty stylish, again with tasteful use of blue cathodes.

Question for the peeps out there.. I have a Wall Mounted flat panel display. And I am intrested to knwo if there is any "matchbox" computers, with no hard disk, and low power processor.. which use little power, but can display a slide show, or some sort, so my display can become a "virtual painting" when not being used as a computer. Is it possible to build one?

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[Anonymous Coward]

it couldnt be too hard to build one, cassanova. :D

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[MikeFM]

You put sexysciencegirl as your name and then you're so cruel as to not put any pics of yourself on your website?! It's hard enough finding science girls (all of which are sexy) without those that exist teasing us!

Reminds me. I have toyed with the idea of putting together a magazine or webzine dedicated to smart/geeky people being shown as sexy. Take system admins, geologists, and all those types and put out some pics of them and some sort of bios and let them write about whatever they're interested in and would like to share with the world. I'd profile both men and women and would try to make the pictures somewhat sexy but I don't know if I'd go as far as nudity (maybe make it optional to the person being profiled?). I think us geeks need some publicity that says here we are, we're sexy, we're smart, and we're not going to hide in our cubicles and labs anymore. No reason to be shy right? It'd be fun and I think it could really have a major effect on how the public feels about science, math, and technology. We could have more respect and teenagers wouldn't have to hide that they're smart to avoid being teased. It might even produce more sexy science girls for future generations if so many girls didn't feel the need to hide the fact that they're smart.

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[Pleione]

Blue and black lights? That is so corny. It's like a gaudy, retro pool-hall environment.

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[Anonymous Coward]

tasteful use of blue cathodes

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[eclectro]

errr what? "Sexy engineer" or " sexysciencegirl

It probalbly doesn't matter after you have had a lot of the "free as in beer" beer.

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[SenseiLeNoir]

replying to my post.. and looking at the moderation....

erm.. and still totally at lost as to WHY someone cast me as a troll?

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it means she cuts you off. First. Literally.

HAND. HTH.

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[MooseByte]

"totally at lost as to WHY someone cast me as a troll? "

This seemingly innocent line, no doubt:

"Not ALL geeks have issues getting women! ;)

Seems one of us geeks who DOES have issues getting women took offense. ;-)

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[Enigma_Man]

Sure can. There are plenty of tiny computers out there. If you want to DIY, you could go with a mini-itx board and put the OS on a compact flash (IDE compatable).

Then you could just load all of the media over a network or something.

-Jesse

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[nickscalise]

Someone else built it for you, but the iMac G5 will do that.

Re:It sounds like an oxymoron...

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on how DIY you really want to get... i bet this little number from xess would work nicely if your in for some heavy designing. (i am kinda working on a small wareable stack-engine based system to build out of the same board)

Oninoshiko

[OT] Security Info warning!!!

[advocate_one]

got this for that guy's page...

This page contains both secure and nonsecure items

Do you want to display the nonsecure items

Clicking on no has no major effect that I can discern except for the guy's last box where the "Get Firefox!" icon/image is missing...

Re:[OT] Security Info warning!!!

[Barnoid]

why is this surprising? His page uses https, but the 'Get Firefox' image is loaded over a http connection, hence the warning.

Re:[OT] Security Info warning!!!

[Lu Xun]

Huh - and here I thought that Firefox was secure as hell...

I (heart) Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until every DIYer or EE dude posts on how they could have done it cheaper, more efficiently, and with their own favourite microcontroller?

Re:I (heart) Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for the opportunity.

Quite honestly, I don't know why he bothered to beg for LM317 samples when he could have pulled them out of any old junker linear power supply lying around, and if he didn't have those he could have used some zeners and power transistors instead of waiting for the mail to arrive with LM317s

It does make sense to use a microcontroller for the project in a PWM configuration driving power transistors.

This way you could control it with your pc from over the internet.

I'm sure there is some linux softare somewhere that would work with some X-10 modules.....

Re:I (heart) Slashdot.

[kfg]

I just duct tape the leads of an LED to an AA battery. The duct tape is a 'free sample' if you steal it from work.

KFG

Step 2

[Polarism]

Plastic Surgery!

Re:Step 2

[blixel]

Plastic Surgery!

Something I wrote a couple of years back.

To the tune of Blurry by Puddle of Mudd.

(Still a work in progress)

My wife is mostly plastic
everything's so fake
Her tits are full of saline
now they are in perfect place
Filled her lips with fat
They sucked out of her thighs
Her teeth were stained and yellow
but now they are pure white

If only I had said no
to plastic surgery
I would still be with you
and you'd still be with me
I use to be your world
I use to be your man
But now I'm just this guy
who pays for all your tans

Chorus:
I paid for everything
But you left me anyway
You slapped me in the face
You sprayed me with some mace
I paid for everything
But you left me anyway
You slapped me in the face

Everything has changed now
There's nothing left that's you
You wear a ton of makeup and
clothes that are see through
It wasn't always this way
You use to be a troll
But now all men adore you
And want to tag your hole

But I know all about you
I know who you are
You're just a gutter rat
who grew up in the park
You're just a dirty tramp now
using guys for cash
I hope someone rapes you
so I can have a laugh.

Re:Step 2

[Anonymous Coward]

How is parent 4: Funny? This is completely unrelated to the article or any of its parent posts and is -1: Offtopic at best and -1: Troll at worst.

Re:Step 2

[Anonymous Coward]

(Still a work in progress)

And you'll need a quite a bit more work if you want it to be good.

Add some rhymes, and some point. Right now it tries to be funny but it doesn't go enough in that direction, and the final verse just screams: "I am a bitter loser who can't get over it".

Re:Step 2

[Kombat]

I hope someone rapes you so I can have a laugh. (Score:2, Funny)

Classy, real classy. Gotta love Slashdot.

Re:Step 2

[SenseiLeNoir]

Rape is NOT funny.... ...Although i doubt there are many psychos here in slashdot, but still..

Re:Step 2

[Tore S B]

Quoting bash.org/?37584:
marek: rape is such a bad term, lets call it surprise sex!

Re:Step 2

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm clinging to the hope that, being typical /.ers with modpoints, they just read the first few lines then stopped.

It happens all the time, when someone posts a "copy" of the article which has some trollish comment buried in the post.

Re:Step 2

[Feztaa]

Sex is good! Man, I wish I could have some surprise sex.

Re:Step 2

[blixel]

Add some rhymes

It does rhyme if you know the rhythm of the original song. The original song was not written in a perfect, metered tempo.

and some point

It's a parody. It's not supposed to have a meaninful point. It's meaningless point, however, is about some loser that hooked up with an ordinary, not so great looking girl. He totally loved her and tried to make her happy by getting all this plastic surgery she wanted. But as soon as she looked great, all these other guys that would never have given her a second look were now wanting to bang her. And being the stupid bitch that she is, she left the guy that loved her for who she was for a bunch of "hot" guys that only wanted her for her new body.

Seemed obvious to me.

Re:"sexy engineer" (with working link)

[JaJ_D]

the link wasn't working so I'll try again!

Pot signing out

Jaj

oh

[CMCC.PTT]

Lots of companies will ship you free samples, its a good deal for college students. laugh.....

The perfect excuse for a drunk woman...

[Anonymous Coward]

He blinded me with science.

do27

Broken LED

[EvilNutSack]

I hope they aren't like my Xmas tree lights; if a bulb breaks they all turn off and you have to check each one manually.
Of course the LEDs in a pad don't work like that, but it would be funny if they did...

Re:Broken LED

[gotr00t]

Then you must have some terrible christmas tree lights. I mean, even the cheapest I've seen could still stay mostly lit even if one burned out.

Re:Broken LED

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll say what's funny: you actually can get LED xmas lights that are wired in series like your lights.
Hideous things...

Re:Broken LED

[ocelotbob]

Throw away that 40 year old set of lights before you burn your house down. Seriously, lights nowadays are much more reliable, safer, brighter, and use less electricity.

Re:Broken LED

[devilspgd]

AND they're less likely to burst into flames at random. It still happens, don't get me wrong, it just happens less often.

obligatory family guy reference

[kndnice]

now you can be somewhere else when the girls don't call..

Re:Electric bill? -- Burnin' down the house

[shepd]

If you look at the pics, he mounted all the LED's through cardboard with the wires soldered to the back.

If doing that burns down the dorm room he needs to take a course in EE! :-D

Haiku

[Ligur]

Man who lights his bed
with a multicoloured led
will never get head

Re:Haiku

[antivoid]

But if his LED Happens to be red He will be fucked in the ass instead. :p

Re:Haiku

[DJCF]

Ok, no way is that a haiku.

1. A Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons.

2. A poem written in this form.

Re:Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really insightful, haiku's are accepted in a different format. If you looked at the definition more closely (ie. not dictionary.com), you'd see that there are a wider variety of Haiku formats. Given that the english language sounds different, the effect of Haiku is a lyrical one, the resonating syllable are meant to convey form. Since the Japanese language is differnet (and syllables sound differently), the attempt to keep it similar to the original format.

Japanese words for the most part are polysyllabic, consisting of multiple syllables. English, in contrast, has loads of one syllable words ("spring," "rain" and "duck" for instance). For this reason, most haiku poets writing in English don't follow the 5-7-5 syllable rule. Seventeen syllables of English could potentially add up to seventeen separate words, making the "haiku" too long, lessening its intensity.

Besides, I thought it was funny and I guess i'm less likely to listen to people that say no way, yadda yadda ya.

Re:Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you haku-jin get it wrong.

The syllabic form is not so rigid as that. Buson, Bassho, and Issa all wrote haiku that deviated from 5-7-5.

That definition also fails to mention the "cutting word" that links the two separate ideas of the poem.

Also missing is the mention of the customary poetic reference to "classical" Japanese poetry i.e. from the compilations made in the 13th century by various courtiers.

Re:Haiku

[Jesus IS the Devil]

Now why would a heterosexual man want head? Unless you think he's gay, or you are?

Re:Haiku

[tod_miller]

Enlighten my bed tonight,
Yet I sleep alone,
'Cause no girls for me, a geek.

Re:Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Because getting head simply means "recieve oral sex".
I don't know about YOU, but I'd love a blow.

Re:Haiku

[geminidomino]

It's called that when it comes from a female too, yanno...

Re:Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, bay-bee, check out
the purple lights of passion
on my sad bunk bed.

Re:Haiku

[geminidomino]

Like wind across a cave <---- Nature reference. ;)
The geek's bed whistles softly
in its emptiness.

Re:Haiku

[Phreakiture]

It works if you pronounce LED like "lead" as in the metal.

Re:Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Now why would a heterosexual man want head?

If you have to ask, you have never had any and are a credit to slashdot!

Re:Haiku

[wsanders]

Buy colorful LEDs.
Babes waiting in lines, maybe.
HTTPS?!?

Re:Haiku

[Jerrry]

George, it's been three years. Why haven't you found Osama?

The world's a big place and finding someone isn't always as easy as it seems.

It's been 70 years and we haven't found Amelia Earhart. It's been 30 years and we haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. It's been 30 years and we haven't found D.B. Cooper. Etc.

Re:Haiku

[fbjon]

Hey, almost a good haiku. That's the first time ever... you just need to work on the "whistles softly", too constructed there.

Re:Haiku

[Caraig]

Try this, then....

His bed cast in light
Fall leaves are LEDs
No risk of VD

Re:Haiku

[Phreakiture]

It's been 70 years and we haven't found Amelia Earhart. It's been 30 years and we haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. It's been 30 years and we haven't found D.B. Cooper. Etc.

True, but how hard have we been looking for Earhart, Hoffa and Cooper, really? None of the three of them approach the level of national priority.

Re:Haiku

[ahoehn]

Finally, a chance to show my prowess as an english major on slashdot.

Most real, serious, critically acclaimed, whatever you want to call them, Haiku aren't in the strict five seven five form; they're just two to five line poems with somewhere between about four and ten syllables in each line.

Let me see if I got this right....

[Vladan]

So this light display -- it's like a warning beacon of sorts, right? A light house, if you will, to warn the woman that the sexy guy she met at the club is an engineer and it's time to start preparing her excuses and leave, lest she crash against the inexperienced rock of his virginity.

Samples

[vectra14]

The fact that the writeup included the bit about samples is really kinda dumb. Moderation is key. Samples are great but if every idiot starts sampling everything (which i'm sure will be a side effect of the present article) companies will stop sampling or make it more difficult.

in general, the state of slashdot is shameful these days. i dont have a solution (aside from simple obvious things like submission moderation, etc)... maybe i've just changed enough that it isnt the place for me anymore. which is a shame. cause from my POV slashdot aspires to be about Cool Things. the latest microsoft bug isnt a cool thing. it isnt news. (to adapt what John Stewart said about a transmission from Hussein).

and all of this Geek Nerd etc shit. I think the US population is nuts about trying to group people (including themselves!) into groups of like scales. I havent seen anything like it anywhere else (i live in US and have lived in other places).

anyway what was i gonna say? oh yeah:
to anyone who reads it - if you sample, please, PLEASE sample in moderation so that people that actually build prototypes and such (like *this) continue to have this wonderful resourse availible.

Re:Samples

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, instead of being such cheap bastards, try ordering parts online and paying for them.
Or go to the local electronics shop (no, that does not mean radio shack.).
You'll get your parts much quicker that way, rather than applying to sample parts.

It shouldn't be that hard to part with 25$, right? That's nothing compared to the few hours that would be spent setting this thing up.

Re:Samples

[Lisandro]

Actually, most semiconductor companies are very liberal when it comes to sampling. TI, for once, ships three samples of almost anything on their catalog, to anywhere over the world, as long as you fill some personal info and state what are you intending to do with the devices (or atleast they used to). They once shipped me a very high quality opamp IC that i turned into a beautiful headphone amp. I can't recall the price, but it's surely wasn't cheap, if not unavaiable.
Maxim does the same, and i got from them a couple of LCD display drivers that would've costed me a sum here in South America.

Of course, they don't want the service to be abused. But for them it's a neat way to do advertising amongst designers (i sure regard both companies better after that) for cheap. Anwyay, 90% has no use for electronic parts anyway, it's not like it's free T-shirts.

Re:Samples

[Ghostgate]

Samples are great but if every idiot starts sampling everything

Every idiot already does. I mean, just listen to the radio. ;)

Re:Samples

[eclectro]

I agree. It's being pretty cheap sampling LM317s when you can get them anywhere, unlike exotic new parts.

But maybe that's why he got them. They are cheap enough to throw a couple to a college student, and TI gets good publicity from it.

I have had mixed luck getting samples in the past telling companies I was a college student. Sometimes I got them, sometimes not. Most companies at the time wanted to know how many thousands you were going to buy. Not if you were doing a college project. My friends had similar experiences. But this was twenty years ago. Things are different now with the internets.

Now I much rather prototype with off the shelf, because that means most likely that the part is widely available and you won't have problems getting production quantities.

It started with PIC (and Dallas) making things easier by selling onesy twosy to anybody.

It paid off by their chips gaining wide popularity.

I also think that is what lead to thicker digi-key catalogs. I remember when they were pamphlets.

Re:Samples

[GigsVT]

Heh yeah, I was shocked when I got a digikey catalog recently, the last paper one I had was from years before, and it was tiny... these new ones are rivalling Grainger catalogs!

Re:Samples

[wkitchen]

I'm a little surprised that TI would sample something as common and cheap as an LM317. Those things have been widely used for 25 years, so it's not like they need a lot of promotion. It probably cost TI more to pack and mail them than it would have cost this guy to buy them.

Re:Samples

[Doc Ruby]

No, it's a great idea. Free samples are marketing, by vendors to engineers. The cost of thousands of free, and cheap to manufacture, voltage regs is much less than the cost of other marketing. And less than the profit from increased sales, to the engineers who tried and like them. That's why vendors do this "for" students. And a Slashdot frontpage mention is some of the best free advertising they could hope for.

Re:Samples

[nmos]

Agreed, I got some fairly rare op-amps and transistors back when I was a student. In addition some companies (National Semiconductor for one) will send out free copies of their databooks as well. That said, it seems like a waste of everyone's time to do this with an lm317 though.

Re:Samples

[Kiryat Malachi]

Honestly, TI doesn't care (usually) about throwing one or two of damn near anything to nearly anyone. Essentially, those one or two are *retail* sales; TI doesn't really do retail.

For instance, the local On Semi rep for our area will give me 5-10 of anything I want from them, because he knows it makes me more likely to use On parts when I do a design... if I do, they get sales of millions of semiconductors. Even if the part is for something I'm doing at home, it doesn't hurt their chances. Sampling, to the reps, is about mindshare, not about the 3 bucks they might be losing by giving away the parts for free. TI, by the way, is particularly good - they'll sample some really nice stuff, including high end ADCs.

It would take a LOT of sampling (more sampling than is likely, even if half of /. started actually building things) to really impact one of the semi companies.

The rule I try to live by - do I need one or two? Sample it. Do I need 10 or more? Digikey order.

Re:Samples

[bkr1_2k]

First of all, no company is going to quit sending samples because they are being used. These samples ensure product recognition and give strong customer satisfaction (generally) to the actual user base. Not the bean counters, but the engineers and future engineers who will be designing things using the products. Yes it can be "expensive" for the manufacturer to do this, but if a company stops providing samples after a history of doing so, the company is going down anyway. And, expensive or not, the good PR of doing so, even at a limited level is worth far more business in the long run.

As for the whole Geek Nerd thing, I agree entirely...there is way too much categorization among the US population. It's stupid, and very rarely do people really fit a category. Yes I'm a geek, but I'm also an athlete, a father, and many other things...defining me by "standard" metrics just doesn't work. I am ME, nothing more, nothing less.

The state of slashdot? Well, I'll leave that for people with more concern about it to argue over. It just takes too much time that could be better spent doing other things.

bkr

Re:Samples

[idontgno]

OK, so maybe it's me. I feel so... guilty... asking for freebies from these firms. YES, they make a lot of money. YES, generally the samples are a good thing for them, because it gets their products into engineeering evaluation.

But I feel that since it's WILDLY unlikely that the company will get any followup volume business on the basis of my hobbyist hacking around, I can't see my request rising to the level of meriting a sample request. So, usually, I'll pay the (unreasonably) high rates to buy the ICs I need mail-order retail. Particularly for kinda rare old chips like Maxim smartwatch chips. (I was that close to pulling the trigger on a sample request for a smartwatch for an old Tandy PC I'm resurrecting. Guilt really sucks.)

Re:Samples

[Lisandro]

Don't feel like that. They wouldn't do it if it weren't good buisness; think of it like a promotion.

But even then, i agree, abusing such a service is downright bad. Like nmos said, the LM317 is quite a venerable part, avaiable anyware for cents. It's kinda cheap to ask a free sample of one.

Re:Samples

[Anonymous Coward]

You are sorely mistaken. The semicons love sending out samples to private persons, quite simply because the interest in hardware in general and analogue electronics in particular is simply alarming. With so little interest the recruitment is at a dangerous low. This little stunt will probably pay for itself purely on the Slashdot exposure alone.

I have worked in this industry, I see where things are headed. Thus we (and I too) do unpaid favours to those who maintain a genuine interest. Income comes from production scale sales.

Re:Samples

[milkman_matt]

No, it's a great idea. Free samples are marketing, by vendors to engineers. The cost of thousands of free, and cheap to manufacture, voltage regs is much less than the cost of other marketing. And less than the profit from increased sales, to the engineers who tried and like them.

Eeeexactly. And they're thinking "sure, we'll give them a few of this cheap part for free" because just wait until you need something that they offer that is NOT in their "bag o' samples". They'll probably be the first company you turn to to order it. Brilliant move IMO.

-matt

Re:Samples

[vectra14]

i based my post on my experience with two companies that actually stopped offering products for samples after amateur robotics clubs started sampling their products en masse. it does happen. (though my post was an overreaction, given. funny what you can write at 4am...)

however these were micros and connectors (some of which are pretty expensive per-unit), not fets/amps and such, so thanks for your POV and so on :)

Re:"sexy engineer" (with working link)

[Anonymous Coward]

Gah - is that some kind of dirty protest or what?

agh

[miseryinmotion]

I bet his roomate absolutely hates him

Re:agh

[JayTeeUK]

Not as much as his University's network administrators:

"Forbidden
Available bandwidth quota for this filesystem has been exceeded.
(/bkpeters/www/LEDBed/index.html)

Please, try again later."

Warning

[RightInTheNeck]

Warning : Be sure to place switch box up out of the way. Accidently bumping switches in your sleep can produce nightmares of Satan.

How long do LEDs last?

[falzer]

25$ for 50,000 hours worth of birth control. What a bargain!

Re:How long do LEDs last?

[witcomb]

That makes me thing of the bear patrol. Homer: "Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm."

Must Have Female

[biologicalunit]

I must do this too. Female interaction is something Mr. Wigglesworth desires.

what a dork

[Britz]

what a dork:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/bkpeters/www/Prom /imagep ages/image1.html
what a girl:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/bkpeters/www/Prom /imagep ages/image11.html
what a dork?
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/bkpeters/www/Prom /imagep ages/image4.html

Re:what a dork

[Skyfire]

Son of a... that's what I've been doing wrong all this time... I just need to get a shit load of LED's and look out ladies, here I come...

Re:what a dork

[eclectro]

what a dork?
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/bkpeters/www/Prom/imagep ages/image4.html

Just goes to show what you can do with the money saved from not having to buy the LM317s.

Re:what a dork

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really so fucking hard to use the href and save 10,000 Slashdot users the trouble of having to paste that shit into a new window?

Jerk. Or should I say moron?

MIRROR

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone got a mirror?

Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

EE Projects got me laid by some pretty damn hot chicks more than a few times - Especially if you offer to "pimp" their room with something cool for fun ;-) ...and no, it's not paying - I would have done it regardless. It's fun to add a vent that'll allow smoking, and put set-up projectors just to play Super Smash Bros on N64 (another chick magnet). Me and my roommate had our dorm on lockdown from day one! Me-Fi-Me!

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

So you still haven't gotten laid 'eh?

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't he mention that he and his roommate locked the room from day one? Man, that's love at first sight.

Re:Not true

[DJ_Goldfingerz]

That's right, keep yourself locked up in a your room with your roommate and smoking that dope.

Only thing is, knowing you're locked up in a room with your roommate, should indicate to you that he isn't some pretty damn hot chicks.

Re:Not true

[tommyboyprime]

Yeah, building led displays and playing C64 games always gets you laid. As opposed to going out for dinner and a movie. God, do you people actually believe the things that are written here!

It'll never work

[ogma]

'Finally something both nerdy AND sexy engineers can do.'

There may be plenty of nerdy engineers out there, but everybody knows there's no such thing as a sexy one...

Re:It'll never work

[Anonymous Coward]

There may be plenty of nerdy engineers out there, but everybody knows there's no such thing as a sexy one...

One engineering student sees a friend of his on a womens bike, and asks how he came to get such a bicycle.

"It's like this," says the cyclist, "I was walking back to the dorm when a woman leapt off the bike, ripped off her clothes and shouted "Take what you will!"

The pedestrian nods approvingly and says "Good choice. The clothes probably wouldn't have fit properly."

Other uses

[p0]

... great! With this, it will be like being on acid, everynight!

Showing my age;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the Dudley Moore scene in the film Foul Play.

Uh.

[Omkar]

You can turn it off whenever you want. It's not exactly HAL. Yet.

what the hell has /. become

[DJCF]

Ok, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna post a "what the hell is this place comming too" post. Jesus, here's some guy who has done a rather awesome thing. Can we please just admire it for what it is without all the name calling? Jesus the tagline is "news for NERDS" - basicly everyone here so can we just stop it with the cheapshots and one-liners? And please, no more smart areses talking about getting laid. With that attitude you never will.

For those who were seriously interested in this project can I refer you to the link a fellow poster posted: it s more interesting.

The only sexy LED illuminated flat

[humps]

The poster has obviously not seen nice flats and non geeky things (otherwise why would anyone describe a few DIY LEDs over a single bed sexy...)

I cam across this flat a few years ago. Now this is proper LED and hi-tech stuff woth talking about!
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/cgi-bin/reg ion.pl?r egionid=104&opt=story&storyid=5682

Re:"sexy engineer" (with working link)

[adpowers]

Everyone should poke him. He may be the first person to get poked to death (due to a slashdotting).

Andrew

PS: If you don't understand poking, then you weren't able to view the Face Book page.

hmm?

[Trepidity]

It follow definition 2. It's written in the form of these traditional Japanese lyrics verses, but is neither in the traditional language (Japanese) nor about the traditional subject matter (nature or the seasons).

Can't get to it!

[Ambient_Developer]

Forbidden

Available bandwidth quota for this filesystem has been exceeded.
(/bkpeters/www/LEDBed/index.html)

Please, try again later.

not my cup of tea

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex by any kind of electric light just does not work for me. Gotta be candles, I'm afraid.

Re:not my cup of tea

[Jesus IS the Devil]

You're here on Slashdot. You're not supposed to get any sex. :)

Re:not my cup of tea

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I have a hard time having wet dreams if the lights are left on.

Re:not my cup of tea

[Doc Ruby]

Don't be afraid of seeing your sex partner(s). Especially if cups of tea figure into the performance, it's a lot less scary than the dark.

Re:not my cup of tea

[Elwood P Dowd]

Spotlights are also good.

Re:not my cup of tea

[Rew190]

I don't think most /.ers want to be reminded of what their partners look like while engaging in sex.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not getting any either, huh?

Re:Electric bill? -- Burnin' down the house

[Anonymous Coward]

If doing that burns down the dorm room he needs to take a course in EE! :-D

Nothing spells CHEAP like CARDBOARD.

I came close to burning down the house once when I left the soldering iron plugged in next to the drapes. My parents (thankfully) forgot something and we headed back to the house, discovered that it was filled with smoke and the curtains were smoldering.

This was thirty years ago. I remember to unplug the soldering iron to this day.

posting Anon, as I am an adult Nerd.

oh.

[mrselfdestrukt]

Damn! That looks kak!

Not bad but...

[Len Budney]

Interesting! This guy's project basically connects a dimmer switch each to red, green and blue LED strings. The colors sorta mix, sorta producing colored light, but as you can see in his pictures there are major fringing effects (multicolored bands of light). The howto on this page, suggested by another poster, gives a much cleaner result.

The link above uses a microcontroller and pulse-width modulation to vary each color's intensity, producing a much more even color effect.

Now, of course, I want to redo the apartment with them. Eternal lighting with no more power consumption than a couple of flashlights...yum...

Re:Not bad but...

[Bishop]

For LED control pulse width modulation is the proper way to do it. A dimmer switch is a poor hack, as LEDs are really only on or off. There is very little in between.

You can also make a quick adjustable PWM controller with a 555, a potentiometer, and a comparator like an LM111. (and a few caps, and other resistors) Hook up a 555 in ocsilator mode. Aim for a frequency faster then 120Hz. I would start with 1kHz and see what it looked like. That might be too fast for the LEDs to properly turn off. Connect one input of the comparator to the RC circuit on the 555. Connect the other imput to the sweeper pin on the pot. Connect the pot between Vcc and ground. Adjusting the pot will change the duty cycle of the comparator output from 0% to 100%. You could drive the leds directly from the comparator, but it is better to use a bjt or fet.

Obviously there is some fine tunning that you can do, but that is the general idea.

This circuit is nice because you only need one 555 which can drive many comparators. You only need one pot and comparator per colour of led. The microcontroller is nice because you can preprogram a number of pleasing colours, as well as automatically sweep throught those colours.

Re:Not bad but...

[kzinti]

Just what I was thinking, dude, but you shouldn't need the external comparator. Look at this page: http://www.williamson-labs.com/555-circuits.htm, in particular the astable configuration with the diode across R2 to get a more variable duty cycle. Do that, but instead of separate R1 and R2, use a linear pot. Hook pin 7 up the pot center tap. The RC frequency stays constant, but by twisting the pot, you vary the duty cycle from low to high.

Re:Not bad but...

[Bishop]

hey that is nice. Thanks for the link.

Re:Not bad but...

[Terralthra]

I don't mean to sound dumb, I'm just a visual sort of person...any chance you could draw up a quickie circuit diagram of that for me? I'm having difficulty seeing how it all links together.

Re:Not bad but...

[kzinti]

Look at the circuit diagram on this page:

http://www.williamson-labs.com/555-circuits.htm

The one labeled "Duty cycle 50%". Now, instead of Ra and Rb being separate resistors, they are a potentiometer. Connect one end of the pot to pin 8, the other end to pin 6, and the center tap to pin 7. Don't forget the diode.

Just for grins, I got out my circuit box last night and wired up one of these, using a 10K pot and a capacitor to get a frequency of about 500Hz. I used it to drive a high-brightness blue LED, and it worked nicely. It seemed a bit nonlinear at the extreme ends of the pot's adjustment range, but appeared nicely linear in-between. Fun to play with circuits again... I can't believe I never found a chance to use a 555 as an adjustable duty-cycle driver for an LED. (BTW, with a power transistor as a driver, this circuit would probably also work well for driving cheap DC motors at low speeds - better than a rheostat, I would expect.)

Re:Not bad but...

[Terralthra]

Like this?

It's using a 556, which is basically two 555s sharing a common Vcc and GND, I'm just wondering if I got the potentiometer wiring right.

Also, about what size cap did you use with the 10k pot to get 500hz? I'm horribly with IC math =[ -Michael

LEDs for Barbie house?

[rduke15]

My daughter wants lights in her Barbie house (seriously!), and I thought it should probably be easy with these newer bright LEDs and a battery, but I really know nothing about this.

Wouldn't have thougt of asking /. about that, but since the topic came up...

Anyway, I'd rather find the solution than send my daughter asking that guy for advice... :-)

Can I directly connect these to a battery, or do I need some circuit in-between?

Which sort of LED is it that I want? I mean, how do I recognise and select the right type in a catalogue? Or what more specific keyword do I add to "LED" to find relevant information on Google?

Re:LEDs for Barbie house?

[sifi]

You can use any sort of LED you like - It basically comes down to:
a) The colour you want.
b) How bright you want it.
c) How big you want it.

You shouldn't connect LED's straight to a battery.

You need a series resistor (In between the battery and the LED). The value of the resistor is calculated using

R = (Vb-Vf)/I.

Vb = Battery Voltage
Vf = Forward Voltage (On Data Sheet)
I = Current (On Data Sheet)

so for this 5mm white LED using a 9V battery Vf = 3.6, I = 30mA => R = 180 Ohms.

Make sure that you connect the LED the correct way round (The long lead should be connected to the '+' terminal on the battery, the short lead to one end of the resistor and the other end of the resistor to the '-' terminal on the battery. If you get it the wrong way round it don't worry the LED won't blow up, the LED just won't work!

Good Luck.

Re:LEDs for Barbie house?

[mgblst]

Beware: By the time you finish building it, your daughter will probably have moved on to something else. It was the same way with my neice, now she is into Mary-Kate and Ashley dolls. Can't see a big difference myself, but it is not my place to question.

Re:LEDs for Barbie house?

[ajs318]

Don't use batteries, they pollute the environment something shocking. Use a mains adaptor instead, possibly even an old phone recharger or similar. Note that the voltage ratings quoted on the label are only for show and don't reflect what your trusty AVO will indicate.

Measure the output voltage, subtract the forward voltage of the LEDs {add together if wiring several in series} to get the "excess" voltage {guess 2V if you don't know it, 3V for blue or white diodes} to find out the excess voltage.

Select a suitable resistor to give about 20mA of current, it is not critical that this be spot on or anything, using the formula R = V / I -- where V is the excess voltage that needs to be dropped, I = 0.02 {because we said 20 milliamps but the formula wants whole amps} and R will be in ohms. Now resistors are made only in certain values, usually multiples of 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68 and 82, so choose the nearest; eg. if your power supply is putting out 4.9V and your LED wants 2V, you have to drop 2.9V at 0.02A so R = 2.9 / 0.02 = 290 / 2 = 145, so use a 150 ohm resistor.

Finally, work out the power rating required, by multiplying the voltage dropped across the resistor by the current through it. In this case, P = 2.9 * 0.02 = 0.058 watts, so a 0.25W resistor will do fine.

Each room will need a separate switch and resistor, but if you have the volts available you can put multiple LEDs in series from the same switch. Watch the current consumption doesn't exceed the power supply rating: as you get close to it, the voltage will start to fall and the LEDs will get dim. But power supplies of this kind must be short-circuit-safe by law, so you won't burn your house down even if you do actually overload it.

Re:LEDs for Barbie house?

[B1ackDragon]

I'm rather suprised nobody has said anything here yet.

Basically you just need to put a resistor in series with the LED and battery, to keep the LED from burning out. LED's are a type of diode, which means that one side of the LED must be connected to negative, and one to positive or the current just won't flow.

To find out the resistor value you need, you can use the formula descibed on this Diyaudio page. It also has some info for using multiple LED's in serial. If you have any more questions just leave a reply - I'm no electrical engineer but the Doll house lights thing isn't too big a deal, particularly considering the amount of enjoyment your daughter will get from such a simple hack!

Oh by the way, your local radio shack (if you have those) sells LED's and resistors individually, the forward voltage referred to on the diyaudio page will be listed on the back of the package.

Re:LEDs for Barbie house?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you get it the wrong way round it don't worry the LED won't blow up, the LED just won't work!" Actually, the LED is working as spec'd. Remember, it is a diode. Put a negative voltage drop across the junction, and it won't conduct. Very useful for rectifiers. Hook it up the correct way for your inteded function.

Re:LEDs for Barbie house?

[pylonz]

Also, resistors come in standard values - 100, 220, 330, 470, etc. So if you decide to substitute a 6V battery for the 9V, you'll find you need an 80 ohm resistor, which isn't easily available. It's okay to substitute a 100 ohm resistor.

Happy building!

if you really don't want to get laid

[c01100011]

u could have saved yourself 25 bucks and the time and had a light switch rave instead !

for further instructions http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail45.html

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Anonymous Coward]

The attitude causes the lack of sex which causes the attitude which causes the...

It's psychedelic man

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay no mind to those who would diss your freek pad. Not only are they averse, they have no gumption to leave their video games for more than a quick jab at anyone who would dare consider an assemblage of non shrink wrapped electronics. Suggest some filters to drive those LEDs off your HiFi as an option to the pots. Look at the 317 specs again. A beer can and tubing headboard for your rack and you'll be all set for nookie. Abba modulated LEDs and some PBR will certainly enhance your partners freek experience. Don't forget a webcam. The disrespectful, masters of their domains, will appreciate being tossed this bone. Even though the may complain that your partner lacks adequate resemblance to the Olson twins, rest assured they'll still enjoy the vicarious experience.

Gettin' some

[karniv0re]

Hey, you guys should back off. At least he's getting some

Re:Gettin' some

[ucdoughboy]

i dunno i think i see some rolls rolls there.

Re:Gettin' some

[mikeb39]

You guys are brutal... Jeez, lol.

speaking of LEDs - how to replace light bulbs with

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone knows any good resources, how to switch your household as much as possible away from classical lightbulbs to LEDs and other energy saving illumination methods?

any good pointers, resources, experiences?

thanks.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[eclectro]

And please, no more smart areses talking about getting laid. With that attitude you never will

Dude, this story was posted at 2:39 am.

Need I state the obvious for you???

If we are reading slashdot at 3:00 a.m. in the morning, there is a rather (extremely) high likelyhood that readers here do not have the company of a female.

Unless it's a mother telling us to turn out the lights.

At a dance club...

[JollyFinn]

Drool, beatiful women....
look at ground: come see my very cool BED. It has some leds on it that make it a look great.
Droooll, stare her breast...

Definitely a good hit line. Definitely.

Re:At a dance club...

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely a good hit line. Definitely.

Wow. Who knew Dustin Hoffman posted on /.?

Birth Control

[NitsujTPU]

That bed... perhaps. However, I stayed at a rather nice hotel once that had similar lighting over the bed. If the console were replaced with something a bit more... subtle, and the lights were moved a bit, it would be pretty pimp.

Been there, done that...

[Anonymous Coward]

We recently got a gift, somewhat artistic and of oriental origin, for sure: some kind of crystal, too heavy to be acrylic, with a 3-D dragon inside (probably made with bubbles, created via some optical/laser convergence process).

Well, that thing came with a led-equipped base. Three leds, one that lits with a blue tone, one greenish and one red. They also pulsate to give the crystal an intended classy and eerie look, I suppose.

Well, my wife and daughter always want some kind of night light, and all I have found until now was too luminous to me (I sleep too little, must have a quality dark night). By using the base without the crystal, coupled with a translucent white plastic mug, I got an ideal saving-energy solution for zero dollars (ok, it must cost something, maybe over $25). As a plus, it was Halloween, I expected people to find it weird to see my house glowing. Sadly, the effect is not perceived from outside with such low power.

Of course, I didn't tell my daughter: as she is as curious as I am, she would mess with the base during the day, possibly breaking it and I would be SOL.

And, of course, she had the same idea on her own -- and called it an "aurora borealis" (our Portuguese version of this, but Latin is no big deal over here).

Another great use for this would be for christmas tree lighting, specially with the glowing, but I suppose it might become somewhat expensive.

And let's not forget about the blinken lights... :-))

http://www.brabandt.de/html/blinken_lights.html

Hint: in Opera, select the above url and middle-click on the tab toolbar, but not on a tab. It will open a new page and load that the page at that url.

And the score is...

[pylonz]

8 points for creativity 10 points for lustful intentions 1 point for soldering

Re:what the hell has /. become

[adamh]

"Dude".

Welcome to the world, we have many timezones from GMT-12 to GMT+12. You probably live in the GMT+5 to GMT+8 zone. You may be surprised to discover that more live outside of your zone than live in it.

(Swap GMT for UTC if you think Greenwich is in Connecticut)

;-)

Free Electronics Samples

[L3WKW4RM]

While I'm not jumping to build this project myself, I've got a couple dozen others that I'm half-working-on at all times. I've got a list of links to manufacturers that provide free samples of electronic components for this very purpose.

http://lukewarm.homelinux.net/freesamples/

Enjoy. If you know of more, I'd love to add to the list.

Re:Free Electronics Samples

[Anonymous Coward]

ONsemi will give you a whole bunch of stuff, but you have to pay ~$12 for overnight shipping. They have strange minimum quantities: I only needed 1x of each part, but the minimum for each was 5x and the max was 25x if I remember correctly (!).

Re:speaking of LEDs - how to replace light bulbs w

[eclectro]

The problem with LEDs are that they are still relatively low intensity light sources.

While you may get s high intensity directional beam, it is more difficult to get a uniform general coverage LED source, as it takes many more LEDs. So it is just cheaper to use a good flourescent.

With the price of LEDs dropping this may change.

Bunk bed?

[martinde]

Is it possible to make a bunk bed into any kind of a "pimp bed"?!

Re:what the hell has /. become

[DJCF]

Really? Seems more like 7:39AM to me (not everyone is from the States ya know!). (And not everyone feels the obsessive need to label themselves in socially-limiting categories - geek, nerd, etc.) (And not all females are turned off by mental prowess.)

Now if there only wasn't this...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, he's got the bedroom, but I don't think this picture is helping out his cause too much: http://uillinois.thefacebook.com/profile.php?id=19 03120&l=b6aa6391fa

Re:what the hell has /. become

[eclectro]

And not all females are turned off by mental prowess.

No, just the cute ones.

The Vos Pad

[maiku]

I don't think I could live there. It'd freak me out, like Kramer in the Kenny Rogers Roasters episode.

Re:The Vos Pad

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubly for me. Anyone who could live in that place without going insane has no soul.

Potentiometers?

[jridley]

Come on, LED brightness control should be via PWM. Get going on the microcontroller code, dude! Then you can do color cycling, timed dimming/brightning, etc.

Must be said

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imaginea Beuwulf cluster of those things!

correction.

[Pandora's Vox]

*looks at linux server in one corner*

*looks at linux laptop as recently reviewed on slashdot*

*looks at LED star canopy over bed*

most girls would run from such things. some have their own, thankyouverymuch :-)

-Leigh

ps. Ubuntu is love.

Re:correction.

[Anonymous Coward]

A/S/L?

Hah!

Re:correction.

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you marry me?

(See? I've got more class than that other AC!)

illegal in most dorms

[peter303]

Mine had a rule you could only use Underwriters tested/approved electronics and nothing rigged up on you own. The chance of a fire, though low with low-powered LEDs, can be devastating in these highly crowded buildings.

Re:illegal in most dorms

[Politburo]

The chance of a fire, though low with low-powered LEDs, can be devastating in these highly crowded buildings.

You need your fire protection code updated, then. New Jersey State Law made sprinklers mandatory in dormitories after a deadly fire at Seton Hall 7 years ago.

Even so, these dorms tend to be concrete block structures and fire does not spread easily, unless there are carpets, furniture, etc., that fuel the fire.

what, who, how?

[michaelbuddy]

This guy is more of a stud than everyone gives him credit. He's got a load of prom pics further in the root of the site. He had a date from the looks of this.. Wait, did he build her? She may be a robot... Stand by...

OYYYY!!! one of us got laid!!

Re:what, who, how?

[nmx]

Yeah, but she's not very attractive.

Re:what, who, how?

[Anonymous Coward]

She's gorgeous you insensitive clod!

Re:what, who, how?

[msim]

And if you look at the pics at this link you can read something written in his girlfriends yearbook, and if you look *REALLY* carefully you can see her name is Michelle, AND you can find out the email address of her friend.

*sits back and watches the geek frenzy*

Re:what, who, how?

[Anonymous Coward]

No A.C., you're confusing "gorgeous" with "not fat" again. You'll understand one day, I promise!

Re:speaking of LEDs - how to replace light bulbs w

[homebrewmike]

Here's a good place to start: http://www.homepower.com/

After a quick glance, there wasn't much on the website - however, they have had articles on replacing your incandescents with LEDs.

If all else fails - give them a call. Really helpful people.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[p4ul13]

Damnit, I know. I totally do know that you're making a joke here. I also hate it when folks explain them.

Somehow I still can't help but mention that there is a town called Greenwich in Connecticut. Damn I feel so ashamed for being that guy.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[PriceIke]

Those pictures of the dude frying himself on the electrical tower are interesting .. looks like he short-circuited the whole sky.

2. BEER

[scorp1us]

2. BEER (Though most women go for flavored malt beverages)

ouch

[shis-ka-bob]

from the site

Remember that capacitors store charge and in this case it is at a high voltage. The circuit will hold a charge after being disconnected from the mains supply and can give you a nip. If you are going to work on it then it's a good idea to remove most of the residual charge by shorting the emitter needles to the other end of the ioniser with a bit of wire.

An even better idea is to short the capacitor using a few kOhm reisistor. Discharging capacitors with a wire is needlessly dramatic, at least on a Monday morning.

think again

[twitter]

So you intentionally skimmed over "drugs" because you don't think teenagers should be doing them...but you think alcohol is ok. I'm not entirely certain you understand the concept of a "drug".

I don't think you understand the QC implications of illegal.

Re:think again

[trentblase]

Since his daughter is clearly not of drinking age, alcohol is an illegal drug in this case.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[cosmol]

I totally agree, its sad really. I think the moment I realized this was when I read the comments on the ipod halloween costume story. What a bunch of assholes!

Erm.. maybe you just answered your question....

[SenseiLeNoir]

a) WHY are u only looking for a "geek girl".
In my experience, its not good for a geek to date another geek.... The young lady I will be marrying in two weeks time is a Business Consultant. Yet we get along with each other.

b) why do you consider yourself as different?
See you complain about needing "recognition", but you imply you are "different". When I walk in the streets, i am just like everyone else.

Its more to do with personality, and being yourself. also dont be ashamed of being a "geek"... just be yourself. If the lady you are chatting to asks what you are, tell her upstraight without any embaressment, and move on to smiling at her, and flirting with her. These days, being a geek does not have the same stigma of, lets say 20 years ago.

Also girls do realise that its the Geeks who drive the Mercedes/BMWs etc ;)

Re:Erm.. maybe you just answered your question....

[MikeFM]

Personally I love geek girls. I love to be able to talk about my interests with someone that actually has some idea what I'm talking about. Many of my interests are technical (building stuff, programming) and others are just plain geeky (anime) and I don't want to date someone that I can't share those with. The girl I'm dating right now wasn't a geek when I found her but was, and is, smart so I'm gradually geeking her out. I wouldn't be happy dating someone who wasn't smart or didn't want to be geeked out though.

I have no problem with being a geek. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I'm all for making other people more like me. Being a geek doesn't have the same stigma it used to but it does still carry a stigma especially before adulthood.

I walk and ride a bicycle mostly. Cars are for lazy people that want to kill the enviroment. I'd love to customize an old GTO convertible with a more powerful and effecient engine though. Mmmm. Someday I'll get to that project.

eLion, solid?

[xThinkx]

Uh, maybe elion's worked well for you. I ended up taking an extra semester because I trusted eLion's degree audit. And have you ever tried to schedule classes during peak time using elion?

Re:"sexy engineer" (with working link)

[Fear the Clam]

He looks okay, but I think he's a little too fond of scat. And I don't mean Ella Fitzgerald.

Nothing says romance...

[amgrau75]

Nothing says romance like LED lights and an extra-long twin bed.

CF power factor

[name_already_taken]

You work for an incandescent light bulb company, don't you?

Several manufacturers are now making high power factor compact fluorescents (power factor >0.9).

I agree that LED lighting may not be terribly efficient and there will have to be some clever work with diffusing the light but its saving grace is that the lamps will last a very long time and the lamp packages can be made very flat which will allow some interesting design changes in products which use lights (like motor vehicles for example). Applications like street lighting and traffic signals and other public space lighting are probably ideal for LED retrofit; even if the lamps cost a lot more the savings in not having to replace them anywhere near as often will pay off quickly.

The problem of getting the illumination pattern even will be solved quickly. Take apart an LCD monitor. Who would believe that that thin cold cathode lamp could illuminate an entire screen so easily? Someone will solve the problem even if you can't see how.

Re:speaking of LEDs - how to replace light bulbs w

[ajs318]

I have three filament bulbs in my home -- that's including one in the fridge and one in the sewing machine. {No light in the oven. I was thinking to fix a gas mantle on a wire so that it could be lowered into or out of the burner to provide a light; but I changed my mind when I found out what was in them. Besides which, haven't you ever heard of baking blind? :) } The third one is in my bedside lamp; it's on a turn-for-off dimmer switch {thus precluding any kind of fluorescent} and so tends to last about five years at a stretch. This is only ever on for short periods like long enough to get out of bed and put the main light on, or perhaps an hour of reading. Everything else is lit by compact fluorescents {with a standard push-and-twist base fitting like any ordinary light bulb; note that the cheaper ones are only double-folded and so longer than the more expensive triple-folded ones} except the loft, which is lit by "ordinary" fluorescent strip lights. {Unfortunately they're low power factor types, but just require some additional capacitors to correct this. Anyway, the main issue with low power factor is voltage drop in the cable, and I happen to know there's less than 10 metres of 1.0mm2 copper T&E cable from the fusebox to the luminaire in this case.}

If you're retrofitting, compact fluorescents are the obvious way of doing it. If you're wiring from scratch, it might be worth using small fluorescent striplights. Avoid halogen lights at any cost -- they're still filament bulbs. It may be worth arranging rooms so as to take advantage of natural daylight as far as possible. I guess I'm lucky living in a Victorian two-up-two-down, since this would have been designed with the sun as the primary illumination source. Judging by the evidence I've seen, the building was first wired for electricity sometime early last century {definitely before WWII} and completely re-wired about 25 years ago.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone with a PhD and a cute girlfriend:

No, birds are not turned off by intelligence. They are however turned off by other traits that tend to correlate strongly.

Read and learn:
http://www.pickupguide.com/
http://www.fa stseduction.com/ ...there is some seriously good stuff there

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Anonymous Coward]

You nailed it. More people need to realize that.

Check out the LED lights at Fry's

[cyrus007]

Better still, Fry's has Christmas lights made of LEDs going for $9.99 for a box of 50/100, I don't remeber exactly. It has different colors but a constant illumination. Maybe you can just work on it to make interesting things and would be more safe also, and they also provide some warranty too.

Re:Check out the LED lights at Fry's

[linus_vp]

If you have a little cash, you can get pre-assembled strips of bright-led lighting for about $20 each here.

way to go!

[Ender Ryan]

Way to go assface, you have succinctly (albeit unintentionally) illustrated his point for him.

Bravo!

Re:way to go!

[eclectro]

What anybody says on slashdot never really matters. Discussion is here today, gone tomorrow. Don't let your underwear get bunched up. It's just not worth it.

Re:speaking of LEDs - how to replace light bulbs w

[Anonymous Coward]

What about just heading to http://www.led.net/ and just buying LED bulbs? ...or is that too easy?

Priorities

[Rich Klein]

Maybe I should clean my apartment before I worry about color-changing LEDs for my bed...

Re:"sexy engineer" (with working link)

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me that's not poo he's got all over himself.

Re:"sexy engineer" (with working link)

[wondafucka]

Whatever, he's cute.

Forbidden

[Mr. No Skills]

Sure would like to read it:

Forbidden

Available bandwidth quota for this filesystem has been exceeded.
(/bkpeters/www/LEDBed/index.html)

Please, try again later.

LEDs aren't magic...

[Anonymous Coward]

No way you can light your whole apartment with LEDs and use only the power of a couple of flashlights.

There's no magic to LEDs. They are efficient, on par with fluorescent lighting. But that still can't make 10W cover your entire apartment.

Nice shoes

[klugerama]

You can tell by the fact that he wears socks with sandals that he's not trying very hard to hide his geekosity with fashion.

Giving Teens Condoms Leads to Pregnancy

[KnarfO]

...because, let's face it, you don't always feel like using a condom, even when you have one in your pocket.

But, by handing out condoms to your kids, you're sending a clear message that you're ok with them having sex, and that there will be no negative consequences to their choice to engage in intercourse.

I've seen this happen first hand. Mom gave daughter condoms. Daughter got herself a boyfriend. Daughter gets pregnant. Oops! So much for that pile of prophylactics sitting in her dresser drawer at home...

Re:Giving Teens Condoms Leads to Pregnancy

[lachlan76]

you're sending a clear message that you're ok with them having sex, and that there will be no negative consequences to their choice to engage in intercourse

Seeing as you are not a teenager now, I should probably point out to you that most of us don't care what our parents opinions are. Believe it or not, we form opinions on our own, and not based on whether our parents supply condoms.

Re:Giving Teens Condoms Leads to Pregnancy

[lachlan76]

What you don't seem to understand is that we want to live life for ourself, and form our own opinions.

Maybe we pay a price, maybe we don't. It's the choice that matters.

Plasma screen above the stove?

[bs_02_06_02]

Did you see the plasma screen above the stove? Poor planning? Move it 4 feet to the right or left, maybe a stylish swing arm of some type.

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have a mirror of the site? It's succumbed to slashdotting.

Mirrordot link

[Anonymous Coward]

Linky.

No images, though. Bummer.

Yay, Mirrordot!

u r cool

[earthstar]

I think ur post is one of those posts that really talked about doing those projects.( Unlike Funny or Slashdot blaming ones).Great story and comment,Iam gonna try this.Hope you are gonna try to,and post pics of ur room on the web( prbly with the babe u acquired too! :p) .
Your slashdot id no. "4500" is real kewl!

Re:what the hell has /. become

[anethema]

Christ are there really any 30 year old virgins here? I mean seriously guys its not THAT hard to get some sex.

Yeah, and...

[MattHaffner]

...check out these dancing digs. Very handy for showing off your, er, potential... on the road.

I gotta ask.

[Grendel Drago]

I'm still trying to figure out your sex from your sig. It could be either, I suppose. I think.

Or you just found a pithy one-liner and I'm reading too far into it. Could be.

--grendel drago

n/t

[Anonymous Coward]

everything sucks now and nothing ever happens. except lots of dupes. trolling is as dead as your pet goat. and of course nothing to see here, move along.

Ultraviolet LEDs

[LM741N]

Don't know if many experimenters know this, but long wave ultraviolet LEDs are available.

See www.hosfelt.com, or it might only be in their catalog as they don't list everthing online.

Their number: 800-524-6464

p/n's 25-497 and p/n 25-498

have fun!

Re:Ultraviolet LEDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of /.rs blinded in LED tragedy.

Someone teach this guy how to solder!

[SuperDuperMan]

I haven't seen so many cold solder joints since I was a kid. ;)

Pretty graphics!

[Anonymous Coward]

The lighting effects on those screenshots really surpass Doom. I wonder how many frames per second this scene runs at!

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Anonymous Coward]

Man is this gay. And I am gay! To quote Lewis Black: it's beyond gay. It's in a realm gayer than gay. It has a gayosity that is beyond gayness.

Umm... no?

[Anonymous Coward]

Checking Slashdot after sex is a lot cheaper than lighting up cigarettes! So go ahead, bang a woman (or man if that is your taste) and then /. away!
Besides, they say in Silicon Valley, the smell of a server dying a slow, painful death is an aphrodesiac.

eBay the bed?

[Zelph]

Hmmm... I wonder if he'll sell it on eBay... the title could be LED bed gets the women, get yours now... Well, at least I could fine the Inova X1 on there.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, I don't. She is asleep.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Kehvarl]

Somehow I still can't help but mention that there is a town called Greenwich in Connecticut. Damn I feel so ashamed for being that guy.

Then feel shame no more. I shall take up the burden and proudly proclaim:
"There is a town called Greenwich within the state of Connecticut!"

Does that make you feel better?

Nice

[shadowsurfr1]

I like the look. Especially the blue colors.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Random832]

Considering that GMT+5:30 is India and GMT+8 is China, If more live outside that band than in, it's by a smaller margin than you think.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[adamh]

Damn, you're correct of course. I really meant -5 to -8.

I'd have thought that -5 to -8 (mostly the americas), +2 to -1 most of europe and africa, and +5 to +8 india, china, would all have been roughly equal in terms of population. But I can't be bothered checking the veracity of my assertation....

Horrible Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I already tried this. I set the whole thing to flash to the beat of my mammoth stereo system too. The night I finished it, I cranked up the watts and popped in my Frankie Goes to Hollywood CD. I promptly experienced an 8 hour seizure that only stopped when the sun came up.

Re:what the hell has /. become

[p4ul13]

Thank you.

color kinetics

[mizarc]

if you don't feel like being nerdy, you can always buy the high-end version.. computer controlled, with lots of different fixtures.. http://www.colorkinetics.com

Re:what the hell has /. become

[Random832]

Well, there's india, china [alone a third of the world's population] and whatever else is in those timezones.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion