Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DIY LED-Illuminated Sleep Chamber

Posted by timothy on from the good-in-bed dept.

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.'"

19 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Too cool by mr_tap · · Score: 1, Insightful

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

  2. And we rate it... by cold+fjord · · Score: 2, Insightful


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

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  3. Re:Electric bill? -- Burnin' down the house by shepd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

    --
    If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
  4. Samples by vectra14 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Samples by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Samples by eclectro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  5. Re:Electric bill? by Lisandro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. what the hell has /. become by DJCF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Obligatory Pun by eclectro · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  8. not my cup of tea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  9. speaking of LEDs - how to replace light bulbs with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  10. Re:Haiku by tod_miller · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
  11. Re:what the hell has /. become by adamh · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "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)

    ;-)
  12. Re:What the guy is probably thinking.... by lachlan76 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:What the guy is probably thinking.... by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  14. Re:HTTPS? by t_pet422 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:What the guy is probably thinking.... by liquidsin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    do not read this line twice.
  16. Giving Teens Condoms Leads to Pregnancy by KnarfO · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...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...

    --


    "Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
  17. Mirrordot link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Linky.

    No images, though. Bummer.

    Yay, Mirrordot!