Create a Custom LED Painting
2023-06-11 | By bekathwia
License: None Addressable LEDs
Today we’re making a painting dressed up with LEDs. It’s easy to customize to your own decor theme and makes a great group workshop project as well.
Makers Night In with Becky Stern & Allie Weber | Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day
I first started working on this project for Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, for which Nate Larson had created this guide for an in-person activity. I worked on it during my livestream with Digi-Key. It was super fun to chat with some of my favorite makers about how they got into DIY electronics, and you can catch the replay.
To make this project, you will need:
- Canvas on a hollow frame
- LED strips, rings, jewels, and/or individual pixels
- Stranded wire
- Soldering tools and supplies
- Soldering iron DK #1691-1083-ND
- Solder DK #2260-WBNCC633731-2OZ-ND
- Wire strippers DK #1691-1281-ND
- Flush cutters DK #1691-1037-ND
- Pliers DK #1691-1422-ND or tweezers DK #1597-1536-ND
- Eye protection DK #3M158306-ND
- Workholding tool (often called a third hand) DK #1568-1077-ND
- Multimeter DK #MN35-ND
- Heat shrink tubing DK #1528-4559-ND
- Heat gun (or a lighter) DK #1568-1602-ND
- Solder wick DK #315-SOLDERWICK2.0-ND or a desoldering pump DK #243-1183-ND for fixing mistakes
- A microcontroller (I’m using an Arduino Micro)
- Solder-type breadboard for building the circuit (not strictly necessary, but handy)
- Hot glue gun
- Canned air (optional but handy)
- USB power adapter
You’ll need a canvas that’s stretched, so you have direct access to the back of the fabric, which will diffuse the light. Other solid types of painting surfaces won’t let the light through.
You’ll also need some acrylic paint, brushes, something to protect your work surface, and your choice of addressable LED pixels, whether it be a strip, rings, singles, or whatever your preference.
One way to plan your painting is to lay out the pixels on the front of the canvas and lightly sketch around them to create a design– I’m drawing flowers.
Then I’m going in with my black paint and filling in the design. Let the paint dry before adding the electronics.
During the recent livestream, I wired up the first NeoPixel ring to a microcontroller and hot-glued it to the back of the canvas. My cohost Allie Weber made her own version of the painting project too. Very cute.
After the stream, I made a more permanent version of the circuit on a solder-type breadboard, connecting up the pixels’ power and ground as well as the data input to a digital output pin on the microcontroller, in my case an Arduino Micro.
Then I continued connecting pixels to the chain, using small gauge stranded wire. You can find a circuit diagram and complete parts list at the link in the description. I powered up the pixels using some library sample code uploaded to the Arduino and flipped the painting over to see and align the pixels to the artwork. Then I hot glued it in place, using a blast of canned air to rapidly cool the glue before repeating with more pixels.
After the circuit is complete, you can go in with a little more paint and touch up as needed. I’m powering this thing with an old USB phone charger.
In Nate’s original guide, he shows how to use pixel strip, folded in half, upright and perpendicular to the painting, using the hot glue as light pipes. This makes it possible to put two different colored regions very close to each other while having nicely diffused light.
The finished painting makes a great night light that’s totally unique. Please give this one a try and share your results with me.
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