What is it? - UPDATED -
We had the chance to show off the Blinky Ball at Defcon 26.
The most common question we received was "What is is?"
The answer we most often gave was, "It is something that sits on a desk or shelf and gives off light.... It's a lamp."
- It's lamp that has 384 RGB light elements all individually addressable.
- It's a lamp that has a 9 DoF IMU so it knows which way it is pointing, how fast it is accelerating and which direction is North.
- It's a lamp that has a temperature sensor.
- It's a lamp that has a gesture sensor so it knows which way you are flailing your hands.
- It's a lamp that has a light senor so it can auto adjust brightness.
- It's a lamp that has a color sensor so it knows the ambient color (you can also bounce back the Blinky Ball color to it self, to self calibrate.)
- It's a lamp with a digital mic so it can react to sounds.
- It's a lamp with a 32-bit DAC (and headphone jack) so you can stream music.
- It's a lamp with a voice assistant (you need to supply the speaker and Amazon account).
- It's a lamp that has Wifi and Bluetooth so when you don't want to wave your hands at it you can use your phone or computer to control it.
- It's a lamp that has a 4000mAh rechargeable lithium cell so it can do all of the above when it is away from its desk or shelf.
In short, it is what happens when hackers design a lamp.
Technical details
- 128.397mm diameter sphere 5.055” measured at N34°14'14.478'' W118°33'9.219'' 248 meters above sea level at 82.5F
- 382.7186 grams (13.5oz)
- Individually addressable 5mm PTH WS2812b Custom designed and manufactured specifically for the Blinky Ball LEDs (Preformed leads)
- Cypress CY8C4245 Programmable System-on-Chip
- Espressif ESP32-WROOM-32 Module
- Injoinic Tech IP5209 2.1A Charger / 2.4A Boost Converter.
Tools you will need
- Soldering Iron and Solder
- Wire clippers
- Wire strippers
- Super glue or Loctite (optional)
How to Build
The kit is not hard to build, but it will take some time. We will post a step by step video before we start shipping kits . But here is a little preview, most of your build time will be spent doing the three steps below.
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First tin one pad. Make sure the flat side of the LED is pointed in the correct direction (as denoted by the little 'D'). Tack down one lead of the LED. Completely solder down the other leads of the LED. Finally, solder the lead that you originally tacked down.
And repeat 383 more times.
Kit Contents
- 1x Main slice PCB mostly populated and fully programed
- 15x Blank slices
- 1x Top PCB
- 1x Bottom PCB
- 1x USB PCB (populated)
- 384x 5mm PTH RGB LEDs with integrated WS2812b IC
- 1x 2.54mm header pins
- 2x M2.5 screws, nuts and spacer
- 1x USB to Serial
- 1x Misc lengths of wire and other helpful bits
- 1x Battery (depending on reward level)
- INDIEGOGO exclusive Slice tester
About Us
For the past 7 years we have designed and produced the electronic badges for LayerOne. So every year we need to manufacture, test and package around 400 battery powered devices by a particular day in May. Some years they are complex and some years they just blink. One year it played video games and hacked cars.
So we are very proficient in tracking our supply chain and poking our manufactures to make sure we stay on schedule.
However things can go wrong, delays with PCB houses, mis-shipped parts and world wide parts shortages do happen. We have factored for those things in our schedule and hope to meet and overcome any challenges that might arise.
