LED Tube Gyro Thingy

[lboucher]

Hey All

This is my LED tube thingy. Its a starting prototype working towards a bigger idea.
There are 32 leds that are PWM controlled and rotate opposite the direction of rotation.
The LED's dim along the tail, and the tail grows longer as rotation speed increases.
I didn't pick the best LEDS, should have used diffuse ones, but live and learn.
The size of this thing is huge right now, just because its on protoboard.
It could be made much much smaller, to the point where a 9 volt battery becomes the driving size constraint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bd7hfZH270

Any cool ideas about how to use this.

[eswets]

Use it for tires on a bike or rims of a car. give us more info on how you made it. Looks cool.

[djulien]

Any cool ideas about how to use this.

I'm not sure if these ideas are in line with what you wanted to do ...

Maybe put several of them (red) in a spiral for use as a candy cane?

They could be used as wheels in various wireframe figures (ie, a train) or propellor of a plane with Santa in it, or something like that.

If they didn't need to be strictly in a circle, you could use them as the outline for bells or various other shapes.

You could also rearrange them into star or snowflake shapes for a nice scrolling effect.

don