Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
Just finished these prototype LED hats. I'll be leading a workshop to make them at #emf2026.
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GeekMomProjects
@geekmomprojects@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Tinkerer Maker Solderer Mom • lateral thinker • LEDs improve everything
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Joined October 28, 2022
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The illuminated hat game was strong in the evenings, and it was a terrific place to wear the gorgeous hand-crocheted LED beanie that @alpenglow@mstdn.social made. It was a great place for *all* illuminated wearables.
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Since people seem to like the penguins, I have to post this photo, which somebody else on my ship took. I think it belongs in National Geographic. We saw two orcas chasing a poor penguin which darted underneath our ship multiple times to try to escape. Zoom in on the penguin's face to see its expression.
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The kids in the infinity mirror workshop were wonderfully creative, and if anyone wants to do this project themselves, instructions are at https://www.geekmomprojects.com/infinite-fairy-light-creatures/
Boosted by @ferrix@mastodon.online
Pixel mapped my friend's tree last night using @themariday@mastodon.social 's awesome video-mapping tool and set it up with a #pixelblaze controller
I made this hyperboloid years ago when LED strings were only available with 10 cm spacing. The old LED string broke, so I restrung it with higher density pixels, and am playing with 3D patterns on the #pixelblaze controller.
Thank you all, transportation has been obtained!!! Deleting the rest of this post now, so as to not waste people's time #emfcamp
I am an orchid show taking a tour. The speaker, a lovely older lady, explained that growers are very generous in sharing cuttings freely and that their generosity "puts the 'whore' in 'horticulture!'" 😂
Boosted by @ferrix@mastodon.online
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Video of the illumination so far with a dumb LED controller. The plan is to program it to display messages.
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@consumablejoy I have literally hundreds of them, which could be a bit overwhelming, but here are a couple more:
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@gblues Someone pointed out that how you feel about the photo depends on whether you are watching a penguin documentary or an orca documentary.
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@tired_panda Good question. As far as I know, you either have to book a vacation as a tourist or become a scientist and get lucky with your research. Though I suspect that part of the reason is such a wonderful place to be is that there are so few people down there at any given time
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@ferrix @logicalelegance I did not pet a penguin, though I certainly wanted to!!!
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@consumablejoy right!?! I thing that somebody needs to start an all penguin cable TV channel
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@FeloniousPunk @Binder @themariday I didn't think I'd need to explain this in the post, but apparently it's not clear to everyone that there is a whole playlist of patterns the tree can display. I posted these specific videos because they make the pixel mapping obvious.
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@RobeeShepherd sorry for the belated response. There is a 5V phone charger that fits in a pocket inside the bag
@yayael@mastodon.social Right?!?! I have a whole series of those too interacting and at it's adorable, though that is by far the best photo. I'm convinced they are a penguin couple.
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@CleoQc ...At two of the stops, the weather was too rough to disembark, which is a pretty common occurrence, but we had 8 shore excursions on the trip, and the view from the ship itself is pretty stunning. There are 4 days travel (two each way) through the Drake passage, which can be pretty rough seas, though it was a bit better than average when we crossed, so I feel pretty fortunate about how the whole trip went.
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@orci I definitely considered making the attempt!
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@Cognissart not at all! They are super curious.
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@pettter They are so delightful. I could watch them for hours on end!
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@RueNahcMohr it was written by @themariday , and is far more clever than anything I could do. The first post in the thread links to the code repository.
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@atomicbird @lety the hot glue is responsible for a lot of the diffusion. The 3d printed letters are too thin to diffuse much on their own unless there is a large gap between them and the LEDs. I purposely use translucent rather than clear glue sticks for diffusing.
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@RobeeShepherd @themariday that's dedication, but this way is SO much better.
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@ferrix@mastodon.online it really was! It was early enough that not many students were around, just a vexed administrator trying to figure out how to deal with them all.
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@olap @themariday ah, got it. They're (mostly) not my patterns as I used the #Pixelblaze controller that comes with a large library of patterns and has many other 3D patterns that others have written for it. It's a fantastic controller for mapping patterns to arbitrary 3D pixel arrangements. I use it for a lot, if not most, of my projects. It saves me a ton of time and effort. More info here: https://electromage.com/pixelblaze
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@themariday my son did it for me from a menu inside VSCode. Pipx didn't work correctly for some reason that I can't remember at the moment.
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@themariday that's far less of a problem with marimapper than it is of me being slow to learn to use VSCode! I think the setup was fine, and once the venv was in place it all came together nicely. There are a couple of Pixelblaze specific instructions in the repository that could be clarified, and I'll open a GitHub issue just to let you know what I found confusing, but overall marimapper was a big time and sanity saver for the project!
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@ymasumac@mstdn.social we got lucky on the way out with 2-3 meter swells and 3-5 meter swells on the way back. A ship that travelled after us was dealing with 9-10 meter waves. I took some dramamine and felt pretty much fine the whole time.
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@mdione I'm not sure I understand the question. The LEDs are on a string that is wrapped around the tree, and their positions have been mapped in 3 dimensions using @themariday 's app. The Pixelblaze controller uses the map to display three dimensional patterns accurately on the LEDs
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@regorlas right?!?! That's the "bingo!" moment when you're doing the pixel mapping.
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@pixelpusher220 yes, the best way to see them is definitely in their natural habitat.