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Rainbow Jellyfish

Convenient indicator LEDs for your breadboard

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After making #Nyan Board I wanted to explore the rainbow wires theme a bit more, but this time with something original, that I could actually get out to people without having to worry about copyright infringement. I also wanted to make it a little bit more useful.

After playing a bit drawing various dumb unicorns, I remembered that I actually like tentacles, and that there are many see creatures that are colorful and shiny. So I decided on a jellyfish.

The idea for the device is very simple: you just have a bunch of LEDs with matching resistors, colored the same as the wires coming out the bottom, except for the ground wire, which is common for all LEDs (that's fortunate, since there are no brown or black LEDs). What is is good for? You basically connect it to your breadboarded projects to see the signals on the pins. You want to test the blink program on a new microcontroller? Easy!

gerber.zip

A panelized 4x4 PCB.

Zip Archive - 439.83 kB - 09/14/2018 at 07:21

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  • Soon...

    deʃhipu12/12/2018 at 10:47 8 comments

  • Videos!

    deʃhipu10/14/2018 at 21:01 0 comments

    I didn't write about it, but a while ago @davedarko agreed to make a video about soldering this project, and you can watch it on YouTube here:

    There is now a second video, made by @blitzcitydiy, and you can watch it here:

    It really makes me happy to see that people care about something I made to make a video about it unprompted. I also love the professional quality and clarity of both of those videos! They are really well done.

  • In Stock!

    deʃhipu08/04/2018 at 11:33 0 comments

    It took me longer than anticipated — a couple of events in the middle of it got in the way — but the Rainbow Jellyfish kits are now in stock on Tindie. You can get them here: https://www.tindie.com/products/13347/

    Here's a shot of completing the first ten kits:

    The LEDs are dabbed in paint to show what color they are. I used SD card boxes for the kits — was considering paper bags with printed instructions instead, but this turned out to be easier and required less work. Also looks better.

  • Soon...

    deʃhipu07/17/2018 at 09:26 3 comments

  • Production PCBs

    deʃhipu07/01/2018 at 16:48 0 comments

    The initial prototype PCB worked great for singles, but now I want to start selling kits, so I need to panelize them. Initially I just slapped a few of the boarrds together and added a few tabs to connect them, but when I submitted that to be fabricated, it got rejected. So today I sat down and panelized them properly:

    I could probably pack them denser, and get less problems with the "mouse bites" somehow, but I think this is good enough for now. This will give me 160 PCBs in total. I varied the silkscreen on them slightly, to give them different facial expressions. Ordered them on white PCB with black silkscreen. Should arrive in a few weeks — in the mean time I need to figure out how to package the components, in particular, how to mark the colors of the LEDs.

  • Prototypes on Sale

    deʃhipu06/26/2018 at 22:01 3 comments

    This was a pretty quick project, but it's also really simple. I have the three PCBs I got from OSHPark assembled and on sale at Tindie. I also ordered proper PCBs now (white), and I will sell them on Tindie as kits when they arrive.

    The PCB design is now published at OSHPark, so you can also make your own.

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danjovic wrote 06/26/2018 at 22:47 point

Cute!

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davedarko wrote 06/26/2018 at 16:26 point

I would definitely buy one or two on tindie as a kit :P

  Are you sure? yes | no

deʃhipu wrote 06/26/2018 at 16:30 point

Thanks, working on it.

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davedarko wrote 06/13/2018 at 10:20 point

That's a pretty useful thing actually :) and cute!

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davedarko wrote 06/13/2018 at 10:20 point

you could also make a tiny spider where the eyes are leds and the cables are legs

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deʃhipu wrote 06/13/2018 at 10:40 point

Somehow I don't associate spiders with colors, even though there are some very colorful ones, like the peacock spider.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_yYC5r8xMI

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Tillo wrote 07/17/2018 at 14:25 point

*That's a pretty cute thing actually :) and useful!

  Are you sure? yes | no

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