Fancy Frame

Fancy Frame was the evolution and unholy combination of what I did with Canvas and the other Frame projects. It utilizes the same 3d printed base and black acrylic diffuser of the Circle Frame and Honeycomb lights, but it has the individual 3d printed stencil shapes from Canvas. In fact, they are the exact shapes - I built Fancy Frame almost entirely out of leftover pieces from the other projects. (I did buy the LEDs)

I took some lessons from the previous projects and wired the LEDs differently in this one. No LED Strips! Each LED in this was hand soldered and wired (and I will not be doing that again). This is the project that convinced me that soldering is something I know how to do and can do, but is not something I really enjoy. If you have never worked with WS2812b before, they take at least 4 connections per LED (power in, ground in, data in, data out). That is if you wire them in parallel. I, unfortunately, wanted them in series. I wanted to reduce the wire clutter in the cramped space, which increased the job to 6 connections to each LED. These are pinky-nail sized LEDs (these, if you are curious). I cannot express how long of a slog this was. (and this is coming from someone who has hand wired a keyboard).

Still, you can't argue much with the end result. Not using rigid rows of LEDs allowed me to be much more free and organic with the ordering and placement of them. Gone are the columns and rows which are obvious (to me anyway) in the previous iterations. The control path being random looking means your eyes don't "see" the path as clearly, and you mind doesn't naturally predict the next light, which leads to a feel of artificiality. If I were to make one to sell as a product, it might resemble this. (and someone else would solder it!)

Of course, the down side of the organic flows of light is that I never got a satisfactory matrix built on this one. It didn't need it, but that didn't stop me from trying.

I think the success if this one is due to a few factors - the variety of shapes that illuminate, for one. That is a lesson I carried forward. Additionally, I think control path through the panel has a lot to do with it.

This article is part of a series on LED Art as I attempt to document all of the different LED projects I have built over the years.
More will be added as time goes on. The list of currently available articles can be found here: https://dzw.zentormey.com/tag/leds/