Fiber Optics for Basic Stamp

jtrz

Hi all,

Thinking about playing around with fiber optics but not necessarily for purposes of voice or data communication.· I'll get to those eventually.· Looking at it from purely a decorative purpose right now.·

Anyone have any favorite places for kits and/or info?· How about sources for projects?

Anything would be helpful!

Thanks!
John

steve_b

You can do a lot with a colour wheel and some fibre optic strands from those holiday displays.

You can build a box with some different colour of LEDs and have a bunch of fibre optic ends coming in at one end.
Fade through your colours and you can have a neat little display depending how you arrange the other end of fibre.

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<FONT>Steve



What's the best thing to do in a lightning storm? "take a one iron out the bag and hold it straight up above your head, even God cant hit a one iron!"
Lee Travino after the second time being hit by lightning!

jtrz

Thanks for the reply Steve. Yep. That's exactly what I was thinking. We're on the same page—literally! [noparse]:)[/noparse]

But I would like to experiment with controlling how the fiber lights up. For example, controlling the sequence in which it lights up. I think the easy thing is to put a multi-colored LED at the base of a strand of fibers and have all the ends light light up the same color at the same time. A Basic Stamp could contol the change of color in the LED.

The more difficult thing to do would be to arrange each fiber be a point of light on say a dark rectangle of board (cardboard, thin MDF, etc) and light each point up from left to right in turn and maybe even control the colors, the speed of the transition, the sequence, and the intensity.

So I was looking for example projects and materials for something like that and how fiber optics are use in that capacity.

Thanks!

John

Post Edited (jtrz) : 11/30/2007 3:12:06 PM GMT

steve_b

Hi John,

You might try putting the same led in the box...with the strands coming in at one end; arranged for your left to right sequence.
Then rig up a little servo that drives a "mini-curtain" around the LED. A slit in the "curtain" would allow for the LEDs light to get to whatever fibres are exposed there.

You can try and seal off the light and just have the curtain do the selective lighting....or you could allow some light leakage (don't worry about gaps at top/bottom of curtain) that it would give the entire thing a little bit of ambient glow while the slot opening would give the large light.

Not sure if that's what you're after....

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<FONT>Steve



What's the best thing to do in a lightning storm? "take a one iron out the bag and hold it straight up above your head, even God cant hit a one iron!"
Lee Travino after the second time being hit by lightning!