51–60 of 191 posts
Next up: "Porting Doom to run on an LED candle".
Unfortunately the original post and code all got taken down due to copyright claims, but archive has a copy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210615035229/https://next-hack...
Once upon a time, on USENET, someone had a .sig that predicted one day computers would be cheap enough they'd come in cereal boxes and we'd throw them away. That day appears to have arrived.
Does anyone remember this?
It might be a myth, but I seem to remember the ASICs used to flicker older LED designs were often repurposed from audio greeting cards. The light was actually just Happy Birthday playing through an LED or bulb rather than a speaker.
Not a myth. I clearly remember watching a YouTube video where this was discovered, only a few years ago, but of course the uselessness of search engines these days has made it impossible to find now.
And here is someone who recorded audio samples (no idea of the year): https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Listen-to-Light/
Edit: and here is maybe the video you were remembering: a video from June 2011 of someone hooking a speaker to listen to the flickering led: https://youtu.be/753-lkao8l0?si=-WqRRuBH644oKTXG But they don't realize this may be an audio chip as the tune isn't really nice or recognizable.
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I'm waiting for the EU to ban these fucking things already. That and disposable power banks. Yes, you read that right. Selling consumer devices with Li-Ion batteries that are designed to not be rechargeable, should be banned altogether.
Interesting thing about li-ion batteries, is they have much less lithium in them than disposable lithium coin cell batteries, and hold much more charge. If we're outlawing disposable li-ions we should outlaw those as well.
Except when your watch battery dies, you only dispose of the battery, not together with the watch, as is the case with those single-use vapes.
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I'm waiting for the EU to ban these fucking things already. That and disposable power banks. Yes, you read that right. Selling consumer devices with Li-Ion batteries that are designed to not be rechargeable, should be banned altogether.
We're OK with disposable alkaline batteries, so what makes lithium worse? If anything, alkaline batteries might have a slightly worse environmental footprint due to the use of manganese. The problem with lithium batteries is that they can catch on fire, but that's a problem only when charged (or charging). A fully discharged battery shouldn't do much.
No we're not. Disposable batteries should not be a thing anywhere, especially not in products where they cannot easily be removed by design. Alkaline batteries may not combust when damaged, but their internal juice leaking out is damn corrosive.
> A fully discharged battery shouldn't do much.
Even that is enough to light trash compactor trucks or the heaps on waste collection plants to fire. This shit is becoming a massive problem for the trash hauler and processing industry. One in Australia blames 35 (!) fires a day in the country... no surprise if 1.8 million of them are sold a week [1]. This is frankly insane, and the rise in trash fires directly corresponds with disposable vapes.
Additionally, we need every bit of lithium we can get for electric vehicles and other stuff. Not for throwaway devices.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-02/qld-lithium-ion-batte...
Hey, I got paid to do this a few years back! Here's the result: https://evietealight.com/
They're the sort of thing it's not really possible to show off in a photo or even video. What really gets you (or at least gets me) is seeing these things out of the corner of your eye, flickering, just like flames flicker....
This was a pretty uncertain research project. We didn't know if we'd be able to make really convincing flameless flames. The day I knew we'd got it was the day I brought a prototype home to tune and A/B test against a real candle. I went upstairs to put the kid to bed, then came downstairs and panicked because I thought I'd left the real candle burning. I hadn't! I got fooled by my own product. It was all downhill from there.
These guys are patented (somehow... the language is pretty impenetrable, and it's my own patent...) so I don't mind sharing a little of how it's done: there's an array of LEDs plus optically-active element, which shapes the light in a way that makes it look good. Nothing about this is too complicated (the optical surfaces aren't all that special, but are not trivial to prototype in your garage, at least if you've never done optics before), but there was a lot of R&D to settle in on what looks "right", and the final product has a lot of "premium" touches that really drove up the manufacturing cost. Hence the high final cost -- they really do cost a lot to make.
But they look awesome!
(And thanks Tim for your original article -- I definitely remember reading it during the early research phase!)
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I'm waiting for the EU to ban these fucking things already. That and disposable power banks. Yes, you read that right. Selling consumer devices with Li-Ion batteries that are designed to not be rechargeable, should be banned altogether.
We're OK with disposable alkaline batteries, so what makes lithium worse? If anything, alkaline batteries might have a slightly worse environmental footprint due to the use of manganese. The problem with lithium batteries is that they can catch on fire, but that's a problem only when charged (or charging). A fully discharged battery shouldn't do much.
I really hate these fake LED candles with a passion. Either put an actual candle on the table, or just put a small cosy light that doesn't flicker.
Why? Ive known several people that died from candles including the actions of other people's usage of candles.
That can't possibly be true - unless of them all died in the same accident?
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Why? Ive known several people that died from candles including the actions of other people's usage of candles.
>> Ive known several people that died from candles That can't possibly be true - unless of them all died in the same accident?