Bored with playing games with a non-glowing ball? Why not build your own IcosaLEDron, a programmable, LED-enabled glowing contraption about the size of a baseball.
This ball, as seen on Instructables, features 20 sides that light up as different colors depending on the situation. An ATmega328p board, which is Arduino-compatible, provides the brains for this spherical light display, and twenty WS2812B RGB (red, green, blue) LEDs light up the sections.
In the default mode, an accelerometer causes the top section to continuously be on, and when dropped the ball lights up in a rainbow pattern. Since it is Arduino-compatible, this should allow people to copy this design, and simply modify or make up new code if more functionality is desired.
The frame and translucent sections are 3D printed, which allowed for the creators to design and easily prototype several designs. These were then iterated as necessary to provide the glowing blue sphere you see in these pictures. If you’d like to build your own, the files are available on Thingiverse.
The possibilities for something like this are limited, I suppose, only to one’s immagination. I, probably not that creatively, would think this would make an interesting gaming die, especially if it the size could eventually be reduced!
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