Obeyken writes “Electronic / kinetic bug art. I build these small, insect-like sculptures with simple motion-detecting “antennae” that respond to various stimulus such as movement, vibration, or air currents. When picked up, handled, or otherwise stimulated, the bug comes to life as its LED eyes blink rhythmically. I have one sitting on my monitor right now that blinks as I type. They’re constructed from LEDs, bits of wire, guitar strings, and coin-cell batteries (the PCB battery holder is the bug’s “body”). My original plan was to deploy them throughout San Francisco as a sort of “electronic graffiti” but thus far they haven’t survived too long in the wild…” Link. You could also make your own, the design is the how-to.
8 thoughts on “Meet the Blinkybugs”
Comments are closed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Join Make: Community Today
Is the led wire soldered to the top of the bug? I just did a websearch, and the consensus was that soldering button batteries = explosion. Now that I look again it still sorta looks soldered, but sorta looks alike a clip, too.
These are great – I saw them at Cellspace (in SF) a couple months ago – they are absurdly simple and yet so fun. There’s something very satisfying about this kind of lo-hi-tech geekery.
Second pic from the top looks like the antennae are soldered on to the clip. Is there some space from the top of the clip and the battery so antennae movement creates contact? OTOH I would agree that the later pictures look like the contacts are soldered on to the battery.
Hi i’m the bug guy and i strongly advise *not* to solder directly onto the coin cell battery… i did this in the earlier versions (like in the pic of me holding a bunch in my hand) and had a few melt-downs with weird yellowish smelly chemicals dripping all over me. so now i use a pc board battery clip as the body, and solder onto the top of the (+) clip, and underneath to the (-) pin.
i’d love to see your results… some have already started posting to flickr and tagging as “blinkybug”…