Spiral LEDs

I have always had a fascination with LEDs, those little colorful lights that have now found their way into everything. I picked up a bunch of very small ones (but not "surface mount") and then had to think of something to do with them. I thought it would interesting to make them into a free standing double-spiral. Click on the picture or visit the Illuminations photo album to see the entire double spiral. The entire double spiral is about 14 inches tall. To get the curves and LED spacing accurate enough for my liking I wrote a program to generate a bitmap graphic. This way I could use equations for the spiral instead of trying to draw it freehand or even use a drawing package on the computer. Also using my own program allowed me to make adjustments to the design spacing quicker (that is, to adjust the parameters to the equations).

Comments

[Scott]

But can one eat it?

[Jackson]

What's an LED anyways?

[david]

LED is short for "light emitting diode". Take a look at the LED Museum at http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/