LongExposure
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Adafruit builds Raspberry Pi-powered light painting rig, takes trippy photos
Taking long exposure photographs at night and painting within them using an iPad may be old hat, but building your own light painting rig? That could earn you some serious geek cred, and according to Adafruit, it isn't even all that hard. In a new walkthrough, the team fashioned such a contraption using a Raspberry Pi, a python script with under 60 lines of code, some open source software and a handful of electronic components. Not satisfied with the typical light wand, they decided to spice things up with a circular fixture built from PVC pipes and a hula hoop to hold the ribbon of LEDs. After being attached to a bike and paraded around at night, it created the 3D effect in the masterpiece above. If you're itching to make your own works of art, check out Adafruit's tutorial at the source link below.
Visualized: Stunning long-exposure 'star trail' photo taken from the ISS
Ever wondered what goes on up at the International Space Station? We like to think it's all floating around and eating freeze-dried steak. Astronaut Don Pettit decided to take a break from his no-doubt mundane routine and capture the spectacular image you see above. We say image, it's actually multiple 30-second exposure snaps layered on top of each other. Needless to say the result is both humbling, and hypnotic. Best of all? There's a collection of them, waiting to steal your afternoon with slack-jawed wonderment. Hit the source for the mind-melt.
Design project paints city's WiFi networks with light
We've seen WiFi detectors used for various DIY projects before, but none quite like this rather ambitious project cooked up by Norwegian designers Timo Armall, Jørn Knutsen, and Einar Sneve Martinussen. They built a four-meter long WiFi-detecting rod that boasts 80 LED bulbs and carried it around various neighborhoods in Oslo, picking up signals of various strengths from nearby WiFi networks all the way. That's only the half of it, though. The real kicker is that they also captured the whole thing with long-exposure photographs to effectively paint the "invisible terrain" of WiFi networks with light. Head on past the break for a video, and hit up the source links below for a closer look at the entire process. [Thanks, Christer]
Halo LED spraycan lets you make grafitti the cheap, legal way
If you're down with the latest freshness, like we know you are, you'll already be aware of light writing and the radical imagery that can be created through the use of long camera exposures and stop motion animation. Well, get ready to do your thing with even more style, thanks to the Halo LED spraycan -- a DIY project by Aissa Logerot -- which not only looks like the primary tool of al fresco art, it even recharges itself when shaken. While not quite as sophisticated as the Light Lane, this definitely makes our list of light-based paraphernalia we'd like to see more of. You'll find a few more shots after the break, plus a video of a well-known ad campaign featuring the light writing technique.[Via Cool Hunting]
Roomba's journey shown to be endless, beautiful
We've always suspected our Roomba was actually performing a complex dance loaded with hidden meaning and bewitching charm instead of just bouncing around, and now we've got proof -- check out this long-exposure shot of a Roomba's path over 30 minutes. You can see the initial spiral path in the center, but after that it's a free-for-all that somehow manages to cover the entire room. Now if someone would just make a high-speed video set to the Benny Hill music, we'd be all set.[Via DoobyBrain]
