Cheap Fiber Optic Wand Toy Becomes Tiny Weird Display
1 min read
Summary
In what is both an interesting and frustrating project, Hackaday reports that an engineer repurposed a $1 LED fibre optic wand typically sold as a novelty item into a 3D display.
To do this, the engineer separated out the individual strands at one end, feeding them into a rectangular 3D-printed frame before gluing each fibre in place over a matrix of LEDs.
Although the engineer had hoped to create a volumetric display, the fibre optic wires proved too fragile for this purpose, however, the display still demonstrates how fibre optics work and how different light wavelengths can be carried by fibres next to each other without issue.
Other fibre optic projects Hackaday has featured in the past include a guide on making home fibre couplings.
