How to Easily Build a “Light Paintbrush”

Arduino Craft & Design Photography & Video Technology
How to Easily Build a “Light Paintbrush”

In John Park’s latest project in his explorations of the Circuit Playground’s capabilities, he shows us how to build a simple device for “painting with light” using long-exposure photography. All you really need is a Circuit Playground board, a camera capable of taking long-exposure photographs, a battery pack, some wire, and a potentiometer (to control the brightness of the NeoPixels).

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As always, John does a great job clearly and carefully explaining the build. His project documentation also includes the code you need to control your new light paintbrush.

paintbrush

Putting this project together involves little more than soldering up the potentiometer and applying power to the board (and, of course, installing the control program).

paintbrush

John also has a little tutorial on how to use your light brush and how to take long-exposure photographs. He also includes a gallery of some of his light paintings.

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

View more articles by Gareth Branwyn

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