Sports Teams Wall Art by Nate Jewett-Wolf

Are you a big sports fan? Have you ever wanted a piece of wall art that can light up with the logo of any of your favorite sports teams? Now you can! I've created a piece of wall art that can be hung like a painting, plugged in to a wall outlet and lit up with your sports teams' color from your phone.

Laser Cutter (Can be found in most Makerspaces)

5.5 square feet of 1/4" thick birch wood

3 square feet of aluminum foil

Hot glue

Duct Tape

USB-A to electric socket converter

Circuit Playground Bluefruit by Adafruit (with USB-A to micro USB data cable)

Adafruit NeoPixel LED Strip

BluefruitConnect app for Android and iOS

Because I am not a highly advanced coder and because I wanted to make this project accessible for inexperienced coders and young sports fans looking for a cool piece of art in their room, the code is not all that complicated. The code is attached but the main components are as follows:

1) Importing all the necessary packages for Bluetooth and CPB compatability

2) Setting up the Bluetooth functionality

3) Defining the colors to be used in the painting using RGB formatting

4) Setting up the LED Strip

5) Running a "while True" loop that

a) Initiates a bluetooth connection between the CPB and device with Bluefruit Connect

b) Lights up LEDs 1-10 in RED if the "1" button is pressed in the "control pad"

c) Lights up LEDs 11-20 in BLUE if the "2" button is pressed

d) Lights up LEDs 21-30 in YELLOW if the "3" button is pressed

e) Lights up all LEDs in BLACK if the "4" button is pressed

In line 13 of the code, you can change the name of the device to whatever you'd like within the quotes. Make sure it's shorter than 12 characters.

Save that code to the CPB and you'll be all set to go once it's plugged in.

Upload the attached .ai files, created in Adobe Illustrator, to your laser cutter. I recommend using the "Sport Art Back" and "Sport Art Front" files instead of the "Sports Art" file, as most laser cutters are not big enough to print the entire template. If you would like to integrate your own logos/sports teams, simply find the logo on the internet, and image trace in AI to use the logo. Make sure you follow your particular laser cutter's guidelines for ensuring a clean cut. I used 1/4" wood to ensure a sturdy build and because some of my logos have thin, flimsy connections.

I recommend attaching the back, left panel, right panel and bottom panel to each other to provide a surface to attach the LED lights, while still being able to access everything. The above picture shows the smaller hole for the data cable to run through and the circular cut out so that the CPB is accessible even once the build is completed. I secured the panels with blue painter's tape, so that the panels would hold as I hot glued them from the inside. The same was done with the right panel (not pictured)

The most crucial part of the physical build is integrating interior paneling to separate the 3 "zones" so that the lights from one zone don't leak into another zone. The "Sport Art Divider" .ai template includes a small rectangle (.5" x .25") at the bottom of each panel for the LED strip to pass through, while not allowing light to pass from one zone to the other. Then I covered the interior back, interior left, interior right and both sides of the dividers with aluminum foil to help reflect the light coming from the LEDs. I used small dabs of hot glue to secure the foil to the panel, similar to how "tack welding" is performed. The panels were secured into place using grooves, created by hot gluing small pieces of wood to the back panel. The panels are actually not permanently glued, allowing for removal to access the interior for repair and parts removal.

Since the panels are slidable, I secured the strip into place on the Y and Z axis by lifting up the panels and bringing them down on top of the strip. Of course we need to make sure that there are 10 LEDs in each zone, so I shifted the strip along the X axis and secured the strip to the bottom panel interior with little pieces of duct tape. In this way, we have ensured that the LED strip only contains 10 lights in each zone, the strip will not move and the light from one zone will not leak into the other zones (due to the tight connection of the panel to the LED strip). See the next step for a photo of the interior.

Place the front panel in place and secure it tightly with blue painter's tape. Then hot glue the bottom, left and right edges to the existing housing. Wait for it to dry and remove the painter's tape. I opted to leave the top panel unglued, as it allows for accessibility and it is relatively secure given the nature of the toothed edges. Plug the USB-A into the wall converter, connect to your device with your downloaded Bluefruit Connect app and you're all set to go!

ENJOY!!!

Remember, once you are connected to the device, go to the "Control Pad". BUTTON 1 will control whatever is on the left, BUTTON 2 will control whatever is in the middle, and BUTTON 3 will control whatever is on the right. BUTTON 4 will turn them all off. The art will keep whatever the last command was, even if you disconnect from the device. To turn it off completely, simply unplug the painting from the wall