3D Printed Speakers Lit With LED

(techno music)

These 3D printed speakers were designed and printed

using digital material technologies on an object.

Right so basically you put in two different cartridges

of material and it can mix them various ways,

so you can get a whole spectrum from really,

really flexible to really rigid.

Different optical properties.

We looked at this and we said we have a clear material here,

let's see what happens when we put a light in it.

So we took this flashlight right here and put that in there

and went wow that's really cool!

So then we were having lunch with our buddies at Lumigeek,

and they said--

We showed this to them and they said,

Let's light this up, let's do this.

Alright, so I brought down some of the Lumigeek

development kit and what we do at Lumigeek is we have

this sort of development tool kit, and we go directly

from our cellphone into this little mobile rig.

And next thing you know,

we decided to start coiling up some strip.

And,

stuffing it inside. And you can see that you just

you don't get a one-for-one sort of mapping

to the addressable pixels, but you get something

that's much more artistic and beautiful,

and there's a little bit of diffusion and color blending.

So this is a new kind of LED strip?

Yes. This is a high density addressable LED strip

that actually, if you look really closely on the strip

you'll see that every LED has a very, very tiny

mic-processor in it.

[Nate] And it wouldn't have to be just in a speaker,

you could stick this all kinds of places

where it would respond to ambient noise, or directly

via an audio-in.

Absolutely so you could do a line in, you could

throw this in your car, you could throw this

in your bike out at burning man, you could wrap yourself

up in this for Halloween.

[Nate] So these are not just really pretty speakers.

They're 3D printed, they've got an addressable LED strip

in there, but you can't get them.

So that's why Lumigeek has this shield, it lets you

easily control an LED strip of your own, so you can

use it in any kind of project and make your own.