HALO is an EL-Wire night light. Photo by Emily Shaw

Project boxes can be a real pain. You can get a standard size box from a place like Radio Shack or you can make your own custom box. If you have access to a laser cutter, you can make yourself t-slotted boxes.  While the t-slotted boxes do the trick, the open slots leave an unfinished look to projects.

I wanted a more polished look for my latest clock, so I set out designing Låda.  The Låda (or Lada) Sytem, based on standardized 3D printed corner and edge pieces and custom laser cut face pieces, allows you to define a box of any size bigger than about an inch and a half on a side.  A program written in Python does all of the tedious calculations for you and spits out a PDF file.  Custom openings can be added with InkScape to accommodate stand-offs, buttons, cords an sensors.

The edge and corner pieces have mounting holes 0.4″ from the inside face.  They have an elevated platform to cradle your project.  Hex cutouts captivate a M3 nut so that once installed, they remain in place and the box allowing the final face to be screwed into place.  +Kevin Osborn has been keeping our 3D printing non-stop so that now I have plenty of Lada pieces to play with.

HALO consists of an AlaMode, a Grove Shield, and an EL-inverter. Photo by Emily Shaw

The Lada system works fine for small projects like the EL-Wire night light seen above.  It also works with larger projects, like the Kandinsky Klock (or Kandy) for short.

About the projects:

Halo is an EL-Wire night light configured to outline a doorway.  It helps to prevent falls by both providing light, and creating a frame of reference to orient you if you need to be up in the middle of the night.  I made it for my father who could use a little assistance getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  The idea comes from a story I heard on NPR.

Halo was easily assembled from: an AlaMode,the Grove Starter Kit, and a USB based EL-Wire inverter.

A special thanks to +Kevin Osborn who lined me out on what I needed to drive EL-Wire and pointed that the Grove Started Kit had everything I needed aside from the inverter.

Kandy is a two-sided mountain bike race timer that I’d promised to build for my collage roommate two years ago.  It is 4 TiM boards with c prototype LED controller called TiNA.  It is bluetooth controlled (thanks to the FTDI compatible BlueFruit module).  I think it is worth the wait.

None of these projects would be possible without Anool’s tireless work designing amazingly flexible circuit boards.