Hello friends, family, supporters, and maker community. I've had to make the difficult decision to shut down Alpenglow. The short story is that we aren't making enough continuous sales to cover our shop space and employee costs. More info: www.alpenglowindustries.com/blogs/all-bl...
15.02.2026 20:37 — 👍 28 🔁 4 💬 6 📌 2It features cool stuff by us, @architeuthisflux.bsky.social @californiasteam.bsky.social Steph Piper / Maker Queen @bhencke.bsky.social @evilgeniuslabs.org @drc3p0.bsky.social and has links to all their sites & socials for easy shopping & following. Support small creative electronics businesses!
09.12.2025 17:37 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
A tiled array of images showing colorful circuit boards with LEDs in various fibonacci configurations, a cat on it hind legs pawing at something that has an enamaled-pin look, LEDs lit up and shaped like a rainbow, unicorn, and lightning bolt, some small rectangular circuit board LED controllers, a black breadboard with a probe, a book called Skill Seeker, a UFO beaming up a human, a box of GlowStitch LED strips, and a box with diffused red, green, and blue lights on its front.
It's the time of year where I get to show off all the cool things our friends make! Check out the 2025 Alpenglow Gift Guide and find something fun for that electronics nerd in your life (and maybe that's you!) www.alpenglowindustries.com/pages/2025-g...
09.12.2025 17:37 — 👍 14 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 1
It's alive, it's trapped inside, and it likes music.
Audio-reactive pattern and #Pixelblaze by @bhencke.bsky.social driving an 8x8x8 volumetric RGB LED cube with frosted acrylic enclosure.
Get your own: lectronz.com/products/led...
I was able to run the PixelBlaze Panama Hat with 150 LEDs for over 5 hrs, looking great at 20% brightness, using this small battery that fit under the hat & at 2.2oz, wasn't noticeable:
a.co/d/bbhObkk
youtube.com/shorts/TZBFV...
Honeycomb pattern, one of the preloaded ones on a Pixelblaze LED controller by electromage @bhencke.bsky.social
13.10.2025 17:25 — 👍 15 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
I made a really cool LED wall project for my house last week - spruced up an ugly black fireplace with 1035 LEDs and a Pixelblaze LED controller. Check out the full story and project progress on mastodon:
mstdn.social/@alpenglow/1...
A book cover saying "I'll write the code while I wait for the PCBs And Other Hilarious Jokes You Can Tell Yourself, Volume II"
🤡
03.09.2025 11:33 — 👍 135 🔁 23 💬 3 📌 2
A long haired red head taking a selfie wearing a bandolier for shotgun shells but it’s instead 18650/ in alternating red pink and green. She is wearing a cropped rainbow Jumperless shirt and there’s a dog in the background peeking around the bathroom door.
The bandolier hanging on a doorknob. There are 55 18650s on it and 4 of them are modded with PwrTop 18
Behold: the 18650 Battery Bandolier!!!! I have limited PwrTop 18s left and will be offering them with a battery at Maker Faire on a donation basis.
13.09.2025 00:14 — 👍 41 🔁 10 💬 2 📌 1
A lightning bolt joins the unicorn and the rainbow. All are plugged into USB cables.
Bzzzt! Glowies are powered by a tiny LiPo battery and rechargeable! Stay tuned for more incredibly fun designs coming to Maker Faire Bay Area! #mfba2025 #makerfaire
17.09.2025 01:09 — 👍 12 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0Production today starts with a dip in conformal coat to insulate the exposed wires and pads. #glowies #alpenglowies #ledjewelry
21.09.2025 20:34 — 👍 15 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0Here’s the final style of Glowie we’re making! Shooting stars and flames! These fun animations draw attention without being too distracting, and their battery life is double the solid Glowies, so around 20-24 hrs on a single charge. #glowie #alpenglowie #ledjewelry #mfba2025 #makerfaire
23.09.2025 00:06 — 👍 10 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0Awesome new support board for Pixelblaze for making amazing wearables, or all kinds of projects really, with pebble strings.
11.08.2025 16:42 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Curious what it takes to write 3D patterns for #Pixelblaze by @bhencke.bsky.social?
I've written up a tutorial: www.evilgeniuslabs.org/tutorials/pi...
Among other examples is this rainbow-colored 3D Perlin noise on a three dimensional #RGB #LED cube.
Get your own cube: lectronz.com/products/led...
Playing with the 8x8x8 LED Cube, creating new patterns using the built-in #Pixelblaze by @bhencke.bsky.social.
Get your own cube: lectronz.com/products/led...
I'm putting a tariff on the word "tariff"!
Hooked up an arcade dispenser to give me a ticket every time that god-forsaken word shows up on my computer screen.
20 tickets == 1 beer
I got these boards in just under the tariff wire, and I’m pretty stoked on them, coming soon to the shop! They’re optimized for soldering right to the back of a Pixelblaze Pico by @bhencke.bsky.social, but they can interface with any controller & are an easy way to power everything via USB-C.
04.05.2025 16:17 — 👍 23 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0Oooohh especially like xorcery!
28.04.2025 23:07 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I currently have one Fibonacci512 PixelBlaze available for sale, DM me if interested.
Please note this one uses WS2812 LEDs, not SK9822. It's still gorgeous (if I do say so myself). 😁
Fully assembled, includes #PixelBlaze by @bhencke.bsky.social
More info: www.evilgeniuslabs.org/fibonacci512...
Sneak peek at Pixelblaze Buddy Boards! These interface with a Pico and provide direct soldering for pebble strands, and support any strip via a connector or wires. Convenient USB-C breakout for power. Wired to a 4-pin pebble strand with backup data, then a 3-pin tape strip. @bhencke.bsky.social
13.04.2025 18:55 — 👍 27 🔁 3 💬 5 📌 1PCB assembly and packing process.
15.03.2025 00:58 — 👍 18 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 2
It's fairly lightweight, but does have some overhead.
On an STM32G030 at 16MHz, it can do 2 voices with 4-5 nodes each with a sample rate of 12,500Hz. About 3K of flash.
So you have some number of voices/generators, could either be different "patches" or the same if you wanted polyphony. Then each voice has a number of audio nodes that can be envelopes, oscillators, filters, mixers, etc. Every node has an output and gain pointer input, and then specialized by type.
11.03.2025 19:02 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
I make a super fast simple sound synthesis engine.
Designed for microcontrollers, it uses little RAM and flash. Intended for 32-bit microcontrollers that have a fast multiply, like ARM Cortex-M0.
github.com/simap/MicroM...
520k and counting!
Thank you all for watching this and contributing to this wild ride. Hopefully we can turn this moderate success into something helpful to the world.
youtu.be/FEl_S3zHxh4
One of the few benefits of owning my #lasercutter is that I know exactly who to blame for its current condition.
28.02.2025 17:04 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Two round circuit boards with white soldermask and blue silkscreen, left shows a CR2032 holder and the right shows a USB adapter board soldered into its place instead.
Hey soldering kit makers! Struggling with new coin cell regulations and have a pile of PCBs with coin cell battery holder patterns on them? I made a thing for ours that converts them to USB power, maybe it's handy for you. 🧵
25.02.2025 20:34 — 👍 46 🔁 15 💬 4 📌 4Really nice Mandelbrot viewer. Can even make videos! mandelbrot.page
22.02.2025 04:33 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
So 4 pin common anode/cathode RGB LEDs can be charlieplexed! I made a tool that helps figure out how many given a number of GPIO, then added PWM on a subset of them, and refresh rates for charlieplex scanning. Shows a table for PWMable configurations.
www.bhencke.com/charlieplex-...
Finished this art piece for my office!
The base for this piece is a cork board. I painted the frame, covered the cork in fabric, added a string of WS2812 LEDs controlled by a Pixelblaze V3 Standard LED controller, and then finished it up with some mirrors and flowers.
#leds #pixelblaze #wallart
