Design your most expensive LED Blinky!

[mikeselectricstuff]

Timing signal for the LED blinky will come from a geo-synchronous satellite sending on/off commands.

What, like this (sort of)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/966222131/straightedge-a-new-way-to-see-your-planet

[mikeselectricstuff]

How about roughly 8.3 million 1W RGB LEDs to make the world's biggest 4K display? (Or make that 5K if you want.) Install it in Las Vegas and bring back the drive in theater.

Kickstarter idea - a TV you can see from SPACE!

[Balaur]

Whatever you are making, don't forget to hire my company to evaluate the reliability of the solution for aerospace and military applications.

I'll promise to do a nice job: environmental, radiation (SEE + TID - using neutrons, alpha particles, protons, heavy ions, muons and laser) & ESD testing according to the relevant NASA/ESA/mil standards and requirements.

[McBryce]

Use Audiophile grade capacitors and Siltech cables: http://www.amazon.de/Siltech-Emperor-Double-Crown-bi-wire/dp/B0089ZHCUE

And make sure you hire some consultants to manage the project.

McBryce.

[Mechanical Menace]

The blinky would be controlled by a neural net. Said neural net would of course have to be run on a large cluster using custom silicon with a massive amount of cores per rack, at least 100k cores per rack which would of course need more than adequate cooling and radiation hardening just to be safe. Whether to go with something ARM or PowerPC would depend on the if Freescale/NXP or ARM charge more for licenses I mean whichever best fits the needs of neural net. We couldn't risk not having power so we'd definitely have to look into a small fission generator. To keep it safe it would have to be installed on a submarine or in a bunker as deep as it is possible to go. This installation would of course have to be part of the internet of things...

[Godzil]

You could add some resistors, invisitors and caps from there: http://studiozey.com/zeyresistor/index.html they will provide better colouration for your LEDs and make the power transient much much better!

(yay, I know where the door is)

[synapsis]

I like this thread idea. hah

The spec just says "Blinky", and doesn't specify a uniform period. I propose a "Higgs Boson Detected" LED indicator that requires an LHC connected to it. It'll blink a couple of times.

But we all know that if you *really* want to piss away money, you give it to the sales/advertising dept.

[tszaboo]

How about roughly 8.3 million 1W RGB LEDs to make the world's biggest 4K display? (Or make that 5K if you want.) Install it in Las Vegas and bring back the drive in theater.

Kickstarter idea - a TV you can see from SPACE!

Did you mean a TV in space that you can watch from here? Going on orbit always above the dark side of the Earth? Also known as Lagrange 2. Now, that would be expensive.

[Godzil]

You 1W RGB LED are about which size? that's really important..

But I think that 4K WHXGA (5120 × 3200) would be a better solution.

If each LEDs are a square of about 5x5mm, lets see. It would made a screen of 25600mm per 16000 mm so a rectangle of  25.6 meters per 16 meters...

I like the idea, and don't forget that we will need an accordingly power supply, and way to cool down all of these LEDs.

5120 * 3200 * 1W = 16384000 = 16384 KW or 16MW. I would recommand to build a specific nuclear power plant for this display.

[ludzinc]

I'd use a 555, a billion thermo junctions and a Saturn 5.

Fire rocket, heat thermopile, blink led.

[Zeyneb]

Code this FPGA to flash a pin  $39452

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/XC7V2000T-G2FLG1925E/XC7V2000T-G2FLG1925E-ND/3981901

Use this IGBT to switch the led $6117

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/PP600T120/PP600T120-ND/3775352

Use this bypass cap, and lots off em $9605 x20 = $192100

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/WF165336WQ75233BJ1/WF165336WQ75233BJ1-ND/5086082

Use this resistor $778

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/1623821-2/1623821-2-ND/2365856

Use this led $1995

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/NV4V41SF-A/NV4V41SF-A-ND/3913162

Use this crystal $2585

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/AOCJY7-100.000MHZ/535-11920-ND/3641394

Total $243,027

And if you made a 4K display using them

243027 * 4096 * 2160 = $2,150,147,358,720

Awesome. Your bypass capacitor has a voltage rating of 22.5kV, while the Virtex-7 FPGA is operating at 1V core voltage. I do think you would qualify for overengineering skills.

[calexanian]

Just let  the state assembly of California have a crack at it. Not only will it be way over budget but the lawsuits alone will take years to resolve and it will become a bottomless sinkhole like every other project in this wretched financial hell hole. The price will cross into the billions well before it is even out of environmental impact study phase.

[ez24]

Just let  the state assembly of California have a crack at it. Not only will it be way over budget but the lawsuits alone will take years to resolve and it will become a bottomless sinkhole like every other project in this wretched financial hell hole. The price will cross into the billions well before it is even out of environmental impact study phase.

I feel your pain in this nanny state

[Red Squirrel]

I wonder if there are some ridiculously expensive audiophile tubes that could be used instead of the transistor.  Though, $6117 for a transistor is probably hard to beat.    You want to use a Darlington pair, of course.   Maybe throw in a relay for good measure, a nice solid state DIN mount one.

[Psi]

Awesome. Your bypass capacitor has a voltage rating of 22.5kV, while the Virtex-7 FPGA is operating at 1V core voltage. I do think you would qualify for overengineering skills.

I wonder if that cap would even work at 1V. Might have the worst leakage ever and i doubt its capacity will be the same.

[mzzj]

I'd use a 555, a billion thermo junctions and a Saturn 5.

Fire rocket, heat thermopile, blink led.

I like your thinking.
Saturn 5 1. stage last only for ~ 2 minutes so I assume you were planning to fire more rockets in sequence every 4 minutes to get 50/50% duty cycle for your blinker?   

[Godzil]

I still think that a nuclear power plant will be more expensive than a non reusable rocket

[ludzinc]

I'd use a 555, a billion thermo junctions and a Saturn 5.

Fire rocket, heat thermopile, blink led.

I like your thinking.
Saturn 5 1. stage last only for ~ 2 minutes so I assume you were planning to fire more rockets in sequence every 4 minutes to get 50/50% duty cycle for your blinker?   

Thanks for correcting my oversight.  PEER REVIEW WORKS!

[marshallh]

I will be using a Stratix IV FPGA to run my next Nixie clock. I think i'll use a separate CPU core for each digit, and run embedded linux entirely from blockram 

Seriously, it's sitting here on my desk, just have to make a 4L power board for it!

[G7PSK]

Every project needs a case, so get Fabergé,Tiffany's and Chanel   to manufacture the case jointly, that should burn up some dollars.

[jimdeane]

I'm going to start by powering it with a plutonium radiothermal electric generator.

[Godzil]

Every project needs a case, so get Fabergé,Tiffany's and Chanel   to manufacture the case jointly, that should burn up some dollars.

Ask Philip Stark for the product design!

[zapta]

>> Design your most expensive LED Blinky!

No need to design, just make it a government project and the cost will pile up on its own.

[free_electron]

been done....

Connection machine CM5 :



mor einfo :

http://people.csail.mit.edu/bradley/cm5/

and it will be hard to beat.

[Wytnucls]

Buy experimental time on the LHC at CERN, with a satellite link to your LED, which would blink every time a Higgs Boson is detected.