Frank and Gigi's Cool Color Wheels!

Thanks to Frank and Gigi for this great color wheel project! I'll let them take it from here:

Here we have an example of what we see in color mixing on our computer screens and TV’s. We have all mixed color using paint but the colors that are produced in that process are the results of different wavelengths of light being absorbed by the mixture. Here we have color mixtures produced by light. When we mix the primary colors of paint we get a dark color. If we mix the primary colors red green and blue using light we get white. Notice that the bulb gets brighter as we add more color. Because we are adding light to the visible spectrum this is called additive mixing. Mixing red and green results in yellow. Mixing red and blue makes magenta. Mixing green and blue makes cyan.

Critical supplies - magnet tape, acrylic board, styrofoam, an arduino and Bare Paint! I put up a paint/LED artwork behind the project as it is better than looking at the wires and the wall, hope its not too distracting!

Styrofoam wheels on a clear acrylic track. Paint the middle slot between the tracks on the wheel but NOT on the track... 5V and ground are applied to each side of one of the tracks and an arduino analog pin to the other track - the wheel is the wiper which joins the two!

Similar shot, different exposure... better at showing that there is no paint in the middle of the tracks on the acrylic... Joining the seams on the wheel was key and I used some superglue on that and taped it down - the seams came out good enough, fairly flush.

They roll and stay on their track pretty well thanks to the magnets.. Joining the seams of magnetic tape on the wheel was key and I used some superglue on the ends and taped it down - the seams came out good enough, fairly flush.

Blue with a little touch of green...

All colors on! The lights on the breadboard are simply rgb LED’s - I used the ones with a diffuse coating.

This is light pipe attached to 10mm LED’s with heat shrink tubing. The top is another short piece of light pipe attached to two lens’ glued to each other with some diffuse film in between.