Illuminated flashing Willies

[Richard Hallas]

Greetings all,

I'm posting this at the suggestion/request of Spider.

Recently on Facebook, a guy called Alan Grier advertised some LED lamps he'd created that feature Miner Willy in his Jet-Set Willy guise. Here's the thread:

Facebook thread on JSW LED lamps

He'd only made five of them, and they all sold out within minutes. I was lucky enough to get the last one. However, he's making more. Should anyone here want one, it's probably best to approach him via Facebook (direct-message him). However, he divulges his email address on ordering, so I have that too. I don't want to publish his email in public here, but if necessary (e.g. if someone tries to contact him via Facebook and can't get through), contact me privately on this forum and I'll supply it.

The lamps cost £15 each, inclusive of everything (even postage via Hermes) – which seems like excellent value to me.

Here's mine, illuminated blue in a dark room at night with the other lights off:

It appears a little over-exposed here, but in real life it looks fantastic. It's illuminated from below by a row of LEDs, and they're surprisingly bright and distribute the light pretty evenly. If I were being picky, I could say that there's a slight dimming in the centre of Willy's head and a touch of extra reflected brightness at the top of his hat (which you can see in my photo), but that's being overly critical. It's not bad enough to worry about, and the lamp looks really great. Also, the lamp is bright enough to be very easily visible and solidly coloured in full daylight.

The lamp arrives as the plastic base unit and the clear perspex 'tongue' containing the engraved artwork, which just pushes into a slot and is then quite secure. (But also easily removed, if you happen to have more than one insert and want to swap them.) Also included is a USB cable and an infra-red remote control (with battery already included).

The engraved perspex tongue is very nice quality: extremely clear and ideal for its purpose. The base unit is just plastic and not especially high quality plastic, but it's perfectly fine for the job. It's maybe a little lightweight, but it's heavy enough to do its job, and won't blow over if you walk past it too fast!

The base unit can be powered by the USB cable or you can instead insert three AA batteries into a compartment underneath.

There's a touch-sensitive on/off control on the front (which you can see easily in my photo): holding a finger over it will power the lamp on/off, and touching it briefly will cycle through a series of steady colours.

For full control of the lamp, you need to use the infrared control unit, which offers a surprising range of options, as follows:

• On/off buttons.

• Brightness control buttons (seven levels, from 'clearly visible' to 'very bright', though the levels only appear to work with steady colours).

• Solid colours: White, plus three 'scales' from R to Y, G to C and B to M, each with three intermediate steps. In other words, there's a grid of colour buttons with RGB at one extreme and CMY (in the order YCM) at the other, and three intermediate buttons between each of those colour pairs. Plus White. So, there's a choice of 16 steady colours if you don't want the lamp to flash.

• Four animation effects: Flash, Strobe, Fade, Smooth. These all appear to work at full brightness only. Their effect is as follows:

† Flash: Makes the lamp rotate through the solid colours Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, White, spending about a second on each colour.

† Strobe: Same as Flash, except that it only uses the colours Red, Green and Blue. A bit boring.

† Fade: Makes the lamp cycle slowly through the same set and order of colours used by Flash mode, but this time slowly fading from one colour into the next. Each fade takes about four seconds (with one second spent in each colour-stop), so the lamp is constantly changing but in a very non-distracting way. Also, because the fades are so smooth, you get some nice colours along the way (e.g. on the way from Red to Green you get a brief orange and yellow). It looks really great.

† Smooth: This uses a similar fade effect to Fade mode (though faster, at only about two seconds), but it only alternates between two colours: pure white and deep blue. A bit boring, frankly.

So: two good animations and two ho-hum ones. Flash is good if you like flipping between seven solid colours; Fade is good if you prefer a slower and gentler fading version of the same thing.

I personally like Fade best: it's nice and gentle and non-distracting, but allows you to see the full range of lovely rich colours. (And they really are lovely and rich, especially red, which seems incredibly intense.)

As a final note, Alan Grier has reacted positively to the idea of doing alternate and/or custom designs. So I intend to get him to produce a version featuring Willy wearing a crash helmet, as designed by me for use in my own game, Join the Jet-Set!. If I do get such a version, I'll post a photo of it here.

Anyway, I think the lamp's great. I'm really pleased with mine and plan to leave it on all the time. I've got it plugged into my Mac and it continues to illuminate even when I've put the Mac to sleep, so it also acts as a night light during the small hours and possibly helps to avoid stumbles on the way to the toilet!

Edited August 3, 2021 by Richard Hallas
Corrected typo (to —> two)

[IRF]

It looks great!

A Miner Willy one would make a good gift for a caving enthusiast (though I'm not sure I'd rely on it solely to find your way around a real cavern!)

The pigs in the background of your photo made me wonder if the Flying Pig sprite would fit in the lamp?  It would probably be too wide for the frame though - and thinking about it, that's the playing sprite in The Nightmare Room so it might give you nightmares! 😜

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by IRF

[Spider]

Thanks for posting @Richard Hallas 🙂 I'll only repeat a little bit of my PM reply as its relevant here in that those RGB leds usually have a slow fade effect, still have two functional 10mm ones from a few years ago.

@IRF's suggestion has made me think of something so I'll just leave this here  😉

Spoiler

 

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for the detailed description, Richard! 👍

[Richard Hallas]

Concerning the ideas for alternative images in the lamp… looking at mine, it's clear that if the same of image size is retained, there's room for a 10×16-pixel design, though note that the curvature of the 'tongue' could potentially affect the top three rows of pixels, so these need to occupy less than the full width.

Doubtless it's possible to scale the designs down to fit more pixels in the available space, but still, it's clear that a tall (roughly 1.6:1) aspect ratio is going to work best.

Unfortunately, the 'pointing Maria' sprite is nearly square (14×16), so she'd have to be scaled down quite a bit and would come far short of the curved top of the tongue. It's the pointing arm that's the problem, of course; in her folded-arms guise she'd fit a little better, though she's still dumpy compared with Willy (12×16), so would have to be shorter.

Concerning the flying pig sprite, in its 'wing up' position it's actually 10×14 pixels, so that should work pretty well, though the top, curved part of the lamp will be largely empty. Also, it's an unfortunate fact that the top tip of the wing is a filled pixel just at the point where the lamp starts to curve, so fitting it in without clipping it may be a problem (assuming there's no scaling down), and even if it can be made to fit, it'll be very close to the edge of the perspex.

Anyway, I'm sure that Alan Grier would be open to doing custom designs if approached, and he'll obviously be able to tackle any practical difficulties there may be with particular designs. I plan to ask him to do me another one featuring my version of Willy with a crash helmet from Join the Jet-Set!. And I'd think that a Miner Willy variant (with miner's lamp) would definitely be on the cards, since it's as iconic as JSW.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Richard Hallas
Corrected typo (with —> will)

[IRF]

I only really made the Flying Pig suggestion in jest!  Whilst I imagine that, as you say, a Miner Willy version complete with hard hat/headlamp is probably something he's thinking of doing anyway.

[Spider]

The idea of the standard 'Miner' sprite is very good, I'd take a wild guess he may consider or make those.

Can see why you'd want your own 'Sprite' too Richard for your game creations. 🙂

Here's a short small 50s vid(sadly I should of done this at night or in a darkened room) of a rainbow LED, actually two. They are not in sync anyway. Not really meant to be:

Spoiler

I'm sure the model illustrated initially is similar in its 'slow fade' effect.

[Richard Hallas]

22 hours ago, IRF said:

I only really made the Flying Pig suggestion in jest!

I realised, but it was still worth considering! 🙂

[Richard Hallas]

21 hours ago, Spider said:

Can see why you'd want your own 'Sprite' too Richard for your game creations. 🙂

Here's a short small 50s vid(sadly I should of done this at night or in a darkened room) of a rainbow LED, actually two. They are not in sync anyway. Not really meant to be:

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm sure the model illustrated initially is similar in its 'slow fade' effect.

Yes, I definitely fancy a lamp with my JTJS version of Willy in it. 🙂 I may be the only person who'd want such a thing, but I think Alan Grier will make one for me; I mentioned the possibility when ordering the one I've got, and he reacted positively.

As for your animated illustration, yes, the cycling speed looks pretty similar. It's hard to judge a video like that against real life with LEDs, as they never seem to video as well as they look in real life, but I think the speed of fade is similar. Looking at my lamp in real life, the colours look more intense and the fading arguably smoother, but, as I say, it's probably to do with the video quality. Anyway, the colours produced by the lamp are certainly rich, intense and lovely.

[Richard Hallas]

Just as a quick follow-up…

I finally got it! 🙂 My own Willy with crash helmet, as seen in Join the Jet-Set!. I requested the 'one foot in front of the other' pose, as I prefer it to the striding position.