Home

Holy Pac-Man! DIY Light Painting Saber Is Pure Awesome

A few months ago, we showed you a pretty awesome light painting project that visually captured invisible Wi-Fi signals around town using a Wi-Fi detecting rod filled with 80 LEDs. With some long exposure photography, the results were pretty amazing. This project was inspired by those crazy Norwegians, but this build lets you do something even more amazing—capture pictures of colorful written text and drawn images, frozen in midair.

This project hails from Gavin Smith, an Aussie hardware hacker from the Sydney area, which calls his device LightScythe. The POV (persistence of vision) scythe is an acrylic tube that contains a 2-meter programmable strip of LEDs, and is controlled by a small receiver and battery pack. A laptop computer with a wireless link sends the image data to the scythe at a specified time, making it possible to visualize the invisible network data into some awesome light paintings.

By taking 10 to 15 second exposures, he can write colorful (and odd) phrases in front of houses...

Robots and Dinosaurs illuminated sign in front of a house at night.

He can shows his love of pecs at the Sydney Harbour Bridge...

Friends posing in front of a brightly lit Sydney Harbour Bridge at night.

And can visualize Pac-Man chasing after those monster ghosts at the Sydney Opera House...

Colorful animated characters in front of the Sydney Opera House at night.

And you can, too... LightScythe uses open-source software and can be built from electronics parts available online. Visit the LightScythe project page to see where to get everything and more importantly—how to build your own. More of his light painting pictures can be seen on Flickr.

Apple's iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 updates are packed with new features, and you can try them before almost everyone else. First, check our list of supported iPhone and iPad models, then follow our step-by-step guide to install the iOS/iPadOS 26 beta — no paid developer account required.