Create your own pixel art with light panels
You might know the LEGO pixel art packs where you can recreate the portrait of Marilyn Monroe or the Beatles in colored bricks. Something like this will soon also be possible in an illuminated version, thanks to the new Twinkly Squares. These are luminous LED panels with 64 lights per tile, which can be operated individually. This way you can create a pixel art image according to your own taste. The examples show pixel art by Marilyn Monroe, as well as landscapes and geometric patterns. However, it comes into its own best with pop art-like artworks with clear divisions or patterns such as Pac-Man.
Twinkly Squares with HomeKit
You may know the Italian manufacturer Twinkly for its smart Christmas lights and party lights in different colors that can be controlled with HomeKit. These new Twinkly Squares are something completely new: they are black panels measuring 16 by 16 centimeters, each of which has 64 lights in 8 rows of 8 pieces. You can control these individually. You can connect them together and make a much larger work of art out of them. This goes a lot further than Nanoleaf, where you can only set the square panels in a few colors at a time.
Twinkly caters not only to art lovers, but also to gamers. There is support for Razer Chroma, the world's largest gaming lighting ecosystem. It works with HomeKit, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. The great thing is, of course, that you can set the colors in much more detail and possibly create a color gradient. You can also animate the colors so that they keep changing color.
The Twinkly Squares will be released in September, but a price has not yet been announced. You can buy a starter pack with four or six panels. You can also purchase separate panels for your smallest works of art. The Twinkly Squares can be controlled via an app. You can find more info on the manufacturer's website.
Below you can see a few different applications of the panels:
