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What to do with 60+ glass bricks?!

lorrainbow

Hey folks,

I saw these glass bricks on Facebook marketplace and just had to have them!
Facebook post selling 70 retro glass blocks/wall bricks with phot
It turned out the person selling them is a friend whose website I updated lately so she was happy to give them to me for free! There's about 68 of them. They're covered in expanding foam and paint. I've started to clean them up using a scraper and some nail polish remover for the tough bits.
A single cleaned glass brick with a banana on top for sale
But the question is - what to do with them!?! They're 19*19*8cm. They're hollow in the middle so not too heavy. 
I'm going to get 9 cleaned up and stack them in a grid and light up the centre one from different angles. I want to see what's the best way to light them up. And then.... ??
  • A giant wall for Tetris? 
  • An igloo? (Thanks for the idea  !)
Also, how do I stack them? And where! I don't want them to fall on anyone but I also don't want to permanently stick them together. So a frame of sorts? It feels like an outdoor display to me.. so how do I waterproof the electronics?
Any ideas are welcome! 

  • Not sure about this one but it may kick off some other ideas, so I'll add it to the suggestion box...

    The bricks remind me a bit of Chauvet 'Well' uplighters
       https://www.chauvetprofessional.com/products/well-fit/
    These are shiny battery-powered wireless DMX lighting fixtures.

    If I recall correctly, a six-pack didn't leave much change out of £4k, and I guess a lot of that cost was tied up in batteries. Expensive in quantity.

    Perhaps the bricks could be repurposed into some sort of a mains powered but wirelessly controlled lighting solution. Plug them into the nearest power outlet but without the need to link them for synchronised control.

    I'm not sure that the glass specifically helps a lot here apart from a bit of weight to keep them in place. Although edge lighting might do something interesting giving a combination of edge-glow / main beam.
    (Alternatively slice them in half and you could have 100+ fixtures).

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Garden fence posts in the UK tend to be either 75x75mm or 100x100mm square. That opens up some possibilities as it gives some stock materials and accessories (ground spikes/plates etc.) in the right sort of ballpark size. Either way you can probably just route the post to take the glass bricks (and LED strip) directly.

    You could also have the funkiest fence in the neighbourhood by alternating a column of glass bricks with a fence panel. You could combine this with the MSGEQ7 based audio spectrum analyser idea mentioned above and have a fence that turns itself into a spectrum analyser during outdoor parties synchronised to music (assuming that it ever stops raining for log enough of course, otherwise a giant 'Florabrella' might be a more practical idea).

    Alternatively use the glass bricks as a horizontal gravel board below the fence panel and have them help illuminate a pathway.

  • Looks like someone has had similar ideas

    7x8 glass brick LED matrix 

    https://wiki.hive13.org/Glass_Block_LED_Matrix