Because... of things... Solarbotics didn't do a booth or official presence at this year's Bay Area MakerFaire. We opted to do something fun this time, building a custom just-for-the-fair piece of sorta-interactive LED artwork. Following on the success of the quickie LED floor mandala resting area we did at the NYC MF, we turned it up to 11 for the Bay area, making a WiFi-enabled version of the same thing.
Here's the technical detail on what we did:
The project is based on a modified "Double Rainbow" controller, with the Ardweeny brains replaced by a ESP-12. We set up the three major axis as "always on", with six zones controlled by the controller for animations. We advertised the WiFi SSID point and the URL for people to login to select one of the 6 animations available.
Dan set us up a nice 10' layout cord to speed layout of the major axis:
The franken-Double-Rainbow merged with the ESP-12F.
Setup at the Faire grounds, with our co-founder & CFO, Cheryl. The darkroom (Expo hall..2?) has a very hard rubber floor, so installing them directly to the floor would have turned the LEDs to dust with all the foot traffic. It took us 2 hours and some negotiating to find a 12'x20' carpet at a local Home Depot to mount the piece.
Floor Mandala in full operation! We had zero complications with the piece, other than the WiFi point saturating and not allowing us to login ourselves. Nothing a quick reboot didn't fix.
Sunday, and the lights have just come up at the Maker Faire. Cheryl, Alan Yates, and Elizabeth (sales coordinator extraordinaire) and two other tired attendees are getting ready to wrap up.
Peel up the art and signage, and you get ...more art! Remember, this was brand new (end-of-roll) carpet. That's what several thousand dirty feet can do to a carpet over a long weekend.
Interesting thing about going from a static LED display (in NYC) to a dynamic display is people (especially children) were interacting with it as if their footsteps were making things happen. Huh. We didn't expect that. I suppose the most natural interaction with blinky lights is to turn them on and off physically (not via your cell phone). Lesson learned for next time!
Individually mounted WS2812B LED - Black or White $1.62 Super-tightly PCB-mounted WS2812B addressable LEDs, available in white or black trim. SuperFlex Wire 6M on Bobbin $5.85 This 6M bobbin of 26AWG Superflex wire is a soft and supple, ideal for wearable technology. Superflex 4.5m 90 LED Strand, 5cm Spacing $6.28 90 tiny LEDs of various […]
So apparently Monday here in Albertaland is "Heritage Day". Which, quite frankly, sounds rather uninspiring. Don't get me wrong - any excuse for a statutory holiday is a good one. But the name seems rather vague and underwhelming. And thus I began my quest to find the true meaning of Heritage Day. So as any […]
We've got two pairs of weekend passes for the Calgary Mini Maker Faire taking place this weekend up for grabs. To enter, send an email to it@solarbotics.com with the subject of "I <3 Solarbotics" to enter. Two winners will be selected Friday the 13th @ Noon.
Ok, we won't lie - we have a lot of content to show you today, so we're going to jump right in, starting with... Shipping Cutoff Dates It's getting down to the wire if you want to get a few last-minute gifts for Christmas. Here are our cutoff dates for submitting an order and still […]
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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.