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!
Greetings, ye fine fellow travelers of yon internet. This week you'll find that we have three new and completely unrelated items to show off: 17010 3-AA Battery Holder - This three-cell holder has 9V-style snap connectors, and can create 4.5V with Alkaline batteries. 17390 Tact Switch - A push-button style switch that's compact, inexpensive and […]
Wowwee sent us some information telling us a bit more about the upcoming Bio Bugs that Mr. Tilden is working on. It includes an image showing some of the finished prototypes, and more "Official" stats on these upcoming toys! Check it out! Read More...
With the runaway success of the Useless Box, many of us here at Solarbotics can be assembling the kits in our sleep, even under a dose of tranquilizers, and be orchestrating the two lasers at the same time with no difficulty whatsoever. Just like I used to count transistors for the latest in Soviet Death […]
You would think in these days it would be a simple task to source something you want to have made. After all, MAKE, the Internet and the world "getting smaller" would have you think that it'd be an easy task. Sometime it is, and sometimes it's like this! We've been to Hong Kong and China […]
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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.