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!
Alrighty folks, here you have it. We've just doubled the amount of items in our temperature sensor category by adding the following: Temperature Probe Phidgets Precision Temperature Sensor Sensirion Temp/Humidity Sensor Thermocouple Kit DS2760 DS18B20+ Temperature Sensor TMP36 Temperature Sensor And that pretty much rounds out all the temperature sensors we have planned to make […]
Yes, I know what you're thinking. "But you were just closed for, like, a bajillion days for Maker Faire!!" And yes, you'd be right. Except for the bajillion part - that's just getting carried away. Solarbotics (and HVW Tech) will be closed tomorrow (July 1st), and Friday (July 3rd). Standard rules apply - you can […]
We are working on fixing the bugs in the website, along with a number of other improvements. Some of you may already know that we are rewriting the ordering portion, making processing your BEAM needs that much easier. It is approaching it's release very quickly, we are just doing the final testing now! So give […]
We've come across a variety of small batteries that are splendid for the small types of robots we're used to building! A variety of 3.6V and 4.8V packs ranging from 50mA to 300mA capacity means we have something ideal for almost any battery-powered BEAM bot. Check them out in the "New Items" link under "Products", […]
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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.