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!
This is a quick note to announce our holiday schedule, which is going to be as follows. At Solarbotics: Friday, December 22 - Offices open til 4pm Monday, December 25 - Tuesday, December 26 -- Closed Wednesday, December 27 & Thursday, December 28 - Offices open 9am to 5pm Friday, December 29 - Offices open til 4pm Monday, January 1 - […]
I had been giving some advice to Mark Malmberg about some art he's been putting together. Wanna see a killer huge solar-powered hanging mobile? From the builder himself: This piece has been a test piece and learning experience. I'll show it in a couple of months at a place called the Lawrence Hall of Science […]
We've wrapped up our "Zendulums for Japan" support drive, and we're happy to announce we've sold 84 kits for a total of $2,396.07. A donation of $2400 is being processed to Red Cross Japan. Thanks to all for assisting in our little effort to give some help!
We're adding more and more from our Active Tech Calgary store lineup to our website. This week, NTE's line of head-shrink tubing, and Hammond Enclosures. This reflects what we have presently on hand in the store, which we're now able to bring to you via the website! We realize that with the new dataload our […]
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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.