This thing was so much fun to work on! This was easily the most technologically advanced project I have had a hand in. Animations and effect triggering were handled on a laptop using TouchDesigner, with code developed by Tavia Morra and myself, and animations primarily designed by Tavia. Effects were triggered by a game called “Duck Duck Boosh” created by Tim Alexander. The flame effect physical layer was built by Tim, and the LED physical layer was built by me. Continue reading “The Quacken: Overview”
Author: theblinklab
Designer, collaborator, builder, and installer of interactive art in Austin, Texas. I dabble in a lot of things, including Arduino, TouchDesigner, WordPress, LEDs, propane flame effects, burnable art, and cuisine. During the day I am a quality assurance expert for chemistry laboratories.
Altared Space: The Code
So it has been a hot minute since I have made a post – been dealing with the ongoing madness that is trying to find a job.
The code for this project was based on the FastLED library, and modified from the demoreel example. Demoreel is a cool little snippet of Arduino C that really showcases how versatile the FastLED library really is. The only problem is that it is meant for a string of LEDs. As you can see from the pictures, Altared Space is more appropriately described as a 2d array of LEDs: Continue reading “Altared Space: The Code”
Altared Space: LED physical layer
In a previous post we took a look at how we built the structure for Altared Space. Here we’re going to go into a little bit more detail about the physical layer for the LEDs. Continue reading “Altared Space: LED physical layer”
Altared Space: Construction
Pictured above is the Sketchup drawing of the project. Obviously, a lot of identical repeating elements, which for a project like this translates to “easy to build.” I think all told, it took about 3 hours to make the model in Sketchup. From there, the file was sent to a friend who does vector work, and the pieces that needed to be cut and engraved were rebuilt there. Continue reading “Altared Space: Construction”
Altared Space: The Backstory
In a previous post, I mentioned that Altared Space was a combination of LED project, burnable art piece, and wedding venue. Here’s the story of how it came to be. Continue reading “Altared Space: The Backstory”
The Quacken
So unfortunately I’m away from the computer right now, which means I’m posting from my phone via email. However, when I’m done chatting about Altared Space, we’ll take a look at a somewhat more complicated project – The Quacken.
This guy was a great project, mostly because I got to learn about some new tools.
Altared Space
One of my earlier LED projects, Altared Space. My wife and I designed and built this piece, took it to Burning Man, assembled it, had our wedding ceremony in it, and then burned it to the ground (we saved the electronics though).
All told, it was some 1500 LEDs, 30 sheets of 3/4″ plywood, and a bunch of 2×4 and 4×4 to hold it all together. You can’t really see it in this photo, but the arches were laser etched to include images of things that were meaningful to us. The LEDs were driven by an Arduino Mega and randomly switched between about 10 different patterns. You could see the thing from miles away, assuming a dust storm wasn’t rolling through.
I’ll follow up with some posts regarding how this thing was made, and perhaps even link the code for the LEDs if I feel like starting a Github account.