Hi FastLed users, just want to say a big thanks to @Mark_Kriegsman @Andrew_Tuline and +Daniel Garcia for making the demos and q&a that got my “Seven spires” work off the ground for White Night Melbourne this year. See attached videos - it’s a circle of seven light pieces that each have their own controller, cap touch, and use LPD8806 strips. Sequences are,:
When no touch: used the “sparkle” effect (MK’s demo, modified)
when touched uses either:
Grad fill (AT)
Heartbeat (my own with some help from MK)
Lightning (AT)
FIRE2012 (MK)
Ripple (AT)
Sinelon (MK)
Dotbeat (MK/AT)
Thanks for all help!
Chris Thodey, Melbourne, Australia
@Chris_Thodey I was so pleased to your this installation at White Night Melbourne, because I missed it at Burning Seed the year before! Really great work!
Hi Chris and team… Congrats on a great installation… I was drawn in by the light at around 4am n enjoyed taking a few pics… I will post em up here or direct…
OK @Jason_Coon here’s some notes on the process of getting it together:
Design - Spires:
I started with hand sketches and then a Sketchup 3D model. Then flattened shapes with an sketchup extension and made a *.dxf line file for each of the shapes to be cut in Draftsight (free CAD editor)
Build - Spires:
I had a local guy (Branchflower CNC) cut some MDF templates of the shapes for mebought UHMWPE sheet from Dotmar plastics and used a laminate trimmer to cut each of the sheets (took ages!)
Then hand drilled and bolted them together into the spires, I used leftover bolts from Vivid 2015 (my last major work, Duck Duck Goose)
Design & build- Platforms:
So it came up at the last minute I had to build platforms for WNM as we weren’t allowed to put pegs into the grass - time to ask for a variation from the WNM folks!
Also started with paper then Sketchup to check my back-of-envelope schoolboy trig. Then bought heaps of 17mm formply from Bunnings, cut it at Bunnings into 600mm widths so that it would fit in my “work vehicle” Toyota Yaris ;). Then cut the angle from the sides with a circsaw, cut slots through withch to put metal strapping which attaches the spires to the platforms
Design and build - LEDs/Logic:
Used Arduino pro mini ripoffs from Ebay, on protoyping board board (ebay), in boxes from Alibaba.
Capacitive touch pad is expanded copper mesh I had made in a factory in China through Alibaba, IP68 glands on the boxes protect the circuitry from water, screw terminals and bootlace ferrules connect wires in the boxes (I come from an industrial background obvs!)
The whole setup runs on 5V DC, each light module just gets 5v supply, no logic comms between units, which means modularity ease of programming etc.
Earthing Cap touch. Just do it. Get the GND rail of the PSU and sink a rod into the ground. Makes cap touch rock solid with no drift. All sorts of problems in the house but once we were on the grass - no issues
Simplicity: I like to make one unit first so I can plonk it in my living room and scale up later with multiple units. This also extends to not having too many connections between units
Access: Vivid was a nightmare to access the electronics, so at white night I broke out the programming serial port on each unit to a header pin set that was on the OUTSIDE of the light units. Can re-program / read diagnostics from the unit without even opening it
