I’ve been working on this reactive table project for a while, but haven’t posted much here yet. So, here’s a video of the table running @kriegsman 's confetti. It’s magical!
The surface consists of 61 LED rings (with 12 ws2812s per ring), and each ring has an IR sensor surrounded by IR emitters. Building it is straight forward, but kind of mind-numbing. I’m working on an instructable with the details.
That looks amazing! Looking forward to seeing more details!
That looks super slick! Great interactivity!
Looking forward to seeing more in your instructable.
That’s awesome!
Chapeau ! Please let us know when your Instructables are online.
Spectacular! So creative! I too am looking forward to seeing your Instructables write up along with the code.
That is truly amazing!! Look for to instructable!
WOW. That’s amazing! What are the IR emitters used for?
I’m guessing to send signal to be bounced back to ir receiver. I’m looking forward to instructable. Analog inputs for each one or some sort of multiplexed time sliced reading or does each have a little electronics to create a digital signal… how long do I have to wait 
@Ryan_Cush The IR emitters shine infrared light up, which bounces off your hand (or whatever is in front), and is detected by the IR receivers. They sell the diodes in matching sets (typically, 940nm wavelength). Here’s an example:
Depending on how many of those pairs of IR emitters/receivers were used, I’m imagining many hours of soldering and lots of extra wires involved!
Did you have to do anything to prevent the IR signals from being detected directly from the emitters? When they turn on wouldn’t some of the IR travel laterally which might get picked up by the receivers? I really like what you did here and am considering adding it to a project, but wanted to ask you about this first.
@James_Callahan I did not do anything special, although I do have a calibration phase at startup. I’ve seen some people wrap a bit of black tape around the IR sensor, but mainly in configurations where the emitters are right next to the sensor. In my setup, the emitters are scattered over the surface, and the sensors are in the middle of each ring. You might be able to see that in the video. Both the sensors and emitters that I am using have a fairly narrow viewing angle.
@James_Callahan Here is the basic circuit for a single “cell” of the table. There are six emitters around the edge, and one sensor in the middle. The WS2812 ring sits in the middle, surrounding the sensor.
missing/deleted image from Google+
Analog input for each receiver ?
@Gibbedy_G Yes. And yes, it is a whole lotta wires. I use an analog MUX to select which one I’m reading. Four of these things (4 * 16 channels gives me 64 analog inputs)
This is so cool! Thanks for sharing. It’s amazing what people can come up with to utilize FastLED.
Amazing! Great idea to make a matrix of neopixel rings!
@Sam_Guyer cool. Cheapest way todo it I suppose.
Very cool. I look forward to your instructable. (Heads to AliExpress, looking for IR sensors/emitters).
