Branden has been working hard in the past few weeks to finish the LED grid assembly. All of the boards are together now, and things are (mostly) working. Here’s a quick video of the board in action, and connected to Processing on the laptop.
(Sorry for the whiny cat in the background. Yes, she is like that all the time…)
https://youtu.be/Pmkr1MUVzhc
The board has 225 multicolor LEDs, which are controlled from Processing running on the laptop. There is also an IR LED/sensor pair for each of the visible lights, which acts as a touch sensor to detect my hand hovering above the board.
When the touch sensors are activated, the board updates an array in Processing, and the “pixels” light up on the laptop screen.
I haven’t really gotten into the real board programming yet, but I put in a simple bouncing-box routine to play with for now. When the board is touched, the bouncing box changes its location to the pixel that was activated, and then continues on its merry way.
There will be lots of interaction design and routine programming to do once the board is ready…it’s exciting that it’s getting close!