Week 2 - The First Panel
Goal for the Week:
- Make and control a single LED panel in sync with music
Hardware/Mechanical Work:
We designed and constructed the mechanical structure of the panel. To make it easier to modularize, we laser cut several layers of MDF and acrylic material and stack up together to form hexagonal panels. We divided each panel into two layers: the top layer is covered with smoke acrylic and contains the LED strip inside, and the bottom layer contains the electrical parts necessary to drive the LED strip.
Software Work:
We first wrote the code so that an Mbed could drive the LED strips. This required communicating with the LED strips using a bit banging protocol. Once we were able to control the LED strips, we determined that we would want two Mbeds, one to take in the audio signal and determine the visual output (the main Mbed), and one to change the color of the LED strip (the slave Mbed). To do this, we wrote a communication protocol for the main Mbed to tell the slave Mbed what color to set the LED strip. This communication protocol was a similar bit banging protocol to the one used to drive the LED strip.
Results from this Week:
The result from this week is that we have a single fully operational panel which can light up in time with music. To demonstrate this result we have a video of the panel lighting up to the base in the song “Sail” by Awolnation: