Homepage Article!

The Balluminescence exhibits in the BSLC are now over. A big thanks to everyone who helped outand made the project a real success!

An article about the project was featured on the homepage of the University of Chicago! Check it out here: http://www.uchicago.edu/features/20090615_balluminescence.shtml

Second Sculpture!

Working in the BSLC now on the second sculpture. It's going to be awesome. Will be ready June 1st. Check it out.

Sculpture Construction this weekend!

Hello everyone,
We will be installing the first Balluminescence sculpture in the BSLC starting the Friday at 5:30 pm. Work will continue through Saturday and we plan to have the sculpture completely finished by Sunday evening. Lots of help will be needed to make this project happen (especially on Sunday evening to lift the sculpture into place!), so stop by sometime this weekend to lend a hand. We will be in the basement of the BSLC where the computers are. There will be two construction processes going on simultaneously - the electronics and the balloons. You don't need to have experience with either balloons or electronics and we will need help with both.

Below is a tentative schedule of the construction process this weekend:

Friday April 17
5:30 pm to 7 pm: Meet in basement of BSLC. Build 4 8x8 LED grids. Lots of help will be needed for this part. To see an example of what we'll be doing, check out this video.
7 pm - 8 pm: Pizza. If you want some pizza, please let me know that you'll be present. We will be splitting the cost of the pizza amongst us.
8 pm - 12 am: Finish LED grids. Build part of balloon sculpture.


Saturday April 18
9 am to 2 pm: Build balloon sculpture.
2 pm to 4 pm: Insert LED grids into balloons. Power up everything to make sure it's working.
4 pm to 12 am: Build balloon sculpture


Sunday April 19
12 pm to 6 pm: build balloon sculpture.
6 pm to 8 pm: Lift balloon sculpture into place and secure it. Lots of help needed.
I hope to see you all sometime this weekend.

Chyrs,
Willy

LED grid video

Video of our working 8x8 LED grid:

A Minor Triumph

The pace of our blogging may have slowed, but we've been hard at work. Since our last entry we have:

• Significantly expanded our circle of active contributors (bios soon available on the main site)
  
• Made at least one major design change that will save us thousands of dollars (read: make the project financially feasible)
• Made good use of the wisdom and equipment in the physics department
• Created our first 8x8 grid!

This last point is the focus of today's entry, and it's pretty awesome. We have an 8x8 matrix of individually addressed LEDs, under the control of an Arduino and a Max7219 chip. We found some code to control it, and, as before, gave the whole system a triggering switch like we'll be using for the real sculptures.

Although there are a few technical barriers left, this was a huge step. We've essentially demonstrated proof-of-concept for the design, and one of the hardest things is now behind us. Our next goal is to get several of these 7219s working in a coordinated fashion, since our present plans call for using four at a time in the sculptures.

Pictures are on their way!

Experimental Balloon Sculpture

Built a small balloon sculpture to experiment with different twisting techniques. Didn't really have anything in mind when I started. Here's the result of about 3 hours of work.

Day Two

Here you see the fruits of our labor. Willy and I started the day by letting the magic smoke out of an LED, but it would seem that our burnt offering (a blown out diode) appeased the electronics gods and we ended up making significant progress.

I eventually decided that it might be to our advantage to, you know, *learn* something about how electronics work. Thanks to this excellent tutorial I was able to get a simple two element charlieplexed circuit up and running.


Our confidence restored, Willy and I went on a shopping expedition. We returned toting electronic components, Red Bull, and a fancy pair of wire strippers. After a little bit of frustration we got a six element charlieplexed circuit all breadboarded up. I wrote some code to control it all and we capped off the night by giving the whole mess an on/off switch!

First Arduino Session

Yesterday, Colin and I got together on my back porch to figure out how to use an arduino to control a bunch of LEDs. Connecting the LEDs was actually kind of tricky. We managed to put together two 3X3 planes of LEDs. Progress a little slow, but should pick up soon.