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.