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Monday, June 21, 2010

Fredrik Petrini » “Swarm Light”

"Swarm Light"

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About a month ago I was contracted by a design studio in London (rAndom International) to work on a very interesting project.

rAndom International was working on an experimental light installation called "Swarm Light" which were to be shown at the Art Basel design exhibition.

More images and video of the installation can be found here.

My part of the project was to implement a part of the control software, specifically a bridge between Ethernet and the LED modules.

The Cubes

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The installation consists of three huge LED cubes hanging from the ceiling. Each of the three cubes consists of 1000 LED modules, with tree LEDs each, organized in a 3D grid measuring 81 x 81 x 81 cm.

Controlling the intensity of 9000 LEDs is a tricky problem to solve. If you were to run wires to each LED all you would see is a huge rat's nest of ugly wires…

The problem was cleverly solved by rAndom International by putting a microcontroller on each of the LED modules and using the structural assembly of the cube to route power and control signals to the modules.


Read more and see Videos...
http://petrinis.se/blog/swarm-light/

Don

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