Interactive Show Preview: “Touchy Blinky”

Here’s a quick look at Uriel Guy’s “Touchy Blinky”, which will be at this year’s Interactive Show.

Get tickets before they sell out!

I pepper Uriel with questions and get into the technical details after the break..

JD: What motivated you to build “Touchy Blinky”?

UG: I built it because I wanted to make an interactive experience with lights for Burning Man related events (hopefully for Burning Man itself next year). In the meanwhile it will probably go with me to transfromus this year.

JD: Can you share some technical details?

UG: I can tell you the whole thing uses addressable LEDs, and is powered by 16 atmega8 micros (one per column) and a esp8266 to control the whole panel. Hopefully in a few days it will also have sound.

JD: I’m guessing the LEDs are WS2812 strips? How does the touch interface work?

UG: LEDs are WS2812. Touch interface is actually physical buttons. I wanted this thing to have lots of action, and people actually pushing big mechanical things. Makes it more interactive IMHO. Theres an atmega8 for each column reading the buttons, and they’re all Daisy chained from/to the main controller (the esp8266).

JD: Fair warning on sound, the party will be LOUD and there will be DJs so it will be unlikely that anyone will be able to hear it without headphones. But cool, how does the sound interact with the visuals? How will you be generating the sound?

UG: For the sound I’m going to have a Windows tablet managing that. The components communicate over a dedicated wifi network. Original idea was to make a drum sequencer that people can make their own drum loops with, and the rest of the stuff is a bonus. For other stuff it’s just sound effects or background music/sound.

UG: I’m attaching some photos of less assembled versions.