Minecraft Player Status

Mark Fickett made some cool light up avatars to indicate when players log on and off of his Minecraft server.

When a player logs into my Minecraft server, the associated folded paper avatar lights up: blue-green as they log in, white while they’re online, red just after they sign off.

A Python script queries a Minecraft server for player status, then sends a list of online players to the Teensy. The Teensy runs an Arduino sketch that translates the list of names to output pin settings, controlling the LEDs.  You can find the code for the project on Github.

 

Tesla Coil Winder

Jeff Parisse made a Tesla coil winder.  Inspired by the winder made by Jeff Rosowski, Jeff Parisse ported the code to run on a Teensy.

This high resolution Tesla coil winder shown here winding 140um wire in a single layer. The code runs on a fast 32bit processor (Teensy 3.2) switching Pololu motor drivers in 16th steps giving 6400 steps per revolution and 800 per mm. Need a robot?

This high resolution Tesla coil winder shown here winding 140um wire in a single layer. The code runs on a fast 32bit processor (Teensy 3.2) switching Pololu motor drivers in 16th steps giving 6400 steps per revolution and 800 per mm. Need a robot?

You kind find the code on this forum post.

 

Shadow Wall Art Installation

Natalia Galin created an interactive art installation that inverts the usual concept of shadows being cast as black silhouettes during the day and turns them into a blaze of color at night, mirroring the movements of people passing by.

Shadow Wall is a 180 x 120 LED display for Sydney’s Vivid Festival of Light.

Natalia and team ported the code to Python in order to access the full suite of Open CV functionality.  They also sped up the serial data transfer.  Their code can be found on GitHub.

 

 

Video of the wall in action

Budget BarBot

David Hopkins built his own BarBot for dispensing cocktails (on a budget)

With this cool contraption you can pour cocktails with a touch of a button.  It has a single pump with multiple clamped valves that can be configured to pour multiple recipes that are stored on an SD card. It also features a cleaning cycle so that once you are done with serving, you can flush the system leaving it ready for the next use.

This video shows the BarBot in action

Star Catcher – Cooperative Physical VR Game

Adelle Lin and Matt Pinner built Star Catcher, a  cooperative virtual reality game, installed at Play NYC.

 

Players with nets move around the universe catching falling stars from the glowing ceiling. With each star caught, a new star is added to a constellation in our sky. These luminous Falling Stars have a romantic relationship with us on earth. Catching them has fun, playful, hopeful, and energetic effects.

The stars are suspended from the ceiling from strips of LEDs, each with a traveling light that represents a falling star.  Players hold a net with a location tracker installed that they use to catch the falling stars.  A projector is used to project a galaxy on the wall which is slowly filled with constellations as stars are caught.

Ornament & Crime Synthesizer Module

Ornament & Crime (Patrick Dowling (aka pld), Max Stadler (aka mxmxmx) and Tim Churches (aka bennelong.bicyclist)) developed an open-source polymorphic CV generator.

This module is packed with both hardware and software features. The Ornament & Crime web site has great information on how to build your own as well as documentation on the firmware available.  You can find the software and hardware details on GitHub.

While you can’t buy a completed module, you can get a kit from SynthCube.

This video, published by Synth DIY Guy, gives a great review on building the module himself.

In this video Voltage Control Lab you can see the module in action.

 

Moe’s Phone

Eric Betts was inspired to help decorate a Simpson’s inspired drink station at his office so he created Moe’s Phone – a modified 90’s (or maybe 80’s) era phone that plays Bart Simpson’s prank calls each time the receiver is lifted.

Picking up the receiver plays a dial tone, followed by the dialing of the phone number for Moe’s (it sounds like someone hit the ‘redial’ button). Finally, a random clip starts playing. You can hang up at any time to stop the clip, and the line goes dead when the clip finishes. Small touches like that added a lot to the experience.

You can find the code for the project on GitHub.

SeaGrass Art Installation

Mauricio Bustos was part of a team that built seaGrass, an interactive LED sculpture.

This beautiful, interactive sculpture has 30 30′ illuminated towers.  Each platform structure has a Teensy that is used to read capacitive touch elements that were used as inputs to change the light patterns.  There are 50 addressable LEDs in each tower structure surrounded by a diffusion shroud to make the lights appear as a continuous light band

 

This video shows seaGrass at BurningMan.

The electronics that create the magic of seaGrass.

You can follow the project on the LumenEssence Facebook page.