I want to buy, like, 100 of these interlocking motion-responsive LED modules from Evil Mad Science Laboratories and cover an entire wall in my house with them. Unfortunately I can’t afford to do so at the moment, either in terms of money for that many kits or in terms of time to solder the individual boards together.
(Sigh.)
Oh well, maybe one of you can do it and post some nice video so I can live vicariously.
Long-time readers might recall the original Interactive LED Dining Table, the infamous Interactive LED Coffee Tables, or the third-generation, not-very-creatively-named Interactive LED Panels. All of these surfaces were based on fully-analog circuitry with large circuit boards and a fairly high ratio of LEDs to sensors– typically 20:1.
Octolively, by contrast, is based on smaller, lower-cost circuit board modules, “only” 4×8 inches in size. Part of the reason for this is so that there’s more flexibility in making arbitrarily shaped arrays. Arrays can now be as skinny as 4″ wide, or as wide as you like.
Each module features 8 LEDs and 8 independent proximity sensors– one for each and every LED. The LEDs are (huge) 10 mm types, and that chip in the middle of the board is an (also huge) ATmega164 microcontroller. Each sensor consists of an infrared LED and phototransistor pair, which– together with polling and readout from the microcontroller –acts as reflective motion sensor. The LEDs are spaced on a 2-inch grid, and the edge connectors allow boards to be tiled seamlessly.
As of this writing, the Octolively costs $35 (with generous price breaks starting at 10 units) and will begin shipping from EMSL on Monday.
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