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Author Topic: Light up disco dance floor?  (Read 4058 times)

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angryadmin

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Light up disco dance floor?
« on: June 01, 2005, 09:42:34 pm »
Inspired by a group of MIT engineers( http://web.mit.edu/storborg/ddf/ ) I Think I can do this (with alot of your help), I have the tools/space/budget as well as basic electronic knowledge. I want to design/build a 10 foot by 10 foot dance floor, made up of 6 inch squares, the actual floor is easy, wood/opaque plexi, but the lighting is a different matter entirely, my first goals are not extremely ambitious, I would like to place 3 leds in each square (red/blue/green), and simply have random colors and patterns. I can dedicate a PC to controlling it if need be that is not a problem, so 1200 leds, now what? suggestions??

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2005, 09:47:03 pm »
suggestion ? Get to it...
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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2005, 11:14:08 pm »
How much of a budget do you have?

I do stuff with stage/club/concert lighting, and I may be able to help.
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angryadmin

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2005, 02:10:22 am »
Budget is really flexible, I would like to keep it under $1000 for the electronics. But I would be willing to pay more for more functionality.

ErikRuud

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2005, 10:18:42 am »
Those guys at MIT used custom boards with microcontrollers to control the lights, you might want to consider the Phidgets LED64 board. 
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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #5 on: June 02, 2005, 11:09:29 am »
Sounds like a fun project. The only thing that strikes me is that 6" is a little small for a lit dancefloor. That might be a good thing though since you'll be able to program more interesting chase patterns that way. Program patterns for a chomping pacman or a marching space invader! 8)

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #6 on: June 02, 2005, 12:47:53 pm »
the actual floor is easy, wood/opaque plexi

I'm sure you mean translucent plexi. Opaque wouldn't allow any light at all to show through. ;)

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angryadmin

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #7 on: June 02, 2005, 01:44:04 pm »
"I'm sure you mean translucent plexi. "

Listen to what I mean and not what I say!  ;D

angryadmin

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #8 on: June 02, 2005, 02:29:30 pm »
The Phidgets LED64 may be a solution, hmmm. Thinking out loud..

 I would need 19 of them, and would somehow need the program to address each group of three leds as a pixel. Then it would merely be a task of displaying images.... hmmmm, I was sure there would be an existing solution that merely needed tweaking...  but this could work...

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #9 on: June 02, 2005, 03:48:05 pm »
Quote from the website "...best parties ever!".  LOL, at MIT I highly doubt that any party there is or ever has been the best party ever.  It is awesome looking though.
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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #10 on: June 02, 2005, 04:28:11 pm »
you would need to program a plug in for your media player (such as winamp) to drive the led display patterns

hmmm i'm sure the girls at MIT have great personalities  ;)

obviously having a flashy dance floor will not improve your dance moves  ;D
« Last Edit: June 02, 2005, 04:30:50 pm by rchadd »

rchadd

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #11 on: June 02, 2005, 04:35:11 pm »
the actual floor is easy, wood/opaque plexi

I'm sure you mean translucent plexi. Opaque wouldn't allow any light at all to show through. ;)

-S

looks its like the milky white plexi like I used for lighting the cps in my pacman cocktail cab

then again it might be just a blurry photo

Stingray

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #12 on: June 02, 2005, 04:35:51 pm »

obviously having a flashy dance floor will not improve your dance moves  ;D

I refuse to believe that this is true! Say it ain't so!

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #13 on: June 02, 2005, 05:10:37 pm »
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angryadmin

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #14 on: June 29, 2005, 04:30:16 am »
Alright how would I go about simply having the leds light with random colors? That would be the most basic operation of the floor.

NH

StephenH

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Re: Light up disco dance floor?
« Reply #15 on: July 03, 2005, 10:26:05 pm »
If you used LEDs or Lamps, and had a red, green, and blue element for each square, you could easily set it up to generate random colors, by making lights light up at different intensities depending on the color. 

All Off = Black
Red + Green = Yellow
Green + Blue = Cyan
Red + Blue = Magenta
Red + Green + Blue = White
Red at Full, plus Green at half = Orange
Red at Full + Green + Blue at 3/4 brightness = Pink
Green at full + Blue at half = Bluish Green
Red+Blue+Green at half = Grey

and so on!