February 8, 2013 AT 5:16 pm
RGB LED Lighting Design for Ra Ra Riot
I spent the entire last month designing and building these LED lights for Ra Ra Riot’s US tour, check out some videos and build photos here! Uses nearly 125 meters of our Digital Addressable LED strips 
The set up consists of 12 LED poles, 3 LED boxes, and 8 DMX colorblast fixtures. LEDs are mounted behind frosted acrylic to diffuse the light evenly.
Each unit is operating from it’s own dedicated Arduino. At the helm of the Arduinos is an Adafruit FTDI Friend that communicates one way to all 16 at once. Each Arduino has its own internal address and receives 14 byte packets of data telling it what to do (rate, pattern, color, brightness).
All patterns are baked into the Arduino code- that way if there’s ever a serial disconnect, the lights will continue to run. In addition to the pattern data, the computer sends a heartbeat 10 times a second, insuring they stay in sync for patterns like color fading and strobing.
A processing sketch running on the computer controls everything, and is extended further to use an iPad for wireless control via touchOSC and oscP5. We are working on an update for a Lemur sketch to offer even more control.
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