This year the Disorient Camp at Burning Man built a 7m tall pyramid with over half a kilometer of LED strips. Several artists developed patterns for the panels, including Disorient founder Leo Villareal and Jacob Joaquin from Fresno Idea Works. Update 9/11/13 6:49pm ET: Naim Busek wrote in with the following note – “The project was led by myself in collaboration with Leo Villareal. Would greatly appreciate if you my name to the project description information. More interesting details. After I designed the circuit boards and proved out the major components the project spanned both costs with major contributions from Crashspace and NYC Resistor (forming the core of the hackerspace “Hack Rock City” on playa).

The pyramid was visible from just about everywhere on the playa and served as a great beacon for finding the camp after a long night out.

At the heart of the Disorient Pyramid, a Panasonic Toughbook laptop drives the animations, connected over Ethernet to four BeagleBone Blacks running LEDscape, each in turn USB-tethered to four Teensy 3s, each with eight strands of pixels…16,000 LEDs total. There’s more at the NYC Resistor blog, including videos and all the juicy technical details (including software links).

Featured Guide: Adafruit NeoPixel Überguide

Since their introduction less than a year ago, the humble NeoPixel has exploded into more than a dozen different varieties and form-factors. There are so many tips, tricks and frequently-asked questions, we’ve now collected them into a single densely-packed destination: the Adafruit NeoPixel Überguide!