Big Pixel – process

see here for older Big Pixel progress links.

Jack and I have continued work with our light fixture, aka Byte Light.

We have soldered 50 red, 50 blue, and 50 green 10 mm superbright LED lights each to three plexiglass rods, which will each represent one of the R, G, and B lines in our LCD pixel representation. Each LED needs 20 mA, and between 2-4 V, depending on the color. Therefore, we need an external power supply that goes up to around 3 Amps (when every switch is on). We will encompass each colored LED rod with frosted paper, and encase the three in a square plexiglass box that will shine light downwards on the user, who will be manipulating the 24 switches on the wall.

Our circuit consists of two multiplexors as input from the 24 light switches. Then the arduino takes the binary input and translates it into byte values (0-255) for R, G and B values, and using three transistors, we will alter the brightness of each R, G, and B light rod.