Sophi Kravitz Super excited to talk LEDs today- @Metalnat is hosting

Sophi Kravitz Metal- want to introduce yourself and tell us what kinds of stuff you work on?

Christoph good morning

Metalnat ok CAN DOOOOO!!! I'm Mr. Meeseeks... wait, not that

dKryPt @Metalnat :D nice

Sophi Kravitz :D

James Murphy Rick and Morty strick again.

Garrett Mace The crane was purty. I liked the inherent pun

Metalnat Name is Metal. I currently am a professional maker that builds new things on request. Be is cosplay lights, VR suspension rigs, or most recently escape rooms.

Metalnat oh yeah, and a giant origami style crane in the desert.

dKryPt so metal

Metalnat yep?

dKryPt i mean.. metal AF :)

Sophi Kravitz did the crane light up?

Sophi Kravitz I looked for pics but only found the one that's on the Hack Chat page

keeganolton Yeah can we see a photo of the Crane? I assume I saw it a few weeks ago

Sophi Kravitz https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/4102841506053845402.png

HACKADAY

Garrett Mace https://www.instagram.com/p/BXmvrebAlIr/

INSTAGRAM METALNATHAYEShttp://payload521.cargocollective.com/1/21/680934/12739880/amex_coachella-5_1920.jpg

Lalks Thanks for pics guys

Sophi Kravitz OMG WOOOOOOOOOW

keeganolton +1

Metalnat that would almost warrant a http://cs6.pikabu.ru/images/big_size_comm/2015-05_4/14318754543877.jpg

Shayna Beautiful!

Sophi Kravitz how many LEDs?

Metalnat thank's for the image assist

Richard Meister over 9000?

Boian Mitov very nice! :-)

Christoph what's with that flamingo to the right?

Metalnat So this beast had three Kinetic DMX hubs, each one you can set to it's address in the universe. and each one had 6 channels

Garrett Mace I've found that it's almost impossible to find images of your own stuff, gotta take your own pics if you want them. Self reliance :)

Metalnat I think I only installed 21 lights on this for that thing in the desert

Sophi Kravitz @Garrett Mace +1, also HI

Metalnat oh I have pictures......

Sophi Kravitz what were the 21 lights?

Garrett Mace o7 Sophi

keeganolton Do you ever use non-DMX/artnet controlled LEDs in your work?

Metalnat I think these are public. but all build process pics :

Metalnat https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6812886&sk=photos&collection_token=6812886%3A2305272732%3A69&set=a.10109917051181799.1073741854.6812886&type=3

Metalnat https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6812886&sk=photos&collection_token=6812886%3A2305272732%3A69&set=a.10109917885230359.1073741855.6812886&type=3

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6812886&sk=photos&collection_token=6812886%3A2305272732%3A69&set=a.10109918061197719.1073741856.6812886&type=3

Sophi Kravitz tell us more! what kinds of lights, control systems, installation?

Sophi Kravitz did it last the whole burn?

Metalnat I had to create 3 albums.... took a lot of build pics. like a week of building this guy.

Sophi Kravitz smart to take build photos

Garrett Mace Never underestimate the visual effect of a bunch of wash lights pointed at large areas of material. Not everything has to be pixels. Looked great!

Charlie Lindahl I've been dabbling (with my artist friend) in various wearables. We are currently concentrating on hats with NeoPixel flexible matrices on them.

Metalnat 

Metalnat So we started the build the Weds before the event. and most of it was the physical build. day one we put this together with nothing other than ratchet straps and questionable decisions

Charlie Lindahl Version 1 of hat (which worked for awhile until the internal wiring broke somehow) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberchuck2000/27711593124/in/album-72157664163740774/

Metalnat yeah I had many arguments with others about light placement. they wanted lights against the fabric. but with LED light coming out in a cone. that would have made everything very "sourcy" as a friend of mine says

Charlie Lindahl Version 2 (which I never got completely hooked up) made with plastic mesh on the inside @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberchuck2000/28680083180/in/album-72157664163740774/

Sophi Kravitz @Garrett Mace def done with pixels due to breakage

Metalnat so I started placing all DMX driven light packs at distances i could mount to and allow just enough overlap between spots to cover canvas

Charlie Lindahl Version 3 (in process) uses a "cowboy hard hat" as the base and an upside-down lampshade @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberchuck2000/37016807560/in/album-72157664163740774/

Charlie Lindahl Pixel matrix should be mounted this week.

Metalnat Charlie, how long did your batteries last for the hat?

Charlie Lindahl A problem though: when I attempted to hook up the Neopixel matrix none of my code worked; I tried to reuse the code I wrote for the Arduino Micro which is not produced any more.

Les Hall hey, just stopping by to say hi

Charlie Lindahl The batteries lasted for about 2 hours at least .. I usually didn't wear the hat contiguously longer than that.

Sophi Kravitz hi @Les Hall

Boian Mitov hi @Les Hall :-)

Les Hall ah, hello Sophi

Sophi Kravitz to stay on topic, I'm going to start with Qs on the sheet :)

Charlie Lindahl I used the Guggenhat project at Adafruit for the basic design, although I switched from a 4 meter LED strip to a flexible Neopixel Matrix (much easier to get aligned :-)).

Sophi Kravitz first Q is from Richard: Are there types of white LEDs that are specially designed for optical wireless communication?

Metalnat @Les Hall hi!

Garrett Mace My new staff worked until the power switch failed. I tore up a bunch of the electronics before thinking of checking the switch. Corrosive dust is not great for those

Les Hall hi back watch Metalnat

Metalnat white Leds. I have recently used IR to create an opto-isolator, but not white light. I do wonder as to why the specification for white lights

Richard Meister well, white is the color mostly used for ambient lighting

Metalnat I see a comment in the sheet for White being doped blues.

Sophi Kravitz If you're just joining us now, here's the sheet for discussion: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-ue_OKESdzLOzFADf_2aMd02IDFK3z3ha2TzEVEKbkA/edit#gid=0

Metalnat do we have a scenario for this question

Garrett Mace optical comms usually get free SNR boost by using narrow wavelength band

Richard Meister yep, I admit it's a rather special question...currently doing my final thesis on a related topic

Garrett Mace IR is easily filtered. white LED receiver would be susceptible to room lighting and sunlight

Sophi Kravitz yeah, none of the white LED receivers work in direct sun

Richard Meister room lighting is the actual scenario for me :)

Richard Meister room lighting + communication

Christoph you mean the room light communicates?

Garrett Mace have seen overhead lighting data comms done a number of years ago. never took off

Metalnat when it comes to data i stay as far away from noise as i can. so this is quite the puzzle to allow for white.

Sophi Kravitz I remember Scott Harris doing an optical communication over 20' at Maker Faire a few years back

Sophi Kravitz he was using red and blue light

Richard Meister sunlight is just a DC offset easily filtered out

Metalnat I was once sent a video from a walk in at the makerspace asking to work on Light Canceling LEDs. for selective shading

Garrett Mace surreptitious data exfiltration?

Metalnat that was a most interesting discussion

Sophi Kravitz ok- moving on, next q: What is the process to get custom leds made? Ie, can you get RGB style leds with different diodes? How so?

Garrett Mace Jameco once held a contest to see who could try to solve a question a customer asked about how to find a "dark laser"

Garrett Mace it was not april

Sophi Kravitz what's a dark laser?

Garrett Mace http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/challenge/jameco-invention-challenge.html

JAMECO

Jameco Invention Challenge

Marshall is looking for help from the Jameco community on how to go about designing such a product.

Read this on Jameco >

Garrett Mace The best solution was a stick

Richard Meister I only know "dark" visible light communication: ultra low pwm dutycyle and modulation of the on phases

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~xia/papers/hotmobile16-darkvlc.pdf

Metalnat custom lights. this is something I've never had done. at least small scale. Like i have for clients made circuit boards with specific lights. using discrete components. Like instead of RGBW lets say client wants RGB(IR). then thats a board we can have spun and populated. If we are talking about having IC level component made. I'm more curious about the process now myself

Metalnat RGB(UV) that could be a lot of fun. someone make that please

ZiggyInKC why not (IR)RGB(UV) and get the full fun spectrum?

Metalnat @ZiggyInKC that's madness! the world is not ready for such things

Garrett Mace I have quoted out for custom leadframes / packages / LED dies and in general you can get started for about $50k

Metalnat but if I find something like that on Tindie I'm getting it

Metalnat where did you get your quote?

Garrett Mace APA Electronics

Metalnat and.... noted. thanks

Garrett Mace They are open to discussing it (or were a year or so ago)

Garrett Mace I wanted an addressable 2x2mm LED. they said they were already working on one :)

Garrett Mace sent me some prototypes

Sophi Kravitz $50k!!!!!

MCenderdragon @Garrett Mace what abou wave canceling but with Light waves? There are alot of devices useing this to cancle sound noises, the same should be possible for light. I guess the only problem is the wide spectum of visible light. Lasers have only one wavelength and to cancel light out they have to match in nm.

Metalnat of course. any idea a person can mention, is already being worked on. it's like magic or somethin

Garrett Mace Ah yeah that was in 2015. So they might be able to do a custom package with other LED colors. Easiest if the package already exists. The $50k was to have a new leadframe tooled

Sophi Kravitz alright- moving on. @Metalnat you have a shoutout: This isn't a question per se, but just wanted to give Metal a shoutout for helping with our robot Field Test last year at the SuperCon. Thanks for the positive attitude and capturing the moments! *thumbs up*

Metalnat 50k buy-in is steep

Sophi Kravitz that's from @Erin RobotGrrl :)

Metalnat Oh yeah i saw that. made me happy. hard to think it's been a year already

Sophi Kravitz Next q is from @kevin: How do you use an LED as a light sensor?

Garrett Mace @Metalnat I didn't think it was that steep. I didn't buy it of course. but I buy pixels 14,000 at a time from APA

Metalnat so much fun, I recommend anyone go that can.

Sophi Kravitz Sorry, that is @Kevin P. Hannan

Erin RobotGrrl @Metalnat :)

Metalnat LED's as a sensor. so cool thing about leds is that when light is through at them, they generate energy in reverse polarity. but nearly no current

Metalnat take the IR opto isolator i made

Metalnat 

Metalnat i used an in line fuse holder.

Metalnat ir light source from one board with resistor is series.

Metalnat then on another board i used the IR receiver as part of a 10k voltage devider, like how one might wire up a button

Metalnat the fun thing about the receiver is that i have to wire the long lead to the - instead of the + side.

Frank Buss would be easier to use one of these opto isolator ICs

Audi McAvoy Unless you needed the disconnect. That's a cool idea.

Frank Buss this would be just a electrical switch on one side

Garrett Mace it's like an incredibly low performance TOSLINK haha

Metalnat one might think so. but I had to make something that could do a quick connect and disconnect seeing as how the two halves of the project were to be taken apart and loaded on the semi for comic-con New York

Metalnat I spend so much more time planning out usability with humans than i ever spend on circuits or components.

Garrett Mace true that

Metalnat people man... people.

Garrett Mace if only people didn't breathe, sweat, touch things, or move

Sophi Kravitz haha WORD

Metalnat that escalated quickly. imagine, all people as stagnant robots. taking selfies

Andrew Kowalczyk If you make displays for kids you figure out how they break, it's great

morganrallen oh yeah

MCenderdragon with selfie sticks and rotate constanly around themselfs...

Metalnat i always wondered how kids see everything as a climbing gym.. then i went to burning man....

Garrett Mace if we ever put together a Mars team give me everyone who builds things for a children's museum

Metalnat i think it's a scale threshold

Metalnat @Garrett Mace nothing built will ever break.

morganrallen I learned quickly to glue everything down and remove "gripable" edges everywhere possible

Sophi Kravitz ok- we're going to have a Hack Chat about making stuff for people

Sophi Kravitz ping me if you want to host

Sophi Kravitz :D

Metalnat :)

Les Hall hi again

Metalnat profanities allowed right?

Sophi Kravitz next question is from @Kathy Giori : I'm teaching 7th graders to program a star pattern of 7 neopixels (one center, 6 around it). What example Neopixel programs might you have to recommend?

Sophi Kravitz (moving on)

Kathy Giori the less complex the better...

Metalnat So when i teach i at makerspaces, regardless of age. I start with demo.

Metalnat and teach the art of comments

Leonardo Zuniga Hi Metal! I couldn't come earlier 😅

Metalnat then we comment everything except wipe

Sophi Kravitz #ArtOfComments

Sophi Kravitz lol

Metalnat no prob Leo

Metalnat then I have them look into the setPixelColor inside of wipe

Garrett Mace Make sure they understand the comments are just notes, and not plain english telling the microcontroller what to do :|

Metalnat there we se a setPixelAt type of function. and with that we learn indexes

Kathy Giori They like the patterns where the intensity grows and fades.

Metalnat from there, we have the discussion of wiring parallel vs. series.

Metalnat @Kathy Giori in that case, the for loop of (0-255) brightness, or color value is next. and that almost always gets asked. so plan on that being the next bit of code students write

Metalnat making sure to have them first put the strip.show() outside the loop first.

Metalnat ask why they think it isn;t working

Metalnat then place inside loop with delay() so they understand the importance of nesting instructions appropriately

Kathy Giori great -- I'll try these tips next week

Garrett Mace I really like using the FastLED library on the RGB Shades, because not only does it handle addressable strip stuff, it comes with a huge amount of 8-bit color manipulation and overflow-safe 8 bit math functions (like trig and ramp functions)

Metalnat I could write a book on teaching maker classes and the thought process on building upon common understanding. so feel free to ask anything

Kathy Giori @Garrett Mace I've tried FastLED too, but this is just 7 LEDs, not in a sequentially indexed pattern. so breaking down the functions is needed for them to see what's really going on. @Metalnat - I would be happy to use your book. :)

Metalnat most of the fastLED examples don't emiediately translate to english for the new programming. and the moment, you hit a roadblock in understaing, the students shut down from taking in new info. so that's saved always for a later talk once students feel confident with neopixel

Jordan Bunker maybe you *should* write one! I'd definitely read it

Charlie Lindahl I'd read it (and buy it) too!

Sophi Kravitz We're going to wrap up in a few minutes so I'll pull out 2 more qs: what do you consider your favorite LED focused artwork/build/piece, and what qualities make it stand out

Metalnat noted. On a related note. I've finally ordered lights and Mic so i can start filing education stuffs so woot for that

Metalnat oh gosh, my favorite.... so large audience base i would say the coachella piece i did with VT (just a solder monkey on that job) but it was a great presentation that was just beautiful

Sophi Kravitz @Andrew Kowalczyk we will save your question for the Making Stuff that Doesn't Break Hack Chat

Sophi Kravitz pictures?

Metalnat I'll look for image real quick

Andrew Kowalczyk Cool Thanks!

Andrew Kowalczyk 

Aaron Oppenheimer 

Andrew Kowalczyk If anyone is curious as to what my question was about lol

Metalnat http://payload521.cargocollective.com/1/21/680934/12739880/amex_coachella-5_1920.jpg

CARGOCOLLECTIVE

Aaron Oppenheimer my favorite LED art piece was the tree of tenere, which made its debut on the playa at burning man this year

Sophi Kravitz There were pics of the Tree of Tenere everywhere

Charlie Lindahl very nice. Did you happen to capture it in 360?

Les Hall @Metalnat I had this notion that we could get real time human body info encoded into LEDs placed around the body and sense the data with a few video cameras. Is this novel or not?

Aaron Oppenheimer Yes, I work at the company that designed and engineered it, Symmetry Labs

James Murphy Really Nice!

Metalnat but hands down, my favorite LED project of all time is still the Steggo hoody. It was my first dive into arduino. and first colaboration project at crashapce with Pinner. it was my entrance into the maker world andi love everything about it

Aaron Oppenheimer There's a link to the website on my hackaday profile!

Aaron Oppenheimer we have some drone tree footage on it

Metalnat https://hackaday.io/project/41-led-stegosaurus-spikes

HACKADAY

LED Stegosaurus Spikes

2012 project with Matt Pinner: Arduino driven addressable RGB LED's  using the WS2801 library.   Uniform bases designed to allow for clip in design for this specific led and then slots modeled out for cable management. Then there were several spike sizes designed so people can choose which ones they need for their projects.

Sophi Kravitz is @mpinner here?

Garrett Mace @Metalnat I remember that hoodie, it was really cool

Metalnat that tree was beautifu

Metalnat l

Aaron Oppenheimer https://hackaday.io/page/3879-symmetry-labs-stellar-lighting-software

HACKADAY

Symmetry Labs Stellar Lighting Software | Hackaday.io

Hi, my name is Aaron Oppenheimer, and I am a software engineer at Symmetry Labs. We mainly do audiovisual LED installations for events (live performances, music festivals, corporate events), and recently designed and engineered the tree of tenere, the largest LED art piece on the playa at burning man this year.

Metalnat @Garrett Mace thanks

Metalnat I don't think pinner is here at the moment

Sophi Kravitz @mpinner and @Adelle Lin have a new version of that hoodie

Sophi Kravitz Last q is from @Audi McAvoy : What LEDs are recommended for ambient (multi-colored) outdoor lighting? Patio, soffit, etc.

Les Hall oh i should type that into the document

Metalnat @Sophi Kravitz yes, they made a set/design that's far less "stabby" than the original. we learned a lot in testing with people that give hugs

Metalnat lights for ambient lighting.

Garrett Mace i did a fiber optic version (for some reason have no photo of the finished thing) https://imgur.com/ZeIeg3M

Metalnat hmmm. I have used so much of the ws2812 strip, (miles maybe) and the real puzzle was not even in the lighting itself, but in the diffusion material and distance from the led course. managing that made a world of difference,

Audi McAvoy No concerns of weather, temp extremes, etc.

Sophi Kravitz Before we wrap:

Thanks for showing us your projects :: @Aaron Oppenheimer and @Charlie Lindahl!

We'll do a followup Hack Chat about LED software design with @Aaron from Symmetry Labs and another followup Hack Chat about designing for humans/ stuff that doesn't break.

And if you'd like to host a Hack Chat, ping me sophi@hackaday.com

Garrett Mace For outdoor lighting the main rule is probably no direct view of pixels

Metalnat for the coachella project we actually used a smokey black for the walls, ceiling, and floor. but the for palm trees and mountains, it was fiberglass with a reflective paint on outside surface to bounce light back into fiverglass

Metalnat the paper lantern look does wonders for diffused installs.

Audi McAvoy Nice.

Aaron Oppenheimer Thanks for putting this on, @Sophi Kravitz

Metalnat also just acrylic and sandpaper.

Metalnat @Sophi Kravitz you rock!

Jordan Bunker Thanks @Metalnat !

Audi McAvoy Thanks for the tips @Metalnat and @Garrett Mace

Sophi Kravitz Thank you @Metalnat, that was a really great chat :)

Shayna Thanks @Metalnat !

Metalnat thanks all. this was a lot of fun. let's do it again sometime.