Patternflow is an open-source LED synthesizer. Turn four knobs with your fingertips and shape a living, creative-coding pattern on a 128×64 LED matrix in real time. It's a contemporary reinterpretation of Nam June Paik's 1960s piece Participation TV — instead of watching the art, you make it.

The design stays minimal on purpose. It runs off a standard USB power bank, so there's nothing tethering it to a wall — pick it up and take it outside, to a jam session, wherever.

Build it your way 

There's more than one path in. Full guides exist for the 3D-printed enclosure with the custom PCB, a laser-cut enclosure version is in progress, and if you don't want to touch a PCB at all, there's a breadboard-and-jumper-wires guide that skips it entirely.

Try it before you build it

The browser-based Pattern Live Simulator runs the same four knobs the physical device has. Find something you like, and if you've got hardware on hand, flash it straight from the browser over Web Serial — no IDE, no drivers.

The globe

Share what you build in the Discord and a point gets added to a live globe on the site, one dot per creator, wherever they are. The goal isn't to sell a device. It's to cover that globe until there's no dark space left.

Why open source 

This started as a single post on r/arduino — 150K views, 3,700 upvotes, and far more people asking how to build one than how to buy one. Every part of it is open: schematics, firmware, 3D models, the pattern editor, the build guides themselves.

Where things stand

Hardware and firmware run reliably. Enclosure and PCB are being revised for manufacturing cost. 30+ patterns made and shared so far. Instagram gets a new pattern most days — if you build one and send a video of it running, I'll feature it as a collab post. Discord is active, people building and troubleshooting together. Crowd Supply pre-launch is open.