One of the characteristics we wanted to do with the Deep that we didn't have enough time last year to do was to make the jellyfish reactive, you know, like a real jellyfish. So, for this year, among many many other improvements, I've been working on a circuit that has more biological behaviour.

The BOM is an arduino compatible boarduino, from adafruit, https://www.adafruit.com/products/72, a neopixel RGB strip that uses the neopixel LED strip, https://www.adafruit.com/products/2832, and a cheap ass pir sensor from ebay. Note to anyone who's attempting this, the RGB strip draws a lot more power out of the boarduino, whether from the USB (which you shouldn't be using), or an independent power supply! Because of that, the pir sensor wasn't picking up and the digital port it was attached to kept flashing high, triggering the program code. To fix this, I attached a 3V source to the pir sensor, using this information: http://techgurka.blogspot.com/2013/05.... Now the circuit works perfectly. Also, instead of arduino, which I used to rapid prototype, I'm moving to the msp430g2553 instead for its low power characteristics.

You can see LED color pattern is similar to a comb jellyfish, like this

Using the pir sensor, we can start approximating some of the jellyfish's reactive characteristics, in this case to movement/light. Circuit design and code to be put up shortly.