Planet Arduino

Instructables user “r570sv” needed a marker to find his way back to camp at Burning Man 2018, and decided to make a trio of LED dancing robots that could be raised high up on a pole. The idea is that he could see this from anywhere in the desert, making it great for this particular event—and perhaps for later expeditions, such as beach camping.

The robots were bent out of 1/8” steel wire, with single-color red LED strips affixed to it using zip ties. Three robotic panels are sequentially lit up using an Arduino and a bank of relays to form animations, similar to a neon sign. The flagpole used to raise the animated sculpture was affixed to his truck, creating a sturdy base as well as convenient source of 12V power.

I wanted to make something so I could find our camp at night at Burning Man 2018. 2018 was a robot theme and I’m a fan of neon but no way was gonna head that route so I came up with an idea about a dancing cocktail glass kinda robot.

We beach camp and have sand rails so I know how useful flying some kind of flag can be during the day and some kind of LED light pole is at night. So I figured, use it an burning man and keep using when we go to the beach.

So using metal and welding is in my wheel house and I’m good with Arduinos so that’s the medium that I chose to implement this project in.

[Chris] and his friends were kicking around ideas for a Burning Man project, and this is the one that stuck: a rock climbing wall with RGB LEDs embedded in the holds. The holds themselves were custom made; the group started by making silicone molds of varying shapes and sizes, then added the electronics and poured in polyurethane resin to create the casting. The boards for these LEDs are equipped with a central hole that pairs up with a peg in the silicone mold. [Chris] also solved an annoying spinning problem by affixing a bolt to the far end of the LED board: once embedded in the polyurethane, the bolt provides resistance that the thin board cannot. The finished holds bolt onto the wall with all their wires neatly sticking out of the back to be hooked up to a central controller.

The Instrucables page suggests a few ways to get the lights working, including grabbing the nearest Arduino and relying on the Neopixel Library from Adafruit. [Chris] went the extra mile for Burning Man, however, designing Arduino-software-compatible controller boards capable of communicating via DMX, which expanded the system from a simple display to one capable of more complex lighting control. Stop by the Github for schematics and PCB layouts, and stick around for a video of the wall after the break. If the thrill-seeking outdoorsman inside you yearns for more, check out WALL-O-TRON from earlier this summer.