Process

Christopher Brown

The project started simply as a box with lights that flashed to music.  The first step was to get the LEDs to flash to music.  The actual LED sleeve was an old project at NuVu that was incomplete.  An Arduino was used to manage the LEDs.  To make the LEDs flash a program called Max was used.  Max analyzes the music played on a computer and sends data to the Arduino.  The only problem was it was supposed to be wireless, but the Arduino had to be plugged into a computer.  To solve this problem I attempted to use a Raspberry Pi.  There were even more problems with that.  Max is not available on linux, so we had to find an alternative way to control the LEDs.  Controlling LEDs with a Raspberry Pi is a lot harder than an Arduino.

To use the LED with the Raspberry Pi a Python script was downloaded.  The Python script would have had everything that was needed, but it did not work.  Eventually the Raspberry Pi Idea was scrapped.  Although the Arduino had to be plugged into a computer, you could change the colors wirelessly.  A site called Onion.io was used to interact with the Arduino over the internet.  

Because the Arduino had to be plugged in, the next step would be able to make the LED sleeve wireless. This was never accomplished during the studio because failing to use the raspberry pi took a lot of time. This could be done by creating a virtual serial port on the Arduino and having Max send the data there. Unfortunately there was no time left in the studio to implement this.