(fly)light: The project formerly known as PoC

Posted Sun, Jan 9, 2005 at 11:22 PM

Considering that I'm much more of a Net Art type of person, it's strange how expensive everything becomes when it's not web-based.

If you can believe it, I am now the proud owner of 1,000 green, stubby, 5mm LEDs. Does that sound like a hell of a lot of LEDs? Well, it turns out that it really isn't.

When I bought the first batch of LEDs (500 of them), I discovered that they really don't cover a lot of ground. In a loosely spaced matrix, I estimated that I could really only get about 12" x 12". Active Surplus has a pretty good price on the ones I bought (10 for $1) but I think 10,000 LEDs would be what I really need for PoC to be as big as I wanted it to be.

And then there's still the costs left for wire, transitors, PICs, circuit boards, plexiglass, etc. So I gotta face it: PoC is not going to happen this year.

However, all hope is not lost. I've decided to scale back the project and instead work on something I will call (fly)light... Think of it as being PoC: Volume 1.

This version seriously cuts down on the materials needed because it'll do away with the circuit boards and external case. Instead, it depends more on the wires itself to give structure/shape to the LED display. (And on the plus side, it'll probably be much lighter to carry around.)

Here's a working description of the new project:
"(fly)light is an LED matrix consiting of 1000 lights. (fly)light is non-interactive and is designed to be an interior design accent. The patterns displayed on (fly)light will be modelled from various algorithms such as the flocking behaviour seen in a group of flying birds or an insect swarm."