Hello I am a Fine Arts student from the upper midwest. I want to create a piece of art using and LED circuit that can power large numbers of LEDs using solar power and that have other properties such as strobe timing effect and touch sensitive switches that increase brightness and rate of the strobe effect over a long period of time.
My main question is;
What would it take to wire this circut? How Would I go about figuring this puzzle out?
Thank you for taking the time to consider my question!
Light sculpture is a subject close to my heart! I haven't pursued it as far as I would like, but I have some experience.
First of all, do you have any electronics experience. To do anything like this custom, pretty much requires something like microcontroller programming, multiplexing, serial interfacing, LED drivers.
If you want some sort of console to monitor and manipulate the installation, real time, then I suggest a PC (or laptop, etc.) and Visual Basic. You could then use USB or even MIDI to send control signals to modules with the microcontroller and multiplexing/drivers, etc. There are microcontrollers that have USB functionality built in as well as touch switch capability. Or you could use one of the many USB to RS232 converters available. These are very easy to connect to most microcontrollers (to their serial input). Also, most microcontrollers have one or more channels of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) -- an excellent way to modulate the intensity of LEDs. Strobe effects would also be easy with a microcontroller.
Then you would need a protocol to send commands from the PC to the modules. MIDI is an excellent choice because it's simple yet versatile. NoteOn/NoteOff to turn on/off an LED or color, the note number to select an LED or color, the Velocity to set the brightness, etc. Or you could use DMX, that way it would be compatible with what's already on the market (if you implement it correctly).
If you don't have electronics/programming experience, or are not willing to climb the considerable learning curve, then look into DMX:
