Gertrude: An Led Drawing Machine by Chris McDonald

 Arduino, Blinkenlights, led, matrix  3 Responses »
Mar 132008
 

My good friend Chris McDonald made this extra-great, 2-axis drawing machine for doing time-lapse photography.

Here’s the info from his personal website vanita phone company: 

Gertrude uses two stepper motors to move an LED in a very high resolution x/y plane. The movement of the LED is photographed using exposures usually between 30 and 90 seconds. Gertrude can either be programmed to “print” a design automatically (“Christopher & Daniil”, the Hell Yup!: Scanlines shots) or controlled live via a joystick (Open&Close portrait series). 

II: Christopher & Daniil not talking (pt. 2 in a series of 2) 
II. christopher & daniil not talking (pt. 2 in a series of 2)

Hell Yup!: Scanlines 3 (Self-Portrait)
Scanlines 3 (self-portrait) 

Playing Tetris in an Odd Place

 Blinkenlights, CCC, Interactive, Projects  1 Response »
Dec 112007
 

I like Tetris; who doesn’t? The rules are simple, and it’s a good test of strategy and speed without eye hurting graphics. I’ve played it on a few Nintendo handhelds, my PC, and on Sony’s gaming consoles. The people over at MIKONTALOLIGHTS in Finland developed a platform to play it on a building by using the windows as light pixels and a cell phone as the controller. Check out the video (hosted on CollegeHumor):

It’s similar to a project from Blinkenlights and the CCC based in Germany. Their project also used a mobile phone to control lights (windows) on a building, except they were playing pong and uh, MIKONTALOLIGHTS used color. The Blinkenlights and CCC projects are still cool as they’ve done a lot of animated graphics on the side of a building. Check out their gallery if you haven’t already.

 Posted by at 9:27 pm
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