Week 1

For our project, we were originally inspired by Daniel Rozin's kinetic art pieces. We wanted to create something that was interactive, initially intending to use motors and wooden panels to create a display that made images usinglight and shadows. After researching ways to do this project, we came to realize that it was unrealistic to complete within the given timeframe, as too many motors would need to be used. We consulted with our supervisor to change our project to a LED Mirror, which uses Neopixel LEDs and a camera to see an image in real time, lighting up corresponding LEDs in the matrix to create an image of the person in front of the camera. As the LEDs we are using are Neopixel ones, each LED within the matrix can be individually addressed. For this project, our inspiration came from a youtube video by the youtube channel SuperMakeSomething, titled Giant Neopixel LED Mirror.

In the first week of the project, our group attended our first lab session and had two meetings: one on our own and one with our project supervisor. In the lab session, we collected and verified all of our components. The backboard that we received was much larger than we expected. This led to discussions with the lab technicians about the possibility of cutting it down to size. After some deliberation, we decided against cutting the board for now, potentially revisiting this in later weeks. We then established and outlined the dimensions of the area we are using for the display, making sure it was in the center of the board.


Next, we determined the placement of the LEDs on the board, so each LED strip was equidistant from each other. We then drilled holes at the ends of the LED strips, where the wires will go through. In our meeting with our supervisor, we discussed our progress in the lab and then discussed our next steps for the project. 

At this point, we allocated each of our roles:

Project Manager - Ali
Designer - Harini
Implementer - Hasan
Technical Writer and Programmer - Grace


Here are some sketches for the circuit diagram and general layout of the project:

 

Next week’s plans are:

1) Glue all the LED strips to the board.
2) Start wiring all the LEDs together.
3) Test out the image processing of the Pi camera.
4) Test if LEDs function all together.

 

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