For lack of a better title, the 'Lighting Engine 2.0' is Lumieria's successor to
Pixelite. This is a 'Cookie-tin' prototype of the lighting engine that will be used inside of our upcoming
Wallships-class sculptures. Although each Wallship will have its own custom engine, containing the control logic its unique lighting and motion drivers, this prototype allows us to easily experiement with different lighting sequences, as well as to help calibrate our rendering and previsualization processes. Plus, we wanted a spare one because its just plain fun to mess around with!
What exactly is it?
Lumieria's new lighting engine is a huge step up from its predecessor, Pixelite. First off, it supports full-color lighting. Secondly, it is easily expandable -- additional lighting modules can be added as needed to provide more lighting channels. Also, significantly, the modular design of the hardware that we've chosen to build around, allows us to support other engine functions as well, such as the reading of sensors, the connection to the internet, or multi-touch controllers via WiFi, and kinetic motion drivers for motors, etc. In short, it is a huge leap forward from Pixelite's venerable circa-2001 design. In fact, back then we had to build our own micro-controller board from scratch, and program it in assembly language. These modern times feel pretty fantastic -- the selection of flexible core technology with a modular design is going to let us focus on our own strengths, of creative lighting, motion and sculpture design, instead of all of the soldering! Fear not though,
we haven't gone soft! We're still willing and able to dive into the deep end of electronics to solve any problems or technical challenges that arise.
Technical Details
The new lighting engine is built around an Ardunio microcontroller. We're using several Macetech products to provide the lighting drivers, and Adafruit motor driver modules for motor-driven kinetics. All microcontroller coding will be Lumieria custom Arduino/C++, plus whatever driver libraries are appropriate for the project at hand. The current prototype is built around a chocolate-chip cookie tin -- Thanks Leslie!
