Project Description
HEXA-LED is a lighting system developed for bespoke architectural elements and lighting solutions. Composed of more than 3000 RGB-LED diodes, HEXA-LED allows to programmatically alter the appearance of the panels choosing between more than 16 million colors on a per-panel basis. Multiple static configurations can be achieved independently and/or merged together through multiple fading animations. Furthermore, the system can be expanded in order to allow real time interaction for an even more immersive experience.
images courtesy of INDEXLAB
System Overview
The LED wall is composed of 171 translucent plastic panels of variable shape and size, backlit by multiple daisy chained RGB led strips. To ensure a sufficiently high refresh rate for the animations the data line was subdivided into four smaller sectors of comparable size. Each sector can be lit at a global level controlling all LEDs as one unit or at a local level editing each strip or each panel RGB value.
LED Animation
The main LED animation was composed of a red wave gradually growing from one corner of the installation to the other. The speed and progression of the wave had to be tuned in order to meet the hardware constraints of the Arduino controller and at the same time maintain a sufficient level of fluidity avoiding stuttering or frame drops.
Hardware Data Lines
The core of the system is a single Arduino microcontroller managing all of the 3243 LEDs. The interaction loops were optimized in order to cope with the limited memory and processing power of the MCU. Each panel may be independently lit thanks to a two way mapping of the strips with each panel’s LED domain.
