A whimsical collection of LED strips, wire, and quilt batting. Originally built as outdoor trail lighting for a summer art festival, it is now permanently installed in the home of one of its creators.
Fabricated and co-designed by Ecco Pierce.
- Based on an Arduino Mega.
- Drives 3 WS2811 LED strips (two for two sets of clouds, plus one for the lightning bolts).
- Uses an Adafruit_VS1053 to play sounds.
- Uses an array of relays to provide directional sound by directly switching the signal between speakers. Currently it runs a single subwoofer and 3 satellite speakers. Originally these were 3 battery-operated portable speakers, which was more effective, and convenient for deployment in the woods (where the batteries needed to be managed daily regardless), but I didn't have an easy way to manage the charging and turning on and off once the clouds were installed indoors.
- Has a public button that changes animations and color palettes for the default trail lighting. Originally it allowed the public to make it do a small animation (a "trick") every 60 seconds. It will also do the trick animations on a semi-random timer.
- Has a private button that triggers a thunder storm. It will also do the storm animations on a semi-random timer.
- The clouds themselves are welded galvanized steel dressed with two layers of quilt batting.
- The lightning bolts are laser-cut acrylic coated with spray adhesive (except where a few pieces were lost and replaced with pebbled plastic from gallon-size drink containers).
- The public button is set in a 3d printed case. The private button is hot-glued into a pipe wrapped with colorful electrical tape.
- The cables are dressed in split sleeve wire loom.
- The control box and subwoofer are dressed in an old rainbow hoodie.
