Lumithesia Project - Overview

Okay, this has been a long time coming, but over the past few months, I've been working on a project, I call, Lumithesia.

Essentially, it's a giant 8' x 8' interactive dance floor that can detect users moving above it and react with swirling colors encircling the dancer that which are synched with the music.

Some highlights:

• 32x32 = 1024 pixels. Each pixel has the following:
• An IR LED
• An IR phototransistor
• A WS2801-based addressable RGB LED
• Entire floor is made of 4, 4'x4' units. Each unit has:
• An Arduino Due which:
• Performs 1-million Analog-to-digital conversions a second for the IR pairs
• Streams data to the RGB pixels
• The whole enchilada is controlled by a UDOO Quad which is responsible for:
• 2.2Mb/sec out, and 1.0Mb/sec in via USB to the 4 Arduino Dues
• Parsing the incoming IR data, applying filters via the music and outputting data at 120fps

Structurally, it will be made of translucent 1/2" acrylic with aluminum supports, and a grid of acrylic rods. 

Needless to say, it's a huge undertaking. But, it did motivate me to acquire and obscenely upgrade my CNC (posts to come).

Here's what the pixel units will look like (I decided to use acrylic because it's cheap and pretty):