I wanted to play around with the latest LED and microcontroller tech, so I decided to make a little decoration for my desk at work.

Our company's logo was a perfect shape and complexity for a first-project, and the shape could offer myriad light-animation possibilities for my coding creativity:

TL;DR final result

My desk is now officially ready for parties!

Here is a quick glimpse into the creation process

I settled upon one-light-per-circle in the outer circles, with a dense phyllotaxis pattern in the center (a la sunflowers):

I found reflective steel containers online in the correct diameters and drilled holes in them for each single LED.

I tested various materials for the front covers before choosing a double-layer of a plastic sheet from a huge roll that I previously found at a thrift-store.

I used my Cricut cutting machine for the perfect -and numerous- circles necessary.

The inner circle presented its own set of challenges, from a physical production perspective to the eventual programming logic, but I knew it would be worth it for the extra ‘resolution’ that would be so crucial for animation later.

Testing the dozens of inner phyllotaxis LEDs with a simple color cycle.

Testing the custom software that drives the FadeCandy controller.

Everything is affixed to a clear Lucite-type plastic panel (cans on one side / wiring on other), which was an interesting look by itself, but not at all anchored solidly.

Will have to replace some covers that were accidentally painted.

It was a lot of fun to figure out an appropriate "power-on" sequence animation!

The Software

• simple web-based UI written in Coffeescript, talking to a local FadeCandy server

• allows the user to assign any number of tags (“arm1”, “size4”, “xPos”, “yPos”) to each LED light

• a set of lights with a given tag is a [collection]

• a set of such collection is a [collection of [collection]s]

• a [color source generator] generates a continuous stream of colors (eg rainbow cycle, fire-colors, etc)

• a [color source generator] feeds ⤳ [collection of [collection]s]

This allows me to isolate things to animate (“the third arm”, “all outer circles”, “the 4th pixel in the phyllotaxis center”) with the various color generators.

There is also a movie-playback mode where a media file can be loaded and the colors mapped onto the LED space - “sunrise / sunset compilations”, “psychedelic/fractal compilations”, “demoscene demos” can be so good!

Showing movie mode with an Electric Sheep animation. My robot army is clearly pleased.