Hi all...great to find this forum just now. So many interesting posts to read.
I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a Burning Man costume project that has been evolving over the past few years. This is how it looked last year:
http://highwire.stanford.edu/~straffin/brc.jpg
In its current incarnation, it's a bike helmet which is outfitted with three spinning wheels, each of which features four colored LEDs. The spinners are built with and controlled by first-generation LEGO Mindstorms, and each spinner switches direction every few seconds at random by means of a simple program.
While the effect is pretty darn cool and has made me instantly recognizable on the playa -- always a good thing when one is trying to meet up with friends in a large crowd -- my custom wiring (3x4 LEDs plus 3x3 AAA battery packs plus resistors chosen for appropriate brightness) has not always been entirely reliable in those challenging conditions. So, when I lost a wheel one night this year, I figured it might be a good opportunity to rebuild the helmet with more self-contained parts. Keychain LED flashlights seem to have come a long way in recent years, and it seems as though they might fit the bill nicely, but there are obviously a lot of models to choose from.
The best model I've found so far (whose brand I can't recall at the moment) is a popular button-cell model with both high-power and low-power modes, along with a strobe mode which I don't use. The low-power mode is roughly equivalent to my current setup. The high-power mode is frankly blinding, though this shouldn't be a problem since I'm planning to revise my design and angle the lights so that they won't shine directly in people's eyes under normal circumstances. The only problem with the high-power mode is that it shuts off after a few minutes in order to preserve the battery, and that just won't do for this application. In addition, it's a disposable model, since the button cell can't be changed.
My ideal model would be bright, but more importantly, it would allow the battery to be replaced and the power switch to be reached even while the unit itself is affixed to the spinners at both ends. A button-cell model would be ideal, but I could probably work with a AAA model as well. Or maybe this is all a bit too much to ask, but if there's a model out there that fits the bill, I'd love to find it.
Thanks for reading. (And if you happened to be at Burning Man as well these past few years: wheee, how about that Cubatron? Mark Lottor is a genius.)
I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a Burning Man costume project that has been evolving over the past few years. This is how it looked last year:
http://highwire.stanford.edu/~straffin/brc.jpg
In its current incarnation, it's a bike helmet which is outfitted with three spinning wheels, each of which features four colored LEDs. The spinners are built with and controlled by first-generation LEGO Mindstorms, and each spinner switches direction every few seconds at random by means of a simple program.
While the effect is pretty darn cool and has made me instantly recognizable on the playa -- always a good thing when one is trying to meet up with friends in a large crowd -- my custom wiring (3x4 LEDs plus 3x3 AAA battery packs plus resistors chosen for appropriate brightness) has not always been entirely reliable in those challenging conditions. So, when I lost a wheel one night this year, I figured it might be a good opportunity to rebuild the helmet with more self-contained parts. Keychain LED flashlights seem to have come a long way in recent years, and it seems as though they might fit the bill nicely, but there are obviously a lot of models to choose from.
The best model I've found so far (whose brand I can't recall at the moment) is a popular button-cell model with both high-power and low-power modes, along with a strobe mode which I don't use. The low-power mode is roughly equivalent to my current setup. The high-power mode is frankly blinding, though this shouldn't be a problem since I'm planning to revise my design and angle the lights so that they won't shine directly in people's eyes under normal circumstances. The only problem with the high-power mode is that it shuts off after a few minutes in order to preserve the battery, and that just won't do for this application. In addition, it's a disposable model, since the button cell can't be changed.
My ideal model would be bright, but more importantly, it would allow the battery to be replaced and the power switch to be reached even while the unit itself is affixed to the spinners at both ends. A button-cell model would be ideal, but I could probably work with a AAA model as well. Or maybe this is all a bit too much to ask, but if there's a model out there that fits the bill, I'd love to find it.
Thanks for reading. (And if you happened to be at Burning Man as well these past few years: wheee, how about that Cubatron? Mark Lottor is a genius.)
