I saw there was a 2022 thread but didn’t see a 2023 one?
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I’ve outfited a lot of my campmates for things like bikes and cloaks, those are a fun but trivial application. What I’m really excited about is our camp’s shade/hosting structure. Its a standard flat top shade, where on a couple of support poles I have a number of LED strands coming out and around the camp. The main unit goes Pixelblaze with sound chip->output expander → 8 led lines with 600 pixels each. They’re kinda arranged in a tree like pattern that takes up a 20x20 foot cell. I have 2 of these. Both these units are connected via wifi to a raspberry pi where I have the ability to modify the pattern in real time via a midi controller. It looks like this, with the usual caveat that it looks better live.
Walk by after dark, we’re at 4:45 and D, should be visible from the street.
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Hi, just got my first Pixelblaze today so I haven’t made anything with it yet. This will be my 20th year to BRC. I finally made some art. It will be at the Sonic Soul Tribe sound camp at the 2:00 corner. Come say hi.
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I’m thrilled to see there are burners here! I went a bunch of years between 2001 and 2010, camped with the G-Spot. Hoping to get out again in 2024 with a newbie in tow. Excited to share my rig in the 2024 edition of this post, but for now I just had to swing by and say hi! Hope y’all have an amazing week out on the playa.
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An 8’ by 6’ checkmark sign, to be mounted 30’ up (one pixelblaze), and a medium-sized mutant vehicle (3,200 leds, 4 networked blazes to sync patterns across the whole vehicle). I’d post pics, but… of course neither is quite finished yet.
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This is standard operating procedure for many projects 
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Is anything made for burning man ever truly finished?
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Leaving the 16x16x16 cube at home, spent too many hours on it just to have the playa destroy it in a week but making a mutant vehicle instead with 900 LEDs. Nothing too crazy and just a single PB pushing em over 4 channels.
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Ha! Hey parker, camping over with Brett at Baconeers. Keep a eye out for the MV!
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I’ll be bringing a beta version of the Technocolour Dreamcoat V3. Four hundred pixels (so far…) in an isometric grid.
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5’ cat tail for the back of my bike. Will be covered in faux fur.
600 LEDs running a set of the canned patterns at 5% for now. Can run without issue off just USB at that level.
The frame is made from mostly PEX and bit janky, but should hold up.
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This is my new skateboard helmet, I’ll be wearing it daily – It’d truly brighten my night (pun intended) as piece of playa magic and serendipity if someone saw this post, saw the helmet on the open playa, and came up and said hello.
It uses basically all the techniques I documented a few weeks ago in my beginner tutorial on this forum, but… then gets a lot more complicated when I decided custom design (with help from friends) and 3-D print LED diffusers, which I can share the STL files for if there’s interest – they’re designed to work for the very popular right now pebble string lights, which are used in this project.
The demo footage is using a palette based version of three patterns: Xorcery, Spiral Twirls 2D, and Pulse 2D, with the 3D shape of the helmet simplified to a 2D map.
I’m also co-leading a camp, Bubble TEAse, 9&C, serving bubble milk tea, 2-4 PM Monday to Friday; feel free to come by.
It has a sensor expansion board installed – in the “no Burning Man Project is ever finished” sense, it’s not currently using it. I had big aspirations of doing a sound reactive or motion based pattern – if anyone has sample code that would work for a piece like this, feel free to suggest ideas. @hbeck , I had saved a post from you with a sound reactive pattern that might work, but couldn’t find the actual PixelBlaze code in your GitHub; if you finish that code section, let me know, and thanks!
*P.S. – @zranger1 (and @wizard ) – this is the project I used as the core test bed for all of the pattern code I was building into my beginner tutorial – it uses… basically every new PixelBlaze feature over the last year!
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Made a simple faux fur scarf. I have some more complex WLED setups at our camp at 7:30 G benevolent elephant. Come say hey!
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Hi everyone! Me and my crew do an installation at 6:05 (towards 9 side of keyhole) and Esplanade every year, it’s a 60’ wall made of 3 storage containers. Were doing an animal mural with some cool changes between day and night. Not sure how Pixelblazey itll be, more blacklight activated this time. But also doing two backlit signage/art walls for Trap and Nap / Sprack City at 7&D, and then making a backlit mini dj stand with a PB lighting it up. Excited to use the darkness for canvas!
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I don’t think anyone’s another thread mentioned it, but I wanted to post the info here for the 2023 LEDs Are Awesome meetup.
It’s Tuesday (8/29) 7-10 PM at Camp Illuminaughty, 9:15&G.
Here’s the FB event page if that’s your thing:
Hope to see you and your awesome projects there!
If you see a big iceberg art car, come to the lighting control desk out in the dance area and ask for Jeff! I’d love to say hi and point out @zranger1’s amazing work. We should have about 140K LEDs going, unfortunately a little too large for today’s Pixelblaze capabilities
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Btw, @Paintedladder is the artistic genius behind the EM logo and the Pixelblaze toon.
His murals are legendary.
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What’s the name of it?
Ill probably be pretty visible.
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How many pixels / LEDs is this, and how are you powering it? Looking great!
EDIT: The YouTube video title says 600 LEDs.
Yeah about 600. Really happy with how it looks.
2x 21700 batteries in series and a switching bec to drop to 5v. Batteries were pretty cheap too so just bringing a bunch of spares with a 3d printed case I made.
Battery lasts just over 3 hours at 50% brightness and running a random assortment of patterns. It’s so bright that 50% is ample.
Not sure if these are used by anyone in the led community? Used what I was familiar with from drones.
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