In short: the Mitochondrion looks as stunning as I hoped for about five years ago. My journey into the obsession of making LED staffs About five years ago, I stopped fire spinning and started building LED staffs. I wanted to have images hanging in space around me while I am spinning staff. Technology (and my …
My new countersinking technique is unstoppable.
Hmm… twenty one boards into a twenty five mm tube, with quarter mm clearances? I think I might mock that up with paper and cardboard, just to check nothing clashes. So old school. And then I’ll get all the circuit boards made and bits 3D printed and it’ll all just fit together, right? RIGHT? [EDIT, …
Of course, a whole bunch more to do, but it goes.
It’s good data. There’s lots of it. I just need to work out what to do with it…
Right then, after a fair amount of swearing, I made the decision that the Mitochondrion Mark 5.0 has some fatal design flaws and won’t be ready for Kiwiburn. Turns out the 144 LED per metre Neopixel strips are a bastard to join and connect to. There’s a variety of ways to do it, none of …
Yeah, this is going to be bright. That’s the test power board, the test centre board, and the test strip. The power board holds four 16340 Li-Ion cells and a 5 Volt, 4 Amp converter (and some other gubbins). There’ll be four of them, one for each strip. The centre board holds the Teensy, motion …
The answer to the question “how many LEDs?” is always “moar!”. However, I think this counts as “almost enough”: And you’ll note from the change in version number that the Mark 5.0 power design didn’t work out. The Mark 5.0.1 power design is underway. In short, while I could fit 18.2 mm diameter cells into …
Measure twice, cut once, swear loudly, and measure again like five times… So one of the goals for the Mark 5.0 is for all the bits just to fit together accurately and quickly. The structure for the Mark 4 was passable but there was plenty of bodging. Instead, the Mark 5 would have a far-more …
The power output for the next version of the Mitochondrion glow staff is approaching the level you’d use for an electric bike, hence I’m taking battery management seriously. The current plan is to use a dedicated battery level gauge chip. The Linear LTC2943 looks like it will do the job, except it is 3 mm square, with no legs …
Picture by Peter Jennings Very brief summary: Returning to Kiwiburn, with my closest people, who’ve also been away. Helping to build and light the Effigy. The Effigy crew. The resulting meat blanket. New site, oh yes. Finally getting the Hat Band working and out in public. Ooo… it’s shiny. It lasted three days before an …
Circulation is one of New Zealand’s finest little circus festivals. I got back from there last night, still covered in bruises and glitter, but I finally managed to get some video of the Mitochondrion in its native setting, helped by Nicholas Leland, Tama Bw of The Fire Bugs, Reece Dunn of Dragon Flow, Josh Smythe …
Mitochondrion Mark 4 code is now running on the Mark 5 chip. Teensy 3.0 – an ARM Cortex M4 on an 18 mm wide board. Consider me pleased. Have yet to time the code, but should be faster. Much faster. Which is required, as it might be possible to replace the Mark 4’s 88 LEDs …
Reese Dunn in the renegade show at Under the Spinfluence with the Mitochondrion, Mark 4.2.4. Pic by Charlie Whiteley.
That tiny thing is a Teensy 3.0. ARM Cortex M4. It’s a serious step up in performance from the Arduino Nano that runs the Mark 4. Four times the program memory, eight times the variable memory, four times the clock speed and 32 bit not 8, so quite substantially more grunty. Which is somewhat handy, …
The Mitochondrion M4.2.3 code was a bit of a mess. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either that it was put together in a bit of a hurry for last summer’s festivals. And then I tweaked it further over the summer while running out of program memory (Arduino Nano/ATmega328 so only 32 kb). And …
One of the LED strips in the Mitochondrion is has a problem. Only the first third of the LEDs light up, the rest are dim. Now, finding hardware problems can take bloody forever. Poking, swearing, scratching of head. In this case, however: Yeah, that’s a crack through the middle of the driver chip. It’s pretty …
Back from Rainbow Serpent now and mostly recovered from having too much fun. So much fun that I haven’t any pics or vids. The Mitochondrion mark 4.2.3 got a great reception, someone described it as brain-melting, which is one of the feelings that I’m trying to create, and I got to meet lots of other …
While everyone’s off to Kiwiburn, we’re off to Rainbow Serpent in Oz. It just worked out that way. Anyway, for the Mark 4.2.3 I’ve fixed lots of bugs, mended a couple of screws, implemented a couple of more structured modes, 24 modes in total, and doubled the speed – 10 ms per refresh. I’ve also …