Project UberTutu

This project came about partly due to a slight obsession with things which emit many photons.
I had a string of digitally addressable LEDs from Adafruit bought because well... They were shiny! Enter Circillumina: An invite only rave dance party kind of thing... The perfect opportunity to play with glowwy lights.

Jez spinning his rather epic LED creation, the Mitochondrion

While throwing ideas around with Jillian and Rachel we decided that construction of some slightly out there costumes would be in order. Jillian is a stilt performer as one of her many many talents, she agreed to put on a bit of a stilt show at Circillumina 2 so a costume had to be created.
Rachel had a tutu in her collection of dress ups and I had the lights... Time to do something cool.

Rachel and Jillian started off by sewing the string of LEDs into the tutu whilst I ignored my nagging thoughts about how on earth this thing was going to be powered... The LEDs draw around 5W, not a small amount of power for something that has to run on batteries for several hours.

The LEDs are controlled by an Arduino which I soldered a JST connector directly to.

First test of UberTutu modeled by Rachel, Running Adafruit code.

As things were starting to come together, I turned attention back to power. I considered a number of different battery chemistries:

I have access to some pretty huge LiPo electric flight batteries, however I decided against this... The thought of strapping a battery which without warning can turn into an incendiary device to my friend did not appeal.

I have a Pag C6 video light: This has a 6V 8Ah NiCad battery pack with internal fusing. It's big, heavy, ugly and in a form factor that's not very sympathetic to being fitted to the female form. It is however safe. I used two silicon diodes in series with the battery to reduce the voltage a bit as the LEDs are designed to run from 5V.

I set about making a belt to house the battery that was comfortable and not too obtrusive.  I purchased a couple of metres of a while parka nylon from Global Fabrics in Wellington much to the amusement of the staff there.
After ten minutes with a pencil and paper I came up with a pattern. I cut the fabric out with a soldering iron in order to avoid the need to hem or fray stop the edges.

Unfortunately there aren't any more photos of the battery belt being made up as time was running short.

Jillian showing off the battery belt

Some flashier code was written and everything came together just in time for the night...

Featured on Adafruit Wearable Wednesday

Putting the Light Into Proportion

The Silly Light has had it's first opportunity to really shine... Ahem.

As the gig was the first "final" assembly I wasn't 100% sure as to how it was all going to turn out... Jez and myself set about pulling the house apart in order to bolt the Kee gate hanger down.
The ironwork is a mixture of Unistrut brackets and a spare construction plate I had lying around. The end of the scaffolding pipe is inserted into this gate hanger to keep it in place.

The festoon lights were gaffer taped to the pipe just before we put it up.

After the whole thing was assembled, the pipe was propped up on one of my ammunition cases as the shade was hanging a bit low. The rope top stay was tied to the hand railing and it was done :-)

The effect is almost exactly what I wanted to achieve, if the light is assembled again I want to prop the pipe up higher and spread the light further.

Thanks to: Jez, Dave and Joel for helping with the assembly, Will for help with disassembly and anyone else I have been rude enough to leave out.

Part One: Where the idea came from.
Part Two: First testing of the light shade.
Part Three: I try out a mercury vapour light source.
Part Four: Procuring parts like the street light.
Part Five: Test assembling the frame.
Part Six: Going away from the frame idea.

SHIHAD - Sleepeater

When Sam Peacocke approached me about doing some effects for a Shihad music video I had no idea how apt the title was going to turn out :-D

I was given a ten page PDF of how the video was to play out... It required a spinning shaking chair, water cannons, smoke machines and a wind cannon. For me it simply read: Lets make some cool stuff :-)

The pNuke:

This cannon resulted from my initial "more power Igor!" approach to the water cannon idea. The pNuke is a 9kg gas tank fitted with a 2" solenoid sprinkler valve. The tank is pressurised  with an air compressor, activating the valve dumps the tank with quite some violence.

Thanks to: Greg at work for helping me out with the welding and James at Deeco for the valve.

Testing the pNuke with no nozzle:

The water is thrown even further when you fit the pNuke with a nozzle:

The following video shows why we decided to only use the pNuke as a wind machine... It's simply too violent when shooting water:

My Dad being pNuked:

Smoke Ring Cannon:
We did initially want to shoot smoke at everyone in the video... Software glitches filling our tent with smoke made us decide at about 1am on the saturday morning that smoke was a bad idea.



The Gentle Annie Water Guns:
These were used for generating the streams of water than fly behind and into each person as they spin on the chair.

A bank of 3/4" solenoid valves fill a bunch of polypipes with water and then use compressed air to "empty" them in a hurry.


Valve Bank:

The Gentle Annies required two different air supplies in order to achieve the desired effets. The pNuke was also supplied with regulated and filtered compressed air.

Air Supply Manifold:

The Final Result: www.sleepeater.co.nz/

Check back soon :) This is a work in progress...