EVERLASTING BLINKING

I wanted to challenge myself and attmept to create a specific blinking pattern based on the beat to one of my favorite songs: The Black Keys' Everlasting Light. I took the song and mapped out the beats I wanted the light to turn on and off to. I was interested in using the Rhino plugin Firefly, designed to visualize Arduino. The blink command asks for a pattern of on and off. I had the time of the beats in miliseconds recorded from the song. I input this information into the blink command.

from .

PREPPING THE FILE FOR MILLING

I realized that in the previous electronics assignment, I had designed my LED board wrong. I re-designed the board and re-milled it. I also had to create an Arduino, as I was working with Firefly. I was told that Fabduino was quite stable, so I attempted that board.

MILLING

The milling and stuffing for both boards ran quite smoothly. The problem came with trying to load the bootloader onto the Arduino. As the fabduino did not have a 6-prong connector, I attempted to create my own. I assume something was wrong with this. I am fairly confident I had the configuration of pins into connector correct, as the green light on the programmer was on, though I kept getting an error message when I attempted to load the bootloader.

PROGRAMMING

I never was able to get the Arduino up and running. I hope to try a different base file for the Arduino and try again.

WHAT I LEARNED

I was quite happy with the Firefly plugin for Grasshopper. It allowed me to visualize the code I was inputting into the chip. This may not be for everyone, but it helped me map out the steps necessary to create the complete code.