2,000 LEDs on Fire

What’s 18 feet tall, 12 feet wide, has 2,000 LEDs and turbine-driven blast furnaces? Believe it or not, it is a piece of kinetic sculpture created by [Therm] (a collective, not a person) for Burning Man 2016. The project is about 60% salvage, has a Raspberry Pi 3 helping its three human operators, and took a team of 30 about 9 months to complete.

The Raspberry Pi drives LED using fadecandy. You can see a video of the sculpture (three giant moths, to be exact) and a video about fadecandy, below. (We’ve covered a subtler fadecandy project before if you want to see a different take on it.)

No place is the salvage more evident than the control podium which looks like it has some scavenged airplane controls. The turbines are also salvaged and modified to use electric motors. Apparently this is fuel efficient: the sculpture takes 80 gallons of fuel for a four-hour show. We don’t know, but they tell us that’s better than some other similar flame sculptures.

Although there are some 3D printed elements, this might be a bit ambitious for your first art project. Maybe start with something simpler. Or perhaps start with some LEDs and rebar.

Filed under: Raspberry Pi

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