Chroma Chandelier (Version Tree)
Blood, sweat, and solder went into creating my final project with Emeri and Madeline. Our earliest ideas for the project can be found at chromachandelier.magnify.net. In a nutshell, our project is a multifaceted visual representation of musical notes. An sound-based LED light fixture, if you will. We had some issues interfacing our last prototype with the program we wrote, but separately they work fine. Further work will need to be done to fuze the two together in unison. When that is completed, we will really have something special on our hands.
The Chroma Chandelier is a light fixture that is intended to interface with a musical keyboard and “play” not just the notes from the keyboard, but also specific color values on the RGB LED’s that are attached to the chandelier. These special color values correlate to specific frequencies of light waves associated with light that correspond to the sound frequencies of their respective notes. The research and concept are Madeline’s baby.
The final presentation went well, and everyone commented on how well the lights themselves turned out. They are RGB LEDs encased in lucite cubes that Emeri and I drilled by hand. For the time being, the lights are responsive to the movement and values from a potentiometer, but this functionality will soon be ported to a MIDI keyboard. Also, we would like to add lights to react to a full 88 keys, and actually invert the lights in a fixture so it can be a real chandelier.
At any rate, I am very proud of our work, and how it all turned out. GO TEAM AWESOME!
Video of the chandelier in action can be seen over yonder:
A beta version of the program written to run the lights can be found here. Give it a try!
Ultimately, I envision the program to run in perfect unison with the delicate hardware piece that we made. Though it is gaudy, for some reason, I can see the full 88 key chandelier inverted over one of those translucent grand pianos. I imagine the chandelier being in the shape of an inverted Christmas tree. It would be cool to hang one over a large staircase and watch the lights react to ambient music throughout a house or building. We reached our goal of creating something visually attractive, but we need to improve on the functionality of our creation. We will make it happen, because the color/sound theories that underly the basis for the project could be easily understood simply by watching the light show.
Be Happy Forever 