The Sensor Maze effect
159
Published 2021-01-06
This one took me a while to figure out and sketch out to figure out exactly what's going on. Being that it was a "motion" of color, but also a "motion" of the lights lit themselves, it totally confused my tiny brain. I ended up sketching out the pattern on graph paper multiple times... and even then, the color sequences looked horrible on these light strands.
What I ended up with here is an adapted version that conveys the two sets of motion, that actually looks enjoyable on the strand.
The original was a series of neon(?) tubes in groups of 5, where each section would have only one of those lit at a time, and then the pattern progresses down the sets of tubes, making waves of color going down the tube. It essentially had one lit tube, then four unlit tubes. I condensed this down to be one lit bulb, and two unlit bulbs. It lets the colors have space to move.
This is one of the effects built in to my "Color Animator" class as found in this Arduino code project: github.com/BleuLlama/LLColorAnimator It currently requires a WS2801 LED strand but was designed to be easily adaptable to other addressable LED strands.
For reference, see the original in action here in this video: • 1989 Epcot Center Imagination Inside...
All Comments (2)
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That's pretty amazing! The original Journey Into Imagination was my favorite attraction at Epcot growing up, and that's exactly how I remember the tunnel lighting up. Where did you find these lights??
