Make A Mini Version Of UVA’s Origin [Instructables How-To]

By now, you must know about our fascination with the austere, mesmerizing, geometric light and sound sculptures fashioned by UK collective United Visual Artists (UVA). Earlier this year they debuted a brand new design for the Coachella main stage and different iterations of the structure traveled the world during our global event series, culminating with Origin, which was exhibited as part of our New York event earlier this month. (Read more about the sculpture’s transformation here.)

Origin; Photo by James Medcraft

This week’s How-To shows you how to make your own mini version of Origin (sans the interpretive soundtrack from Scanner, of course), made from 512 LEDs and based on an Arduino UNO, which is an Atmel AVR microcontroller on a development board.

The first step is to construct the LED matrix. Keep in mind that it’s possible to switch a single LED on or off to vary the cube’s intensity. There is a separate interface for each set of controls, which should be programmed to the Arduino UNO (programmed via a USB port from a PC). The Arduino UNO’s brain, aka the AVR brain, contains standard interfacing pins, which allow connection to the outside world and external devices.

Now that you understand a bit about how it’s supposed to work, start building the control electronics for the columns. First, connect two PWM shields to the interfacing pins on the Arduino UNO brain, which provide 32 pulse modulated outputs and power 64 columns in total. To light up a particular LED, switch on that column and layer at the same time to pinpoint the LED you want. Then assemble an interposing transistor board to supply the proper current to each LED. The current source should be sunk to the ground using MOSFET. Download the TLC chip library from the Arduino website to drive your design with minimal software coding.

To switch to layers, use a hardware D-Multiplexer. There should be three pins coming out of the Arduino UNO that are a binary-coded decimal representation of the layer address. When you convert the binary coded decimal, you should have three inputs into the D-Multiplexer and eight outputs on 0-7. Run a Darlington buffer out of the hardware D-Multiplexer, which lets the current charge the MOSFET. Each MOFSET (eight in total) controls a layer.

Now configure the software, which will be transfered to the Arduino UNO via USB cable. The display philosophy will only enable one layer to be lit up at a time, so in order to light up the entire LED cube simultaneously, rely on the Persistence of Vision phenomenon. This will allow you to scan through all of the LEDs, or layers of LEDs, without necessarily having them all on at once. There is a pre-program delay, which determines how long each layer is on, that can be adjusted if need be. As you increase the pace of the scanning, you might need to incorporate some blanking on the D-multiplexer so light doesn’t trail. Make sure your TCL configuration file is adjusted to meet your specifications.

Now the fun part… configuring the patterns and algorithms used to generate changes in the LED display. Write eight consecutive layers on each loop of the program. You can then perform mathematical manipulations on the array that contains image data. You can do this by using an algorithm or using a series of images or frames that can be adapted to “play as a movie” within your cube. Find a list of programmable patterns in Step 5.

Visit the Instructables How-To for further instruction, more detailed photographs and tips on where to buy materials.