KAL & CO Kinetic Display

Intro

Finally, my first commission after a long time experimenting with this electronics and microcontroller stuff. This project being commissioned by one of the most respected brand consultant firm in Bangkok Kal &Co.

Story

Storefront displays are quite boring all of them look the same. This project I am explored the possibility to implement the creative technologies to the traditional display. The first implementing decision that I made is tomake this display dynamic, to combined the movement with the led pattern. I chose 20 servo motors on this project because of the rotation limited that thisservos are provided and the easiness to control all of them by the degreeangles. All of these motors being assigned to a difference led units whichformed into K shape. Each row has 9 NeoPixel LEDs, this way I only use one pinof the microcontroller to change the led pattern.

Challenge

I used one Arduino Mega to control 20 servos and almost 300 LED pixels. It quite challenging to get all of them to work at the same time. Imanaged to get rid of the delay function from my code (Thanks to Adafruit tutorial, you guy are the best😊) but I seem impossible to me to simultaneously moving servos while refresh the LEDs every microsecond. As a result, I am only make the display moving back and forth then refresh the NeoPixel at the end of the rotation. The display might look super simple but I am quite satisfied for now. I planning to integrated the second microcontroller to thisproject as a solution. Hopefully I can implement this soon.

Thank you,

Natthakit Kangsadansenanon