Fiber Optic World Map

The world that we live in is an incredible place, with forests, deserts, lots and lots of water, mountains and more. As humans have learned to harness electricity, there there is also a huge amount of light emitted from our cities. This “moss map” hack represents both the world’s natural shape and beauty in a large wall-mounted Mercator projection map, along with its relatively new light sources via fiber optics.

The build starts out with the acquisition of free closet doors made out of Masonite panels. These are striped and cut down to a reasonable size, then placed on a CNC router to be turned into map sections. Throughout the process, there is a huge amount of work to convert a map image into something suitable for the job, including hole patterns where light will poke out. The light is generated by Arduino-controlled “LED pods” that randomly shine both yellow and white light to an array of fiber optics. These are piped to various locations on the globe, creating a stunning display.

Map sections are mounted to the wall using French cleats, and a bit of modification had to be done to run power lines without having them visible to onlookers. In addition to the surface lights, the bottom lights up for a more ambient glow where the oceans would be, and as what would seem to be a wise step, a fuse was added to cut things off if there’s a short. More info and files are available in the video description if you’d like to try something similar yourself!