Mac Pierce Created an Artistic Installment of A Scanner Darkly

Artist and creative technologist Mac Pierce recently created A Scanner Darkly, an installment of 15 3D-printed mock security cameras mounted to a wall. Each camera contains a Wi-Fi controller for remote triggering and a spotlight that randomly switches on/off while projecting the light on the opposite wall, forming a dot-matrix character display. Once every second, A Scanner Darkly displays a new character, showing the U.S. surveillance laws and regulations.

Pierce started his project by 3D printing each camera, providing him with more control. It took 230 hours and 12 kilograms of PLA filament to print out every part. Add in another 55 hours of work just to sand and paint the camera’s housing. He sanded twice using Rustoleum sandable filler primer with a 120 grit sanding fill in each gap and implemented light Bondo to fill in the gaps. Lastly, he applied two coatings of matte white enamel.

Each camera is equipped with an ESP8266 module that handles the Wi-Fi processes and runs and triggers the spotlight. These cameras also feature an LED flashlight mounted on top of the ESP via a small board holding the dip switches and a transistor to regulate the power to the flashlights. Each flashlight is powered through a small step-down module that takes in 15V from a power supply and brings it down to 3.3V to power the light and microcontroller. Additionally, the cameras connect to the M5Stack Core ESP32 module, which includes an SD card slot, integral battery, LCD, and buttons to create the UI. Instead of using the gallery’s wireless network, Pierce built a point-to-point network using ESP-Now to connect each camera to the central controller.

Afterward, Pierce wrote code to load a text document stored on the micro SD card, convert a character into a 3x5 grid, and instruct each camera to switch the respective light on/off. He also provided the STL files for the camera’s case along with the client and server Arduino code for light controllability.