One-Dimensional Fireworks Still Look Awesome

Gather around kids, because it is time for everyone’s favorite class: geometry! Space is three-dimensional, which is why everything has at least some height, width, and depth. If we move down to two dimensions (which can’t truly exist in the real world), we get completely flat objects with height and width but no depth. If we move down again to a single dimension, we only get one axis to work with — let’s call it height. We can think of that in the abstract as a straight line. But how would fireworks work in a one dimension? Daniel Westhof created a firework animation-displaying device to find out.

I just explained how our world only has three-dimensional objects and the pedants will say that this device isn’t truly displaying fireworks in one dimension. That’s true, because the LEDs have both width and depth. But the animation only occurs in one dimension, just like you’re reading this article on a screen in two dimensions.

This device pulls that off with a single long strip of RGB LEDs and the animation effect is surprisingly convincing. At the push of a button, the “firework” launches from the bottom at a fast rate. As it gets higher, simulated gravity slows it down. Once it reaches its apex near the top, it explodes in a shower of colorful LED flares. After the explosion, the flares succumb to gravity and drift towards the ground. Because this only occurs in one dimension on a single LED strip, that shower of LEDs only moves up and down. But even so, the effect is immediately recognizable as a firework and that is really cool.

Westhof made this work with some pretty simple hardware. There is a long strip of WS2812B individually addressable RGB LEDs soldered to a small protoboard with a push button, resistor, and large red LED. That protoboard has headers to plug into an ESP8266 development board, which controls the LED animation. Power comes in through a USB cable and we would normally advise against that with this many LEDs. But because only a handful of those LEDs are lit at any given time, they don’t draw a ton of power.

All of the magic is thanks to Westhof’s programming skill. By implementing details like gravity, he was able to make the animation look real. That’s very impressive given that he was only working with a single dimension in a three-dimensional world.