Published March 21, 2020 © CC BY-NC

Aurora - The Light Show

A cool 30 x 10 ft light show which includes 2 Arduino Mega boards, a hundred single-color LED strips and some SMPS full of AMPERES.

ExpertShowcase (no instructions)6,774

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Arduino Mega 2560

8 Channel Relay Board

LED Strip, 5 m

130

12 volt, 40 AMPS DC Power supply

Jumper wires (generic)

300

Hook Up Wire Kit, 22 AWG

UTSOURCE Electronic Parts

Software apps and online services

Vixen Lights

Arduino IDE

Audacity

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Soldering iron (generic)

Hot glue gun (generic)

Digilent Mastech MS8217 Autorange Digital Multimeter

Story

This light show was a big installation project that took almost one month to get completed. The whole show was running on two Arduino Mega boards. It consists of hundreds of single color LED strips and almost 80 relays. There were two 12 volt, 40 AMPS SMPS. The music was edited and compiled on Audacity software and the syncing with lights were done on Vixen Lights software.

There were a team of 10 members who worked hard day and night to make it a big success.

Thanks UTSOURCE.net to offer electronic components for our projects.

Code

#define MAX_CHANNELS 44

int ch;
int state;
int chVal[MAX_CHANNELS] = {0};
int pins[] = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53};

enum states
{
  IDLE,
  DELIM,
  READ,
  DISP
};

void setup()
{
  for (ch=0; ch<MAX_CHANNELS; ch++)
  {
    pinMode(pins[ch], OUTPUT);
   // digitalWrite(pins[ch], LOW);
  }
  
  state = IDLE;
  ch = 0;

 // analogWrite(53,255);  
  
  Serial.begin(57600);
}

void loop()
{  
    while(1)
    {
         for (ch=0; ch<MAX_CHANNELS; ch++)
        {   
          //if (chVal[ch] > 0)
         // {
            digitalWrite(pins[ch], LOW);
            delay(3000);
            digitalWrite(pins[ch], HIGH);
        //  }
        //  else
       //   {
       //     digitalWrite(pins[ch], HIGH);
         // }
            }
    }
  if (Serial.available())
  {
    switch (state)
    {
      case IDLE:  
        ch = 0;
        if (Serial.read() == '+')
        {
          state = DELIM;          
        }
        else
        {
          state = IDLE;
        }
      break;
        
      case DELIM:
        ch = 0;
        if (Serial.read() == '>')
        {
          state = READ;
        }
        else
        {
          state = IDLE;
        }
      break;
      
      case READ:
        chVal[ch++] = Serial.read();
        if (ch >= MAX_CHANNELS)
        {
          ch = 0;
          state = DISP;
        }
      break; 
      
      case DISP:
        state = IDLE;
        for (ch=0; ch<MAX_CHANNELS; ch++)
        {   
          if (chVal[ch] > 0)
          {
            digitalWrite(pins[ch], LOW);
          }
          else
          {
            digitalWrite(pins[ch], HIGH);
          }
        }
      break;
    }
  }
}