Kinetic LED sculpture — a hanging pointy-top hexagon of 12 NEMA 17 steppers and 18 WS2812 tubes, first shown at Body & Soul Festival 2022. Firmware runs on an Arduino Mega 2560; a desktop sim plays the same C++ choreography in the browser.
Drop a night shot in docs/photos/ and link it here.
Six vertices, motor pairs at each corner. LED tubes ride the motor arms (aimed with the steppers) and sit on the outer struts. Mega + 12× A4988 (24 V / ~2 A) + FAB_LED bit-bang, one 70-pixel buffer replayed to every strip so SRAM stays tiny.
| Path | What |
|---|---|
firmware/STAEXE/ |
Flash this (Mega 2560) |
firmware/lib/ |
Vendored FAB_LED + 12-axis StepperDriver fork |
sim/ |
PIXI preview of LEDs + motors |
hardware/ |
PCB, gerbers, BOM (drop files here) |
docs/ |
Architecture + dated notes |
archive/ |
Old sketches and core stubs |
cd sim
npm install
npm startOpen http://localhost:5173 — hex layout, arms hang down at rest, festival ±30°/±60° pulse at 1× realtime (STAEXE_TIME_SCALE=20 to hurry).
./scripts/verify-mega.sh # compile + flash/SRAM budgets
./scripts/export-firmware.sh # dist/STAEXE/ for Arduino IDEOr open firmware/STAEXE/STAEXE.ino with --libraries firmware/lib. Last check: ~7% flash / ~20% SRAM.
A4988 microstep jumpers must match #define MICROSTEPS (1/8 on the PCB as built).
James Delaney — FAB_LED (Dan Truong), StepperDriver (Laurentiu Badea, 12-motor patch in-tree), Body & Soul 2022.