Welcome to the LumiGeek gallery pages. Prior to founding LumiGeek in the beginning of 2013, JoeJoe Martin and John Parts Taylor worked individually and together on a multitude of LED and physical-computing projects. It was these projects that inspired us to form LumiGeek and share our LED technology with the world.
As a commission by Insomniac for their Electric Daisy Carnival and other events, LumiGeek jumped in to provide three-dimensional spatial mapping of over 60 DMX light fixtures inside the massive sculpture.
Conceived by Michael Christian and fabricated by Orion Fredericks and Dallas Swindle, the sculpture illuminates and inspires its onlookers.
The Turbull Encabulator was the qualifier invitation for the third annual Red Bull Creation hackerspace competition.
Following last year’s Bullduino – an Arduino Uno clone in the shape of the Red Bull logo – the Turbull Encabulator was an Arduino shield-of-shields, which contained an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, an EPROM, a DAC, and a collection of LumiGeek LED drivers.
North Street Labs made a great interactive Tic Tac Toe game for a children’s science museum.
LumiGeek produced 200 of the boards with 150 being requested by hackerspaces across the nation. Over 60 teams submitted projects and 6 finalists will be flown to Brooklyn in summer of 2013 to compete head-to-head at Red Bull Creation.
LumiGeek and Autodesk enjoyed a highly artistic collaboration in early 2013 to create a pair of audio-reactive 3D printed speaker enclosures. The project was rather groundbreaking for several reasons.
First, there are very few instances where a 3D printed object is the final product, rather than an artifact of a larger process. (i.e. a proof of something to be injection molded en-mass) Small pieces of jewelry, precision aerospace parts, or medical implants are a small exception.
Second, the voxel-level control afforded by the Object printer allows for a unique combination of opaque and transparent areas to create never-before-seen lighting effects. The extruded ‘crystals’ are separated by an interior mesh of opaque material to light-pipe the LEDs.
Third, the ability to drive an array of multi-color, individually-addressable LED strip in such a confined space is very recent. This is where LumiGeek’s drivers come into play.
The collaboration was very well received in the design, 3d printing, and audiophile communities.
An impossibly long string of balloons is a familiar sight at festivals and concerts across the country. The Balloon Chain by Robert Bose has graced Burning Man, Coachella, Lightning In A Bottle, and Treasure Island Music Festival, as well as international events such as Boom in Portugal and Fete des Lumieres in France.
LumiGeek co-founders Joe Martin and John Taylor met Robert Bose by chance at Coachella. They poised the question to Robert, “Have you considered multi-color LEDs and remote control?”. He quickly answered, “Of course, but I don’t have the slightest idea how to do it.”
After the chance meeting, Martin and Taylor set out to create a system with an ultra-light LED circuit board, rechargeable battery, color-changing LED, and a receive-only antenna. Prior to 2012, the balloons used an ingenius yet primitive lighting system consisting of a watch battery, LED, alligator clip, and hot glue.
Now the system has evolved to include a custom charging station for the circuits, a combination WiFi base station and RF transmitter to control patterns and colors at nearly a mile away, and a custom iPad application by Pat Barry to ‘finger paint’ on the strand of the balloons, as well as play video-based patterns in real-time.
Joe Martin helped Atlanta-based sculptor Zach Coffin light his massive steel and stone sculpture called The Universe Revolves Around You. The sculpture debuted at Burning Man in 2012.
Martin has helped Coffin for over a decade with lighting, including a work on Coffin’s seminal sculpture The Temple of Gravity that forever changed the scale of artwork at the Nevada festival.
The Windmill Factory was asked to do an art installation for a black-tie fundraiser at the MIT Media Lab.
Jon Morris asked Robert Bose of the BalloonChain to collaborate on a balloon vortex in the large atrium, using the experimental RF technology that LumiGeek developed for the Balloon Chain
Not only did they install a balloon vortex with a circular array of fans, they created a 7×7 grid of balloons to form a low-resolution floating video screen.
The Bullduino was an custom board based on the opensource Arduino Uno specification, but shaped like the Red Bull logo. It served as the invitation to the second annual Red Bull Creation contest.
Applicants to the contest had to create something with the Bullduino and post a YouTube video. Team Instructable’s “Romance Pants” belt buckle was a top entry, where unzipping the jeans caused lights to dim, music to swell, and candles to be set ablaze! See below for a collection of contest entries done with the Bullduino.
After the qualifier, sixteen finalists were chosen to compete in the 72-hour build-a-thon, but in 2012 they worked in their own makerspaces and streamed video throughout the duration. All of the streams were then integrated into a 72-hour straight show, hosted by Tyler Hanson and Mike Senese.
LumiGeek co-founder, Joe Martin, was commissioned to build a larger-than-life 16-segment display with an alpha-numeric keypad for a 62-foot tall vending machine.
The massive structure doubled as a stage for the Doritos hospitality lounge and hosted acts such as Snoop Dogg and Ghostland Observatory.
