Marvelously conceived and exquisitely executed, this huge ball made up of hexagon tiles combines the best of blinky LEDs and animatronics into one amorphic ball.
The creation of [Nicholas Perillo] of Augmentl along with [MindBuffer], full details of the “morph v2” project have not yet been published. However, some tantilizing build progress is documented on [Nicholas’] Insta — most especially through the snapshots in the story thread spanning the last seven months. The scope of the project is brought into focus with time lapse video of hundreds of heat-set inserts, bundles of twisted wire, a pile of 1500 sliding rails, cases full of custom-order stepper motors, and thick cuts of copper bus bars to feed power up the shaft and out to the panels.
The demo video after the break is mesmerizing, shot by [nburdy] during a demo at MotionLab Berlin where it was built. Each hex tile is backed by numerous LEDs and a stepper motor assembly that lets it move in and out from the center of the ball. Somehow it manages to look as though it’s flowing, as they eye doesn’t pick up spaces opening between tiles as they are extended.
The Twitter thread fills in some of the juicy details: “486 stepper motors, 86,000 LEDs and a 5 channel granular synth engine (written by @_hobson_ no less, in @rustlang of course).” The build also includes speakers mounted in the core of the ball, hidden behind the moving LED hexes. The result is an artistic assault on reality, as the highly coordinated combinations of light, sound, and motion make this feel alive, otherwordly, or simply a glitch in the matrix. Watching the renders of what animations will look like, then seeing it on the real thing drives home the point that practical effects can still snap us out of our 21st-century computer-generated graphics trance.
It’s relatively easy to throw thousands of LEDs into a project these days, as PCBA just applies robots to the manufacturing problem. But motion remains a huge challenge beyond a handful of moving parts. But the Times Square billboard from a few years ago and the Morph ball both show it’s worth it.
As you’ve guessed from the name, this is the second Morph ball the team has collaborated on. Check out details of v1, a beach ball sized moving LED ball.
486 stepper motors, 86,000 LEDs and a 5 channel granular synth engine (written by @_hobson_ no less, in @rustlang of course). pic.twitter.com/Sn2fp5tuXc
— nburdy🐣🏳️🌈 (@nburdy) February 12, 2021
Perfect for when you want to gaslight someone by making them think they’re looking at CGI in the real world.
Very interesting but the design looks rather inefficient but that can be excused seeing as how it’s a one-off art piece.
But how noisy is it! Neat
That’s what I was wondering as I think I mistakenly read that it was running on servo motors, but now I see it’s custom steppers. If you turn up the volume on the video, you hear a slight high-pitch ring, so I guess the drivers are pretty good. It helps that it doesn’t have to move as quickly as a 3D printer, so the noise seems much quieter. This is one of those “if I had unlimited money to build something” projects.
Nice. What about fingers between the tiles?
Crushy crushy! Though in all reality it probably just skips steps.
Some more info here: https://motionlab.berlin/en/2020/11/09/mindbuffer-talking-hardware/
Hey check out those flashing lights on the mezzanine. I bet whoever brought those is feeling a bit silly now.
That thing is SUPERB! I want to give it a big hug.
Where’s the video?
“The demo video after the break is mesmerizing…”
After the break…. duh..
jeesh… complete fail on getting the absurd punctuation on the end of that comment…… ;-)
But that’s the thing… there *is* no video after the break?!?
They (multiple videos) are in the linked Twitter thread.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1360220925820604419
For very unrelated reasons I’ve been interested in specific high-order polyhedral / geodesic shapes recently, but I can’t figure out what this one is. Normally you’d see a straight line of hexagons between faces of the pentagons, but these appear to be rotated 36 degrees off that axis. Anybody know what it is?
Seems to be one of the Goldberg polyhedra, looks like specifically GP(5,3).