[Voria Labs] has created a whole bunch of artworks referred to as Lumanoi Interactive Light Sculptures. A new video explains the hardware behind these beautiful glowing pieces, as well as the magic that makes their interactivity work.

The basic architecture of the Lumanoi pieces starts with a custom main control board, based around the ESP-32-S3-WROOM-2. It’s got two I2C buses onboard, as well as an extension port with some GPIO breakouts. The controller also has lots of protection features and can shut down the whole sculpture if needed. The main control board works in turn with a series of daisy-chained “cell” boards attached via a 20-pin ribbon cable. The cable carries 24-volt power, a bunch of grounds, and LED and UART data that can be passed from cell to cell. The cells are responsible for spitting out data to addressable LEDs that light the sculpture, and also have their own microcontrollers and photodiodes, allowing them to do all kinds of neat tricks.

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