LED Matrix
Arduino driven, customizable desktop oddity
LED Matrix
The desktop oddity, as it was called, was one of the most successful workshops I developed and delivered during my time at SLQ, The Edge. With the intention of being a lightweight introduction to Arduinos, microcontrollers and coding, the tickets became highly sought after. The focus was always to make it accessible to anyone with the slightest interest, whether the be a developer or a retiree with little experience in technology. This project evolved and was reiterated upon many times; from a glueless cardboard stand, to a waterproof vacuum formed PET case, to a wide multi-screen version and finally to an elegant little desktop oddity, that participants could show off to bypassing colleagues. It has had many platforms; the director requested one made up specially for an all staff briefing, it was delivered as wearable tech at the Woodford Folk Festival and also was as part of a select few fully digital workshops delivered during the pandemic.
Development.
The development has seen many cycles and although I’ve been the main person responsible for developing and delivering the workshops, it has had input and contributions by other team members (eg. the Badgeduino case).
The technology was readily available and initially we used the Adafruit LED Matrices and libraries. These components were very expensive, making the cost of the workshop too high. I ended up finding cheaper Arduinos and LED matrices, reducing the cost by more than 80%. This was a huge bonus, as we wanted to keep our workshops affordable and accessible to as many people as possible.
In this case, the downside of not using established brands and components was that the available code libraries were outdated, buggy and complicated and I had to invest many hours improving the code, so that it would be easy to understand for those with no prior coding experience. Ultimately, our goal was to encourage, not scare beginners off.
The latest version was run purely online in late 2020, early 2021 over Zoom. We mailed the kits home to those booked in so that they would have them in time for the workshop. This was of course an incredibly difficult thing to do, having lost the ability to help troubleshoot and assist with assembly and wiring. I also found the lack of reading people’s body language and facial expressions a huge disadvantage. Despite the complications, at the end of each workshop, the participants were happy.
The entire range of workshops and iterations of the kit have been well documented. See links to the right under Read more.
Read more.
The full documentation is available for both the development process as well as workshop run-throughs for the different iterations.
Badgeduino (Wearable)
Desktop Oddity (Online) - Latest