so i'm i'm a maker i like to make things
and this is my biggest project that i've
ever made and it's an eight by eight by
eight
red green blue cube of lights
each light is sitting underneath a ping
pong ball which have all been drilled so
it's 512 ping pong balls
that have been drilled to diffuse the
light it's actually really simple
because in the base of the new pixels
neopixels is the brand name it's like a
ws2812b and it's just basically one
strip of lights so it's actually just
512 lights here that are connected
together like christmas tree lights so
when one doesn't work the next 100 won't
work
unfortunately um and they can control
any microcontroller that can control
neopixel library so you got arduino
raspberry pi but my favorite is the
micro bit just because it's so small and
cheap kids can code this so you can use
like the scratch-like language make code
which is like blocks
to code this cube
which is what we're really hoping that
people will do this weekend is they'll
hack the cube and put their own designs
in it i'm really boring i don't have any
imagination so right now just doing the
test grid of red green blue um a lot of
people just were cubes they make them
animations which is a bit boring so i
thought i'd make it interactive so on
this cube because you can control each
individual light
you can play snake on it so you can play
3d snake so you move the snake in around
the cube to eat the apple
and you can play pac-man so the ghosts
chase you and try and eat you um so
that's what i've done but again i just
want people to make their own games like
you do two-player pong microphone has an
accelerometer on it so you've got lots
of potential for movement and dance of
what you can make to interact with the
cube rather than watching someone else's
designs
you know interact and make your own
designs so it's a bbc micro bit it's
like a cartridge so you just take out
the test one and that will stop and then
you put the snake one in
the back lights might not work
so this is the snake the green ball
and that red ball is the apple
so you have to use a controller
to get from
the frontier to the back which is really
hard because you're driving in three
dimensions the average score is only
about five
to five apples the max score though is
20 some guy was really impressive he got
20. so yeah that's snake i really love
to do tetris though um i just i spend so
much time building this and assembling
and bringing places i don't get to code
it at home you know it's never built at
home it's always in the boot of the car
so i'd love to do um 3d tetris because
that would be particularly evil and
difficult to play
and code
so the frame is the um
is the wiring so each each wire is
ground and power and data so data in
from here
data in data out data in data out so
there's three wires going between each
light and it goes like
that so it's a bit awkward to code
because this is like zero this is like
seven this is like eight this is like 15
because of the way
the data travels so yeah the the frame
is the wiring which is what's brilliant
about it it looks neat it looks like a
cube when it's lit up in the dark it
looks really good i mean i'm looking at
lots of connections and things like that
is it temperamental this is version two
so this is much more reliable than
version one because of these copper rods
so the first one was steel these are
copper coated iron rods so they're
stronger and they're easier to um
solder onto so the first version it was
um galvanized steel which is the worst
thing ever to try and solder onto um so
the first one we had eight spare columns
and eventually went through all of them
because they eventually broke this one i
have no spare columns and it's been fine
i've brought it i brought it to ireland
i brought it to kodadojo i brought pie
wars been to leeds newcastle so yeah
this is this travels a lot better it's a
lot sturdier it's it's awkward because
of the size of it but it flats down like
each of these columns come out and it
travels it fits in the boot of my
husband's car
and that's it that's
nothing i'm not going to build anything
bigger
because it needs to fit i'm not but i'm
not renting a van
for my next project so this is emf where
am i this is
hopefully you'll be at pycon in cardiff
so the the python conference because you
can use a micropython obviously the
raspberry pi to control it and so you
can use python to do it and then i work
at lancaster university so they're dying
for me to leave this in the
foyer of the computer science building
and they'll they'll hack it and that's
why i wanted one people to hack it i
wanted to go somewhere where people will
actually
make things for it rather than a display
piece
[Music]
once you get inside it's pretty hard to
confuse them for a working toilet to get
from
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