Bucky Glow Produces an Interactive Geometric Light Show

A few years ago, Jonathan Bumstead built a huge and colorful geodesic dome that could light up and play music. As neat as it was, it was…

Jeremy Cook
6 years ago

A few years ago, Jonathan Bumstead built a huge and colorful geodesic dome that could light up and play music. As neat as it was, it was also pretty hard to make, involving quite a bit of soldering, cutting, and programming. While the results were fantastic, if you don’t have countless hours to dedicate to such an epic project, he’s come up with something more approachable for electronics commoners called the “Bucky Glow.”

This new design is a dodecahedron, which sits on a base containing an Arduino Nano, along with breakout header pins that allow you to access 11 of its I/O pins. The Nano, in turn controls 11 programmable LEDs to light up every side except the base, enable you to pull off any sort of interaction you so choose.

More info on the project can be found here, and project files are available on his site and on GitHub. If you’d like a head start, the good news is that he’s selling kits on Amazon and Etsy! You can see it demonstrated in the video below, showing off its lights, and responding to input from an IR sensor as well as a capacitive array acting as a keyboard. There’s also an app for this light-polygon, meaning that you can interact with it even without doing any programming.

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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