SlashGear Japan
After criticising Mathmos for lacking innovation in their lighting, here’s something actually interesting that, ostensibly, is all about the colour-changing that has become the bigger brand’s forte in recent years.
TRIKLITS are rope-lights with a difference: 24 plastic balls in a string, each containing red, green and blue LEDs so that they can mix up any colour you desire. A small controller box lets you choose between – and tweak – 30 different patterns, plus you can daisychain multiple strings together and have them synchronise. Perhaps most interestingly, the external interface jack lets you control the lights with a computer or some sort of control system.
These are the same light strings that were used so effectively at this year’s Burning Man festival, bringing hundreds of them together to make the mesmerising Cubatron installation. It’s great that home users can get the chance to play around with them too!
A string of 24 lights costs $100, while an add-on USB interface is £25.
5 Responses to “TRIKLITS bring Burning Man home”
John September 12, 2006
This thing blew me away. I have to say though… you blew some of the wonder for me. I imagined hundreds of nerds putting these things together before BM this year. I think I may have to get me a string of this stuff. Thanks!
NeutralChris Davies September 12, 2006
Oh! Sorry, John. Just for you, here’s a special re-report:
“Want to recreate BM’s incredible Cubatron LED display, but don’t have a harem of frenzied geeks you can whip into action? Can’t be bothered raiding the local school of electronics, throwing a bucketfull of soldering irons at them and setting them to work? Well luckily there’s now an alternative to the official “make ‘em sweat” method of BM building – $100 gets you a string of 24 lights, hand-made by nerds in underground slave pits”
Hope that re-creates the dream ;)
NeutralOnto Kyotime September 13, 2006
Several of the art installations were made of relatively simple individual pieces. But it’s the way you arrange them that makes the masterpiece! Another example is http://www.uchronians.org/
So you can buy one of these strings. I haven’t really counted how many there were in the Cubatron but I’m sure it still takes a bunch of geeks to actually program all these incredible patterns!
NeutralEd September 25, 2006
They still get major points for putting it all together and sequencing it. The Cubatron was one of my favorite pieces on the playa and I’m tempted to get a few strands myself. According to their site, the Cubatron had 252 strands. (28 spokes x 9 strands a spoke)
http://www.nw.com/nw/projects/brc/
NeutralAlbina-js January 22, 2008
classy updos
Neutral