We recently built a 1:24 scale model of a studio theater. The design team did a great job building the model, but it was so seamless (thank you laser-cutter!) that it was very dark inside. Even after the viewing holes had been cut, it was literally a black-box. The solution was to rig up a bunch of high-intensity LEDs on the theater catwalk to illuminate the stage in an attempt to create something akin to the dramatic lighting during an actual show. So we mounted the LEDs in black plastic tubing to get the can- and spot-light effects. The lights were wired back to an Arduino micro-controller and we used the Firefly components for Grasshopper to control the whole system.
All this had to be done quickly: about two days before an important client meeting. First, we had to solder together a bunch of LEDs to long wires. As we only had speaker-wire on hand, so the most challenging part was stringing it along the catwalks with electrical tape. With our “not so thin” speaker-wire cabling, it created a bit of a mess when the wire bundle exited the model…
