Discobar uses WashU Software!

The first non-WU project to use our custom dance floor software comes out of Wisconsin. David is making a bar for his home and integrating 384 LEDs into the surface. He uses the MIT controller boards and our software to run the project.

It is still in progress but coming along nicely. Check it out!

Upcoming events featuring the Vertigo Dance Floor

We have begun to receive requests from various organizations to bring the Vertigo Dance Floor to events in the area. Many of these events will showcase the versatility of this platform, as the VDF can be far more than just a dance floor (it doesn't even need to be on the floor!).

Some events (dates pending confirmation) include:

Washington University Engineering Student Council's EnWeek - Late February 2006

Washington University Engineering Student Council's EnFormal - March 2006

Washington University Mu Phi Gamma Formal dance - Spring 2006

Various private parties on and off campus - Spring 2006

We are in the process of negotiating exact dates and times for these events as well as others that will be announced later.

In other publicity, we will be featured in an upcoming edition of BPM Magazine .

The Residential Advisors for Washington University's South 40 have voted to give Vertigo a best event award for 2005. We credit the dance floor for that!

As always, we will post here as more details emerge.

VDF Software First Release

The Vertigo Dance Floor software team has released version 0.1 of their DDF software!

"The software expands on MIT's code to allow users to:
-connect to the board remotely
-create a "playlist" of visualizations and scrolling text
-run the server on a linux box

It provides a client-server architecture for control of the dance floor. The server code is written in C and C++ while the client code is written in Java. Documents on how to extend these modules are included. At this time the code is by no means error proof, and the documentation is not complete, but these issues will be resolved with
time. Enjoy!"

The software was written by Michael Lanyon, Eric Tipton, Garrett Eardley, Cheryl Simon, and Yuyang Chen for a software engineering class supervised by Dr. Ron Cytron. They can be contacted at ddf436@cec.wustl.edu.

Download the software

Wash U Disco Dance Floor v0.1 Release Notes

Server:
The MIT DDF code has been incorporated into a server. The usb cables are plugged directly into the server box. The server allows one client connection, which controls the board. When nothing is connected, it runs an idle pattern.

The server code has been tested most thoroughly on Fedora Core 4. However, it should run on other linux versions, as well as Mac OS X.

Client:
We have provided a java client with corresponding GUI that creates a playlist of .ddf animations and scrolling text. You can do the following:

-Save and load playlists
-Run playlists in normal, repeat or random mode
-Operate in 3 different modes: normal, repeat and random
-Play .ddf files for a specified or random amount of time
-Play scrolling text for a specified or random amount of time with specified or random foreground and background colors
-Static images and games will be working in a future release.

Utilites:
DDFMaker:
This java program creates .ddf files from a series of images.

DDFConnection.java:
Provides an easy java wrapper around tcp socket information, for creation of your own client programs.