Washington University IEEE Dance Floor Project

Meeting Update, plus a moment of silence.

2007-10-15T00:45:00.000-05:00

October 10, 2007 Meeting Summary:

This meeting started the way most meetings start, with only 2 people there. I’m happy to announce that our numbers grew exponentially to 4 after only a few minutes. This worried the mathematician in me. With the population doubling every few minutes, we would surely be crushed to death in no time! Doom! Doom! Gloom and doom! Why me!? I’m too young to be smooshed by thousands of electricity enthusiasts! We ended up leveling out at 4, leaving me significantly embarrassed at having curled up in a ball on the floor.

With nary a mechanical engineer amongst our thriving populace, we didn’t get to have a materials update. As such, I’m going to make one up.

Materials:

‘S’all good. Next!

Electronics:

Judging from her absence, it would appear that Corinne did not survive the MIT Gerber File Heist. However, with her last ounce of strength she managed to get the file back to us to examine. It turns out the file was approximately useless. Touche, MIT. This is a minor setback which Grant does not seem worried about, so I’m not either. We chatted for a little bit about using a set of jumper pins on each board to allow us to arbitrarily specify any given board’s address. The addressing for the boards became the major topic of conversation for the rest of the meeting, and after Grant showed us his spiffy CAD design for the mini-board, Jacob got to work figuring out how addressing each board was going to have to go down.

That's really all we did at this meeting. It was a short one, but we took care of a few issues which will allow us to press on.

A few final notes:

1) I still don't have any photos, but once construction begins you will be begging for a solid block of text that isn't splattered with pictures of arguably off-topic things.

2) I would like us to share a moment of silence for our fallen comrade, Corinne. You will be avenged!

Aaaand they're off!

2007-10-08T17:38:00.000-05:00

We had our second meeting for the VDF2.0 this past Thursday. Due to the extremely small percentage of the world's population who showed up, I took notes on the meeting and will post them shortly. And by shortly, I mean immediately.

October 4, 2007 Meeting Summary:

This is a long summary, but it covers a lot of the design choices that we’ve made so far. I tried to keep it light hearted for your sake. If you read nothing else, read the conclusion. These summaries should be shorter in the future.

Electronics

In order to simplify the amount of cables needed for the new dance floor, the MIT circuit board used in the original dance floor will be chopped into two parts. One part will contain the LED drivers. This board has been dubbed the “mini-board” (sometimes denoted µ-board (please ignore the fact that µ means micro)).

Each mini-board will sit at the shared corner of the four cells that it controls. By controlling cells in this manner rather than MIT’s method of controlling full rows with a single board, we use a lot less cable to reach each cell. Grant has already begun a CAD design of these boards, and is continuing to work on it for next week’s meeting.

The second part we will harvest from our Frankensteining of the MIT board has been denoted the “mini-controller” (it hasn’t technically been referred to as µ-controller yet, but give it time). This board’s main function is to control the mini-board. It connects to the mini-board using an I²C connection. The I²C connection has four lines: data, clock, ground, and power. As of now, there are a few questions still floating around regarding this connection, such as: Will power affect data? Can the clock signal get onto the power wire? Should we ask a professor about this? A mysterious file known only as “Gerber 2.x” contains a lot of insight into the MIT board. Unfortunately, this file is currently being horded by MIT, so Corinne is going to ninja-sneak into their database and blindside them. Or maybe she’ll just ask them for it… Anyway, Grant is holding off on CAD-ing the mini-controller until he has gotten to look at the enigmatic Gerber file.

For next week, the Electrical folks are going to…

1) Update the proposal for the electronic aspect of the floor.

2) Work on a CAD design for the mini-board.

3) Ask professors about data/power.

4) Ninja-sneak information out of MIT.

Mechanical

The first mech-y design issue we talked about was the possibility of making the dance floor shallower. We discussed the pros (lighter, more portable, more stackable) and cons (need room for power?) of this change, but eventually decided that keeping the board at the same height as a standard staircase step would benefit the drunken buffoons who will be using the dance floor.

Another design issue was whether the individual cells should be smaller. They are currently 6 in X 6 in. We debated shrinking these down to 4 in X 4 in, but after noting that this would shrink the overall floor size too significantly this idea was scrapped.

One of the biggest problems that the new board faced was that the mini-boards needed to be on the top of the floor (where it would surely be crushed by the weight of the ignorant masses), or on the bottom (where it would surely be crushed by the weight of the ignorant masses plus the weight of the floor itself). This led to Richard’s invention of what is being called “the basement”. The basement is a 2 inch high compartment which will house all the wires, boards, and USB hubs for the dance floor. The basement is a perfect name for this compartment because, like a real basement, it’s the bottom level, it’s going to be a messy hodgepodge of electronics, and it’s where the hot water heater is going to be.

In order to maximize the diffusion of the LED’s, Ben proposed running ribbon wire from the board up to a crimping connector thingy that will house the LED’s. This will dramatically reduce the number of late night soldering parties, but IEEE members didn’t seem to mind.

Construction

The board itself will be made out of acrylic. This design has a number of advantages:

1) Lighter

2) Cooler looking

3) Easier construction, since Richard knows a guy who can laser cut the plastic into the right sizes.

The floor is going to be made out of smaller chunks than the last one. 4 cell by 4 cell blocks with approximately 25 inch sides will come together to form the standard 16 by 8 cell floor that everyone has come to know and love. Some of Richard’s assignments for next week include: coming up with a finished design for the floor and doing a cost analysis of the materials.

Software

By changing over from one board controlling a full row to one board controlling a quadrant of cells, the programs that people wrote for the first dance floor will no longer display properly. This is where the software team will need step in. Programming the dance floor based on a row-column idea is a very straight forward way to do it, and since programs have already been written following this paradigm, the most logical solution for the new dance floor is to change the way the cells are addressed. This will allow us to still use the old programs and to continue writing in a common sense style. Any questions regarding how the cells are addressed can be directed at Pehr and/or Garrett.

Conclusion

For next week’s meeting, everyone should read MIT’s DDF 2.0 documentation. I believe that Corinne is going to send out an email with it attached as a PDF. Otherwise, Google that mutha. If you need any more information about any given topic in this summary, send me an email at jtp2 at ye olde cec.wustl.edu

Future posts will have pretty pictures and a lot less boring introductory definitions, so don't get discouraged by the length of this post.

LED Selection

2007-09-24T19:33:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday, Grant and some other students worked to select LEDs for the new dance floor. The main contenders came from SuperbrightLEDs and HB Electronic Components. Four of each LED were placed onto a board and covered with potential housing materials so we could see the effects. We considered the brightness, vividness of colors, and expense of each LED.

In the end, Grant settled on the HB LEDs (using an amber diffuser cap from Digikey to get a more vivid green out of the green LED).

VDF 2.0 - It's Happening!

2007-09-24T19:31:00.002-05:00

Grant Williams has become the project chair for VDF 2.0. He'll be posting shortly with some thoughts and ideas on how to build the new version.

Vertigo 2006

2006-11-23T02:33:00.000-06:00

Vertigo 2006 was Saturday, November 18th 2006. The theme was industrial / hazmat and the attendance was estimated to be higher than last year (unfortunately there is no official count). We had the dance floor, as usual, and this year added more lights, decorations, and black-light bubbles!

Make Your Own Animations for the Vertigo Dance Floor!

2006-10-23T04:26:00.000-05:00

The WU IEEE has released our first VDF dev-kit to make your own animations for the floor.

You can get the zip file here.

While the server still requires Linux to run, the client-side is Java and can be developed and run on nearly any platform.

These animations are written in java and use simple 2-dimensional arrays of Java's built-in Color class. The interface is simple to use and
nearly anything is possible!

The developer kit contains some rough sample code, the code necesary to connect to a dance floor server, and the VirtualFloor server (also contained in the original software release) that will allow you to test and display your animations on your computer.

These do not have to be simple animations, either. They can be interactive programs that use any sort of input as its basis. The sample code demonstrates using your computer's microphone or keyboard for input.

Our goal is to see what people can make and send to us at ieee@cec.wustl.edu and we'll show them at our two upcoming events:

Washington University's Dance Marathon - November 4th 2006 - The Athletic Complex

Vertigo 2006 - November 28th 2006 - Lopata Gallery

Burnin' down the House

2006-10-12T01:00:00.000-05:00

The dance floor was recently featured at the Homecoming Dance for Chaminade, a college prep school in St. Louis. The evening included a fire-breather, beatboxing performance, and music to get the kids movin'. This time, the floor ended up strewn with rose petals and bow ties, much classier than the usual spilled beer.

This event marks the full realization of the dance floor dream. The floor was commissioned, transported, and used in an awesome event, and the proceeds will fund new, cool, large-scale projects for Wash U engineering students.

Look for the VDF later this year at Dance Marathon on Nov. 4 and Vertigo on Nov 18!

More Publicity... plus an update

2006-08-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

The IEEE is the world's largest engineering professional organization, and they recently featured the VDF in a front-page article of their online newsletter, The Institute. A few people must be reading it, because our blog traffic went up 40x the day it came out. Overall, the article is well-written, with lots of juicy technical details, but mistakenly claims that our floor is larger than MIT's. It's not.

In other news, we're currently planning the next VDF, and our target for the VDF prototype is November 4th, 2006, the day of Wash U's Dance Marathon. At the event, look for a completely redesigned, touch-sensitive, more portable floor module!

VDF Rocks Bayou Ball

2006-05-03T22:12:00.000-05:00

Apologies for not posting this earlier, on March 25th 2006 the VDF graced Wash U's Whitaker Hall (Biomedical Engineering). The event, entitled the Bayou Ball, was a New Orleans-themed dance party to raise money for Habitat for Humanity / Hurricane Katrina relief. The dance was put on by engineering students to replace the annual for-profit EnFormal.

Wednesday Night Fever

2006-05-03T21:55:00.000-05:00

Tonight we used the floor at the Cocktails For Life's kickoff event, to great success. Dozens of partygoers enjoyed the floor while DJ Nestor spun some sweet House music. From all accounts the event went well and raised a lot of money for the Saint Louis Effort for Aids and PAWS, the beneficiaries of Cocktails For Life.

This wraps up the Dance Floor for this semester, next semester it's on to bigger and better things!

VDF at Cocktails For Life Kickoff Party

2006-05-03T02:54:00.000-05:00

The vertigo dance floor will be featured at Cocktails For Life's kickoff party tonight at the Kentucky Club (4168 Manchester, Saint Louis) . A live DJ will be spinning and local restaurants and bars will be serving food.

From the website:

"Join us Wednesday May 3rd, 2006 from 6-9pm for the kick off party for Cocktails For Life, to benefit PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support). Cocktails For Life (to be held May 17th) follows in the footsteps of Dining Out for Life, where dozens of area bars, lounges and nightclubs will donate a portion of that day's proceeds to PAWS. Founded in 1990, PAWS helps those with HIV/AIDS that must make the choice between keeping their beloved pets, and making their other financial obligations. PAWS provides clients with free food, vet care, grooming and placement for pets if an owner should pass away.

Don't miss our "Wednesday Night Fever" kick off party at The Kentucky Club at 4168 Manchester Road in The Grove! Dance to DJ Nestor on a Saturday Night Fever style lighted dance floor, sample food from your favorite restaurants, and enjoy the libations provided by Miller Brewing, Absolut and Level Vodkas, Grand Marnier, Navan, Echo Domani wines, Corazon tequila and more!"

Tonight is a kick-off party sponsored by Miller Lite to get people excited for the proceedings on May 17th. The event is from 6-9pm and is 21+.

Vertigo Dance Floor lights up Museum

2006-02-03T01:02:00.000-06:00

Tonight we brought the dance floor to the Saint Louis Contemporary Art Museum for their "select night" series sponsored by Anheuser-Busch. We packed the house -- they had to turn people away to stay within their occupancy limit of 750 people! The DJ spun a unique mix of progressive electronica while 20 / 30-somethings talked and danced and checked out the avant garde displays. Several people approached us with offers to rent out the floor for their parties or other functions, which was flattering. Overall it was a successful night and gave us some opportunities to see exactly what aspects need to be improved in our next design!

Vertigo Dance Floor at the STL Contemporary

2006-01-17T11:34:00.000-06:00

We have been invited to display the dance floor at the Saint Louis Contemporary Art Museum for one of their open house / cocktail parties, an event series entitled "Select Nights." As a contemporary art museum, they seek to engage people in all forms of modern expression, including large-scale animated dance floors. The details are below. All are welcome, but it is 21+.

Thursday, February 2, 2006
Dj Randall Roberts
6:00 - 9:00 pm

Show the one you're pining for the crazy-love dance moves you've been practicing. DJ Randall Roberts will be spinning a dance set and you can move all night long on the light-up computer controlled dance floor designed by Wash U engineering students.

Enjoy this sweet mix of culture with local hipsters and the arts-loving crowd. Admission is free and so are the swanky snacks by Pablo Weiss of KitchenK.

Drinks are only a $1 donation to the Contemporary.Guests must be 21 or older to enter.
See you at the Contemporary (3750 Washington Blvd.).

http://contemporarystl.org

Discobar uses WashU Software!

2005-12-15T19:33:00.000-06:00

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

2005-12-04T20:46:00.000-06:00

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

2005-12-01T18:54:00.000-06:00

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.

Our Floor

2005-11-23T02:46:00.000-06:00

We made it on to a blog at University of California as well as MAKE . A comment on that site raises the point that we were not the originators of this idea. It is not a secret that MIT did this first -- we have a link to their site on the left and have mentioned this wherever appropriate (including the first post of this blog). The reason we've received so much publicity is that our school's media services division released a press release to all of their contacts to get the word out. Unfortunately, even though it was mentioned several times to various interviewers, the press-release appears to lack explicit credit to the students at MIT who pioneered this design. Also, the STL Post-Dispatch photographer did not have the opportunity to conduct an interview and as a result there are several inconsistencies in the photo caption seen in the paper and on cnn.com.

We may not have conceived the original idea but that does not discredit the hundreds of hours we have invested in this project, nor does it tarnish the giant working dance floor we ended up with. MIT, our helpers, Thomas (Germany) and Clint should all be commended for the effort it takes to get something like this going. The fact that, currently, there are only three dance floor projects of this type other than MIT's in progress speaks to the size this undertaking really is.

That said, we have made what we consider design improvements that make our floor uniquely our creation, even if the underlying circuit boards are of the same design. We made ours expressly portable in that two PCB's are integrated into a frame of concert staging that locks to additional frames for stability. We built the floor in an unused room on an upper level of one of the engineering buildings and were able to transport the floor down 4 levels and into the venue for Vertigo without too much trouble. Our custom software package introduces client/server interaction that gives flexibility in operation (like wireless or remote control), an easy-to-use playlist for loading and playing animations (as well as on-the-fly scrolling text) and other features. We also put in time to debug and stabilize power supply issues that result from the PCB design and high amp draw from the LED's.

Our first edition of this floor concept will be used in our lounge's window to entertain passersby, in Computer Science II (CSE132) as a final project for beginning CS students, and, of course, for more parties.

Props to MIT for starting this trend and getting everyone interested!

This is only the beginning for Wash U; we have learned much from the creation of Version 1 of the VDF. Spending hundreds of hours creating it has brought to light many ways to make it more reliable, to make it faster to build, and to create even cooler patterns and interactions.

We will be refining the concept further as time goes by. Stay tuned for the latest!

CNN picks up the STL Post-Dispatch Story

2005-11-19T13:13:00.000-06:00

CNN has posted the picture from the post-dispatch in their off-beat photo gallery:

link

More Publicity (part 2)

2005-11-18T11:56:00.000-06:00

The school alumni newspaper, the Record, printed "Lighting Up the Night" with a nice picture of one programmer on the dance floor.

Speaking of programming, the students from CSE 436, Software Engineering Workshop, will release the first version of their software by Thanksgiving. The software has features that go well beyond the MIT software, including:
-client/server architecture for more flexible floor control
-virtual board for testing out animations
-GUI for adding animations to a playlist
-JPEG to .ddf animation converter

... and more, coming soon. As always, if you have any questions or comments, send us an email!

More Publicity

2005-11-16T19:50:00.000-06:00

The dance floor has been getting a huge amount of publicity lately!

The above picture, taken early in the night, is from the Metro section of the Nov. 14 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with the headline "Tripping the Light Fantastic."

We now have a press release on the Wash U web site: Engineering dance features computer-controlled dance floor.

The school paper also featured a front-page picture of the floor, taken before Vertigo had started.

Expect a video of the party and dance floor to be released shortly!

Some Vertigo Pictures

2005-11-14T16:00:00.000-06:00

I have put some pictures from the event into a really quick thumbnail gallery at http://ieee.wustl.edu/floor/vertigo/ . Note that the full-sized images are really large.

Post-Vertigo

2005-11-13T15:14:00.000-06:00

More information will come later as we are all exhausted from dancing all night, but a quick recap:

This years vertigo was bigger than ever. An official attendance total is hard to come by because the counter got reset when the fire alarm went off (due to the fog machine + insane body heat from all the dancers). Luckily we got the alarm reset and the DJ entertained people as they stood outside in the (thankfully not cold but still damp) weather. The alarm went off about 11pm and we were up to about 600 at that point (with three hours to go). An unnofficial estimate is around 2000 for the whole night. Typically the party tapers off around 1:30 with the most hardcore dancers staying till 2 but this time the entire place was packed up until the DJ had to stop spinning, leaving the crowd chanting for more.

Overall, the dance floor was extremely well received. We did have some minor issues, due to the way the circuit boards were placed into the wood lattice. Pressure on the USB and power connectors led to intermittent connections which we only saw when lots of dancers were on the floor. A few slightly-larger holes around the power and USB connections should fix this issue. It didn't matter, however, as you could barely even see the floor because of all the people on it! In fact, even with the entire surface covered with people jumping and grinding to both hip-hop and hard-techno, the Lexan is in great shape-- save for some scuffs and spilled beer. We were very impressed.

Overall it was a great success and many more photos will come!

Vertigo in T-minus 17 hours, 28 minutes!

2005-11-12T04:31:00.000-06:00

The Dance Floor is installed in Lopata Gallery!

After spending all day in the gallery, vertigo setup is coming along nicely. We have more lights and more sound and more stage than any vertigo in recent memory -- without even considering the dance floor!

The space is decorated on every surface with fluorescent designs that will glow under the numerous black lights we have installed. The entrance tunnel has more strobes than is (probably) healthy. We have consumed over 10 rolls of duct tape.

Tonight at 10:00 PM, Vertigo 2005 will dazzle, amaze and entertain thousands of Wash U students. Bring your friends!

Vertigo is in two days!

2005-11-10T15:20:00.000-06:00

Vertigo is this Saturday and the energy is already building! People all over campus are talking about the floor. We will be in Student Life tomorrow and the Washington University Record (Newspaper for faculty and staff) in the next few weeks.

Vertigo setup begins tomorrow (friday) at 2:00 when the stage and lighting truss arrives. We begin by tarping the entire room and then painting designs in UV Reactive paint. We can use all the help we can get so stop by on friday or saturday to lend a hand!

We have been featured on EnGadget as well as STL Diatriber which is amazing!

We have been lax on posting lately due to last-minute issues. We are behind schedule and are pulling 8 hour shifts to get everything done. We ran into an issue with power supply voltage drops causing the USB connection to reset. This was rectified by adding capacitors across the auxiliary power connection on the controller boards and using thicker wire for the 5v line from the supplies.

As of now, we have modules one and two "done" and module three is being tinfoiled as we speak. Module four's frame needs finishing touches before it can be cabled. We'll have more pictures later...

Two Modules Acting as One

2005-11-06T23:10:00.000-06:00

I recompiled the stock animation software(not the in-development stuff) to work with the USB hub and now half the floor works in sync! We're finishing module three monday night and module four by wednesday night. Stay tuned!

Module Two is Done

2005-11-06T14:49:00.000-06:00

Module two is now complete. All that remains (for both modules one and two) is to attach the lexan and minor aesthetic improvements. We have some videos and pictures of the two available. We cannot run both at once yet because the device addresses change when used with a USB hub so we have to recompile/adjust the software to manage this.

Module three's frame is completely built and up in Lopata 404. It is ready for cabling and tinfoiling to get it ready to use. We are meeting this week in the evenings to finish wood construction for module four. Once the frame is done, assembly does not take that much time. The hardest part is getting the cable mess near the controller board situated without pulling any connectors loose. Worst case, we finish the tinfoiling / diffusing friday evening in the gallery. What matters is to get four built and then three and four lit up. We'll keep you posted on the status.

Today we kicked off the major vertigo publicity campaign with the underpass painting and major flyering. We intend to flyer every building on campus to reach out to those who are not in the engineering school and get them excited about the event.

We're getting down to the wire here but we have faith we can get it presentable by vertigo. The one final thing is to make new patterns. Details on how to do this are contained in a matlab script at http://web.mit.edu/storborg/ddf/sw/ddfconvert2.m . we have about ten pre-made patterns that could be used at vertigo but we definitely want more. We will be working on this later in the week.

Media:
Note: ignore the funk music in the background of these clips (or, rock out to it).
Matrix pattern close-up
Checkers pattern close-up
Diagonal pattern close-up
Pulsar pattern close-up

We're getting there, and Publicity!

2005-11-05T02:58:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we made much progress leading up to the final construction. We still have only one module completed however we have ALL cables sorted and taped in rows so we can just drop it into the cable channel and it's good. They've all been tested again as we had a few weak solder joints that were knocked loose.

The frame for module 2 is completely done. Today we will add the cable and then the tinfoil to this module. #3's wood is 80% cut, special notches are left. #4's is cut into strips and now must be altered to fit together. We plan to jam in the wood shop today to get as much done as possible. All the help we can get will be much appreciated.

The software team has many new features working but is slowed down by our lack of hardware. We aim to have 2 modules for sure done by moday with the other two by tuesday (an optimistic estimate) so that they can have full use of the floor to perfect the software.

Publicity for Vertigo and the floor in general is gaining more momentum. Today the School of Engineering PR department sent a press release to members of the media detailing our project (see below) and took information down for the school newsletter. Also, television news cameras may be at the event taking interviews and covering the floor and how it ties in with vertigo. We will be featured in Student Life, Wash U's student newspaper, next week as well. The floor has already been covered in EnSequitor, the engineering school's student-run newsletter (http://www.ensequitor.com).

Tonight the Vertigo publicity campaign will hit full swing as we begin painting the underpass to advertise the event and begin to flier the entire campus with vertigo fliers and the special ones for the floor itself (see below).

all in all, a good buzz is building!

The Press Release:

The talent and ingenuity of Washington University engineering students are being put to the test with a large-scale, computer-controlled dance floor that will light up the night on Saturday, Nov. 12. That’s the date of the Engineering Student Council’s annual dance party, Vertigo, to be held from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. in Lopata Hall on the Washington University Hilltop Campus.

Comprising four 4 ft. x 8 ft. modules, the dance floor boasts 1,536 long-lasting and low-power-consuming LEDs that light to 4,096 different colors. Students are using substances as common as aluminum foil to achieve special effects. The dance floor, which makes use of one-half mile of environmentally friendly ribbon cable, can be controlled wirelessly by remote clients, thus facilitating visual interactions that were not possible in previous designs. The high-tech dance floor is based on one made by M.I.T. students last spring.

Students have worked hundreds of hours on the dance floor and are now putting the finishing touches on their project. They will be working on the dance floor through the weekend in 404 Lopata.

The dance-floor project is under the direction of the University’s chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The software portion of the project has been completed as a project for CSE 456, a capstone course in software engineering.

For more information, visit the project Web site at http://washufloor.blogspot.com or contact Pehr Hovey, IEEE chapter president pehr.hovey@gmail.com, Brandon Heller, bdh4@cec.wustl.edu. (hardware) Garrett Eardley, gse1@cec.wustl.eydu (software), or Cheryl Simon, cls1@cec.wustl.edu (software).

Module One is "Done!"

2005-11-04T03:36:00.000-06:00

We have the first of four 4x8 modules completed, for the most part. All thats left is to attach the Lexan.

We will be working on completely finishing this module as well as constructing the remaining 3 today at our build party. It lasts all day and it is critical that we make progress since vertigo is next saturday!

See a video of the module in action:
Module one, without diffusion

Build Party! Let's get this thing done!

2005-11-01T15:29:00.000-06:00

The soldering* is done, there is no more cable to cut. The plywood is cut into strips. All that's left is to finish notching the wood, stick it all together, route cable and attach the lexan!

Please come help wrap this project up this friday all day (and night?) starting at 11:00am!
Note that we're meeting in Lopata 404 for this one.

we will have a working dance floor before the weekend is through!

*some minor toaster-soldering still needed

It's coming...

2005-10-29T13:24:00.000-05:00

Results! It's solder-tastic

2005-10-29T06:10:00.000-05:00

New videos! (below)

After spending from 11:00am to 5:00am in the engineering school our crack team of solder-ers have managed many milestones. All the cable is now complete. This means it has been cut, connectored, separated, stripped, soldered-to and then heatshrunk. Out of all the cables made (~500) there were only 3 instances of faulty cables (ie, bad solder joint). This is AMAZING as we did this over the course of two weekends with 30 different people helping throughout.

We found that by simply aiming the LED's at the back-surface of the test module and covering it with wax paper we get a nearly even coloring. We planned to do this eventually and include tinfoil and other exotic materials but were amazed when simply re-taping the LED's and having the light bounce off of the wooden backboard was nearly all we needed, as the pictures show.

Excitement for this project is building too. Last night we demonstrated our 4x4 pixel test module to the engineering student council meeting and impressed at least 30 people. This helped get people pumped up for Vertigo itself as well as our solder party we had today.
The Electrical Engineering Department gave us doughnuts on a nice platter to keep us going. They also took many pictures of us kids being constructive for publication in newsletters and viewbooks. Professor Cytron, the overseer of the software team (its a group from his class, CSE436, that is doing the software) has invited members of the media to Vertigo setup to cover the awesomeness that is this project.

We have videos of two of the test patterns included in the MIT code (not quite ready yet to write our own). These basically demonstrate the effectiveness of our current diffusing method (that is, re-aim + wax paper). We eventually may use nearly-opqaue plastic sheeting to get a more even look than wax paper but this works well for now.

Checkers
Diagonal

Pictures from Solder Party II

2005-10-29T05:59:00.000-05:00

By the way, we have decided to market this dance floor to the campus community as a "Sustainable Dance Floor." Part of this has to do with a certain other sustainable party happening today that is very similar to vertigo, and the rest is that we re-used a lot of materials (including old cable and stage frames) and the 1800 feet of new ribbon cable we used is certified "environmentally friendly." Captain planet would be proud.

Solder Party II this friday!

2005-10-26T02:31:00.000-05:00

Really all that is left on the large scale is to solder LED clusters to the ribbon cable. I finished 32 cables tonight (a small amount in the scheme of things but its half a controller board's worth).

We will be doing this all day friday in Bryan 302 so make sure to stop by!

In other news, the programmers have interfaced with the test module and are beginning to test the API on the hardware. They really want some finished modules though so we are making every effort to deliver by monday.

Vertigo is in 17 days!

More Build Party Pictures, Solder Party II: the sequel

2005-10-23T14:49:00.000-05:00

Here are more pictures of this past weekend's build party.

Solder Party II will be held all day friday starting around 11:00 am in Bryan 302. At this point it is pretty much all soldering as we have the LED clusters and a lot of heatshrink and wires cut. It takes a team of two 1-2 minutes to do a cluster (4 solder joints plus heatshrink and sensor wire).

Please stop by and lend a hand! Vertigo is 20 days away!

Also, this weekend is Halloween and Bauhaus! so we will not be hosting an official solder-party over the weekend but someone will probably be there working on it at some point.

Progress! Fall Break Solder Party Recap

2005-10-23T02:28:00.000-05:00

This past friday and saturday we hosted a solder party in the ESE/IEEE lounge in Bryan to get as much progress as possible done on the floor. We had the help of several generous and talented volunteers (fueled by free pizza, chicken and chinese food) we were able to consume over 3,400 feet of 10-conductor ribbon cable (more than 1/2 a mile), 1500 LED's, dozens of feet of heat-shrink, 512 snap-on cable connectors, and a syringe of solder paste.

The results:

>all the wood is cut into strips and ready to be notched (to fit them together into a grid).
>all 512 pixel-cables are cut, separated, stripped, and have their board-connector attached
>more than 100 of the pixel cables have the LED's soldered to them (ie, finished product)
>the remaining LED's have been soldered together in groups of 3.
>4 controller boards are toaster soldered and 2 of them are programmed and verified working (with headers).
>the 4x4 pixel demonstration module for the programmers needs only finishing mechanical touches.
>the floor of the lounge is a MESS.

See the results for yourself!

We have less than 3 weeks until VERTIGO so there is still a lot of work to do.

Currently it is a matter of soldering LED's and sensor wires to the ribbon cable and heatshrinking the results.

After the cables are complete they must be tested and the rest of the controller boards constructed.

Finally, the wood needs to be finished and integrated into the aluminum frames for easy transport.

Coming up soon will be Solder Party II: the sequel. This time it will be ALL soldering as the rest of the mechanicals are out of the way.

Stay tuned!

Video of First Blinking Pixel!

2005-10-20T10:31:00.000-05:00

Last night, the first pixel finally turned on. We have two videos, one of two-color transitions and one of purely random colors. Check these out. Then imagine another 511 pixels next to it, lighting up the room in trippy color.

The problem was due to an incorrectly inserted programming cable. When inserted backwards, the AVR programmer would still turn on, and report that everything was ok. When trying to program a chip, however, there were plenty of errors. It just so happens that the AVR 6-pin ISP connection delivers power to a programmer when inserted backwards, by drawing power from the RESET and MISO lines. With a working programmer, we could finally put the firmware on the main chips, and set them to the proper speed, 8 Mhz. Then... it worked.

Things are looking up now, with the most critical (and delayed) piece in place!

SOLDER PARTY!

2005-10-20T02:43:00.000-05:00

To mass produce the LED / pressure sensor whips we are hosting a solder party this weekend.

We will have teams of interested students measuring and cutting ribbon cable, stripping the ends, soldering the LED's on to it and adding the end connection. Another group will be testing each of them to verify their integrity.

We need to make 512 of these cables so it will take some time but its easy and fun!

Food and movies / music will be provided.

Details:

This Friday + Saturday starting at noon
Bryan 302 (IEEE / ESE lounge).

We will also be doing the woodcutting for the structure on friday as well.

Feel free to stop by to check on the progress and hopefully lend a hand!

More parts

2005-10-15T00:38:00.000-05:00

The Lexan for the surface of the floor has arrived! We are using 1/4" genuine GE Lexan because it is very flexible and 250 times as strong as glass. The four panels were purchased from Regal Plastic in Saint Louis.

The power supplies came today too. We are using 5VDC 13A bulk power supplies from Marlin P Jones & Associates (MPJA). They were cheap and compact and will be integrated into the modules.

Things are shaping up for our build weekend, starting October 21st (Fall Break), in Lopata hall.

Testing Cable, Student involvement

2005-10-10T12:11:00.000-05:00

We are testing various methods to assemble the ribbon cable whips that contain the LEDs and pressure sensor for each pixel.

The two theories so far are to use 20 conductor ribbon cable and split it into 4 5-wire sections. Each section will service one pixel and on the board-end the individual wires could be crimped and put into headers soldered to the board.

Another option is to use sections of 10-conductor and use it with press-on ribbon cable ends (10-conductor). Only 5 individual wires would be used, which translates to one of the 2 rows of the cable connector. This results in wire waste but is faster than doing individual wires with various crimp-on connectors.

As soon as we figure out the "best" way to do this we are going to be calling out to all interested students to help us prepare these ribbon cables. There will have to be 512 of them (1 for each pixel) regardless of how they're arranged. It is time-consuming by itself but a group of people, motivated by free food) can get it done in reasonable time.

We will need people to cut the cable, strip it, make pressure sensors, solder the LEDs and sensors to one end of the cable and attach whatever connection method is used to the other end.

We will let interested people know via this site and e-mail when, and how, they can get involved.

Test Modules Built, Part orders

2005-10-10T08:17:00.000-05:00

Things have been busy with the Dance Floor. Vertigo is 33 days away and the floor is starting to take shape.

We have assembled one of the 4 alluminum frames that will form the outsides of each 4x8 foot floor module. They put together with an allen wrench in about an hour, the rest will soon follow.

On sunday we went to a shop and assembled two prototype "test modules." each is 2x2 feet, with 16 total pixels. The purpose of these modules is not to test software (they're 1/4 the size of the area controlled by one controller board). These modules were built to test the construction methods and various wood thicknesses for the right balance between strength and weight.

The modules were constructed (and the full floor will be constructed) by cutting notches out of strips of wood and fitting them together. The joints were cut pretty tight to increase structure stability when assembled. Wood glue was then used to further lock the frame together. We built one out of 3/8" plywood, the other out of 1/2". We placed a sheet of 1/4" acrylic on them to test stability when stood and jumped on.

The smaller of the two sizes worked amazingly well even before it was glued which leads us to conclude that we can get away with thinner wood which will decrease costs and weight significantly. We used acrylic for the test because it was all Home Depot carried. It worked well which further assures us that the Polycarbonate (lexan) that we will be using (same thickness) will work even better.

We are using Lexan for the covering because it is stronger and more flexible than acrylic. This will save us if someone with a sharp heel puts a lot of ponit-source pressure on the surface. The floor will (hopefully) flex instead of simply cracking.

Today we ordered the Lexan from Regal Plastics (a St Louis distributor), the rest of the USB-Serial Converters from Parallax, and the powersupplies for the floor from MPJA.

All that is left to buy at this point is the wood for the whole floor, some USB hubs, and miscellaneous supplies.

General Project Overview

2005-09-15T15:13:00.000-05:00

We have posted a PDF that contains a brief overview of the project, how it works (roughly), how we are going to build it, and how students will be involved.

If you are interested in knowing more about the Vertigo Dance Floor, please check it out at
http://ieee.wustl.edu/floor/docs/vdf.pdf

Preliminary Hardware/Software Schedule

2005-09-02T23:40:00.000-05:00

Note: for one software design course at Wash U (CSE436), some of the students will be working on VDF software improvements. Their tasks are prefixed with (436). Thanks Professor Cytron!

Sept 9	Single blinking pixel
Sept 21	Final mechanical design
Oct 1	Partial test module built
Oct 7	(436) Basic Software functionality – verification of writing to screen
Oct 7	Physical module built
Oct 14	Soldering workshop/ first module built
Oct 21	Second soldering workshop/ remaining modules built
Nov 1	(436) Scrolling display and multi-module driver fully tested on actual screen
Nov 12	VERTIGO!!!

Prototype Pressure Sensor

2005-09-01T17:56:00.000-05:00

We constructed a prototype of a Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) out of wire, plastic grocery bags and Scotch tape.

These will be placed within each pixel to give the software readouts on roughly where people are standing. This can be used for a large-scale version of "DDR," Human pong, control of games like Tetris, and ambient effects like having a cluster of lit pixels follow people as they walk across the floor.

The FSR's work by placing plastic in between two contacts to act as a dielectric (does not conduct electricity). When compressed, the thin film begins to conduct enough that resistance changes from around a MegaOhm to as little as 1 Ohm (it varies, of course).

These are still in the prototype stage as other materials are considered. Once the mechanical design of the floor is finished we will have a better idea of what sort of "sensitivity" these will need. The layers and materials used for the dielectric can then be tested to conform to specifications. If they are too easy to trigger (cause resistance to --> 0) then pixels may be stuck "on"; too hard to trigger means none of the intended effects will work.

Single Pixel Test Photos

2005-09-01T01:26:00.000-05:00

We built a basic "test pixel" to play with various diffusing options and LED arrangements.

These are preliminary photos, we are still messing with the tinfoil (seen slightly through the pixel cover) and testing various diffusion strategies.

Also note that the Green LED is much brighter and more focused than the other two LED's. This is a feature of the product and something we will have to fine-tune with resistor values and software.

Project Description

2005-08-31T23:16:00.000-05:00

Washington University - St. Louis' IEEE chapter is undertaking a large engineering project that will bring together students and faculty in many areas of engineering including Electrical, Computer, and Mechanical.

This project, dubbed the "Vertigo Dance Floor" (VDF), is based upon work done by a group of MIT students in the spring of 2005. We have worked closely with them to purchase their pre-made controller boards and gain some useful (and time-saving) insight into board firmware. A picture of the MIT project is above. See their site for more details of their project--it is worth the look.

Most broadly, the VDF is an 8 X 16 foot modular dance floor that is easily transportable. Each of the 4 modules is a self contained light display that interfaces with a computer via USB. Audio visualizations, patterns, scrolling messages, and games can be displayed dynamically in real-time on the floor, making for the ultimate party decoration.

The modules are divided into "pixels" that are 6 x 6 inches and contain Red, Green, and Blue LEDs. The LEDs are connected to drive chips that are then connected via an I2C serial bus to a microcontroller, which is in turn connected to a Serial-to-USB converter and then to a USB hub.

The Floor will be easily transportable to all kinds of events ranging from large scale "dances" to smaller private parties and gatherings. The floor will be rented out for the aforementioned events, thus creating a fundraising opportunity for the WU IEEE chapter. It can be used to display text messages to advertise for upcoming engineering events, as well as provide entertainment with building sized games of Teris, for example.

The floor is in the preliminary construction process right now, more details to follow!

The floor is set to debut at Vertigo, the All-school Dance party / Rave hosted by WU Encouncil on November 12, 2005.