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lantern

Animated gif of lantern in action.

lantern is an interactive, audio-reactive home WS2812 LED installation. It consists of:

  • a few stackable shelving units
  • 336 WS2812 LEDs with some custom mounting/wiring hardware
  • a Raspberry Pi 3
  • a fadecandy
  • custom server software, based on @scanlime's C++ libraries
  • custom iOS client software

This repo holds the server and client software, both of which are very much Works In Progress. :) Current master branch has a known crash and a totally crap audio reactive effect.

Project Goals

The main things I wanted were:

  • simple warm mood/back-lighting for the shelves
  • more colorful lighting effects when desired
  • audio-reactive installation/music visualizations for parties
  • keep things modular and well-decoupled for reuse happiness, both physically and in software
  • ???? the future is unknown -- other forms of interactivity?
  • effects and mixer remote-controllable with realtime feedback from iOS devices
  • low(-ish) cost

I also was on a self-imposed deadline to show off a prototype at a get-together in early February 2017. I was very pleased to make the deadline!

Technical Bits / Open-Source Love

The server should build on OS X macOS and recent versions of Raspbian, though there is a fair bit of set-up required there. The iOS client is targeting iOS 10. There are separate readmes in the client and server directories.

The server is written in C++ based on @scanlime's awesome fadecandy mixer/effect examples. The client is written in Swift 3. Client-server communication is over websockets, using websocketpp on the server and Starscream on the iOS client. For easy JSON serialization/deserialization, I'm using @nlohmann's C++ json library and Freddy.

I have dipped my toes into RxSwift on the client for a clean observer implemntation, but I am barely scratching its surface.

Also currently using HGCircularSlider.

I use Airplay in my apartment to stream audio to a couple of sets of speakers. Rather than trying to set up a mic for the Pi, I decided to try turning it into an Airplay server which could be targeted along with speakers. I have integrated shairplay into the server and it's working pretty well.

For analaysis of the audio stream I am using the wonderfully straightforward Gist.

The actual audio visualization is currently really boring so there's a lot of work to do there.

The shelves are Closet Maid brand from Home Depot.

Messy!

Lots of soldering!

Slightly less messy.

TODO / Known Issues

  • recent persistence work on server is causing a crash
  • settle on some audio reactive effects
  • annotate effects that are audio-reactive; show this in client (eg, a speaker icon)
  • redesign client interface (prettier; also UISplitView is too restrictive)
  • expose some global settings (eg, Airplay buffer size)
  • also client-side settings (server hostname at least)
  • client should be able to request layout from server and render spatial controls based on that
  • optimization of client/server synchronization
  • .gitignore/repo cruft cleanup
  • better documentation, both technically and of project

Wish List

  • turn client into more general-purpose LED installation controller/design tool?