Greg Friedland of San Francisco thought of filling that empty wall in his living room just above his coach. Perhaps a Vincent van Gogh or a Leonardo da Vinci painting will do the job. But instead, the modern artist birthed a rather ingenious idea – the Aurora LED wall. The Aurora LED wall is a 4 x 8 foot music-responsive canvas that is controlled by an iPad. Friedland said that the canvas is his largest and most engaging project up to date that involved soldering, woodworking, microcontrollers, and PC programming. Friedland explained that the lights are made up of 544 RGB LEDs attached to a 4’ by 8’ wood board.

Furthermore, he said that the LEDs are controlled by a ChipKit Uno32 microcontroller running at 80 Mhz, which is controlled by a program running on a laptop. “The computer is the brain of the system, being responsible for creating the graphics that appear on the wall, and the microcontroller relays the messages to the LEDs. The PC software connects to software running on an iPad, which allows interaction with the moving patterns. Also, the Aurora has a mode where the built in programs respond to music, bouncing and flashing to the beat, turning it into a VJ of sorts,” Friedland said. If you’d like to learn more about his project, you can check out the guide here.

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