• Concept
• Motivation
• Competition
• Tech Specs
• Requirements
• Risks
• Time Lapse
• Talks/Videos
• 18-549 Home

MEMBERS

• Regina Chan
• Brian Goldfain
• Kaichong Huang
• Daniel Lin

PROJECT CONCEPT

Our original concept involved building a toaster that can toast a given image onto bread. The toaster would turn the images into reality via a moving array of digitally controlled heating elements. However, problems in power and current made our orginal concept infeasible. At this point, we rebooted with five weeks left so used our existing code base in a creative manner to produce LightMap.

LightMap transforms a given image to output on a bar of LEDs that can be viewed with the effects of persistence of vision. Just shake your head!

Given more time, we would have liked to attach a camera to the program so that a user can take a picture and then see their silhouette in flashing LED form.

MOTIVATION

The aim of this project to allow users to view images in a creative way. Putting this on display will make heads turn.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

• SpokePOV

• 
  

  The SpokePOV is an electronic kit that turns a bicycle wheel into a customized display. The project includes a schematic design, open source software for uploading and editing stored bitmap images, and a kit with all the parts necessary to build. The resolution of this entails a 30 LED radius.

• LighTalk

• 
  

  LighTalk was a product once available on ThinkGeek for $39. It involves scanning an image and reproducing it in a wand form factor. The user views the image by shaking the wand back and forth.

• Salient

• Salient is an Australian company that produces various persistance of vision LED products. Their products include a wand much like LighTalk, a device to display text when attached to a bicycle wheel, and a device to display patterns on the spokes of a wheel. However, none of their products are available in the US. Pricing is not specified.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Hardware:

• Arduino Mega
  
  The Arduino Mega is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega1280.

• LEDs
  To be used as outputs for display.

• Desktop application to convert desired image into a files readable by toaster.

• USB

REQUIREMENTS

LightMap Requirements

• Image shall be transformed to a max of 50x50 resolution.

• Image shall be outputted to the bar of LEDs with correct timing for persistence of vision to work.

• User should not be dizzy after viewing image.

Desktop Application Requirements

• Application shall convert desired image file to a format readable by toaster.

• Application shall accept gifs, jpegs, bmp images for conversion.

• Application should have a GUI.

ARCHITECTURE DIAGRAM

STATECHART DIAGRAM

RISKS & MITIGATION STRATEGIES

Risk	Mitigation
The package is too small to solder all connections by hand	Enlarge package
Components overheat because of tight packaging	Test packaging and components before final product is finished to ensure all heat requirements are met
User image contains many fine details	User is responsible for displaying reasonable images
Invalid image provided	Nothing changes after user notified
Safety - headaches caused by repeated use	Use product in moderation

TEST PLAN

Our test plan involved a combination of integration and acceptance tests. We verified the Arduino and PC programs work independently, then tested sending converted images from the PC to the Arduino. Acceptance testing involved users taking images of various sizes and content and verifying that the image displayed on the LEDs looked like the original image.

TIME LAPSE

To be completed

PRESENTATIONS & VIDEOS

• Project Proposal and Requirements
• Design & Architecture
• Mid-semester Project Status
• Test Plan & Experimental Validation
• Final Project Presentation
• Project Poster