Maker Faire Bay Area 2024
Murgetroid: 3D Volumetric Interactive Color Display
Home: California, United States
A unique blend of art and electronics. The Murgetroid consists of four 22x22 full color LED panels, that rotate at ~330 RPM inside an infinity HEX cover. Two panels on each side are mounted back to back. This gives the illusion of single LEDs suspended in space. When rotated, persistence of vision renders these LEDs as 3 dimensional. The infinity HEX cover generates reflections that extend to infinity. I also developed multiple Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to take control of and monitor the Murgetroid, using Bluetooth connected to an Android tablet. Once in control you can very easily create shows of your own. The Murgetroid is also responsive to music, and will create a unique production that changes in real time to the music. TEXT messages can also be displayed.
https://www.youtube.com/@thedubdude
Maker
Donald Wile
Retired electrical engineer, with over 40 years experience designing various types of integrated circuits. I've worked for both large companies, as well as 5 different start up companies. My experience with integrated circuit design primarily focused on analog circuits and mixed analog and digital systems. Disk drive read channels, power ICs, A2Ds.
What Inspired You to Make This?
I was looking for a project in my retirement that would allow me to learn Arduino and C++ programming. I was inspired by a friend's clock that used visual persistence to display the time of day. The Murgetroid seemed like the perfect blending of my passions for electronics, and programming. Most of my career as an electrical engineer was spent developing integrated circuits that few could appreciate or understand. The Murgetroid provides me an opportunity to create something with more mass appeal.
