We're 2 artists (Shirin Sabahi and Sebastien Berthier) residing in Stockholm. We will have a show in Malmo, Sweden in October 2010 which consists of a light installation.
We're building a simple counter with 5 digits out of fluorescent lamps (7 sticks to form any figure like the 80ies clock display) and we want the counter to count every 27 minutes! It sounds simple but we have no idea whatsoever how to realize it. An arduino user colleague of ours told us that this is feasible with arduino. We have access to the hardware but we don't figure out how to make it work in the installation setting. Therefore we are asking for help! We don't have a big budget. If you're interested or know someone in the region who may be, please let us know. The person will get credit for the participation and free booze at the opening.
We look forward to hearing back.
Best,
Shirin and Sebastien
I guess we need both : software and hardware (we have at our disposal a Arduino board, but do not know really how to connect it to the fluorescent lights)
I hope that with this image it gets clearer.
Jag bor visserligen inte i malmö men:
"We don't have a big budget"
Låter lite skumt om man räknar på kostnaderna:
47 = 28 lampor de billigaste såna går väll för absolut minst 4-500 st
45028 ~ = 13'000.
Sen styrkretsar kanske 2-300 per lampa = 7000 och sen en arduino och lite mer styrkretsar säg 500kr lägg till 5000 kr i övriga kostnader absolut minst lite drygt 25'000kr och då tycker jag att jag varit väldigt optimistisk. Med andra ord detta är inget litet hobby projekt, att inte betala den som gör detta åt er verkar mest snålt, i mina ögon.
Arduino delen av detta skulle nog ta runt 4h att göra om man kan vad man gör. Krävs 2 st *arduinos eller en ShiftOut men det är bara onödigt avancerat.
*Eftersom En arduino inte har tillräckligt med utgångar.
Thank you for your answer.
I think there is a misunderstanding, because we are going to make every digit with 7 flurorescent light bulbs which means eventually we will have 35 light bulbs (not 450). So is one arduino enough to program the 35 lights we have?
And would you be interested in spending the 4 hours you estimated to work with us?
Is the issue still current? I might be able to help. You can use the "personal message" feature of this forum if you like.
A few technical questions: Does the 27 minute interval have to be accurate or could we be a handful minutes off after a weeks display?
Do you want to survive a power loss (ie someone accidentally switches it off, when turned on again, you do not want to start at 0000...) The Arduinos can store the last count in nonvolitile memory, but the memory will be "worn out" some. It will last your exhibition, but the owner of the Arduino might not like it. Alternativly a computer is temporarily attached to set start number.
Your budget: To connect the flourescent tubes we need some circuitry. A simple triac optocoupler chip (one per tube) is only 10kr or so. (I have never tried this ... :o)
The largest Arduino has 50+ outputs, the others do not have enough pins and this requires a few components more (say approx 100Kr). Which Arduino do you have?
Another 100kr or so for the circuit board, connectors, wires etc.