Nerdy Christmas Lights
December 25, 2020 6:57 AM   Subscribe

 
wow.
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:17 AM on December 25, 2020


See also: Kyle McDonald and Jonas Jongejan's Light Leaks (details). (Sort of surprised I couldn't find a "previously" on that.)
posted by phooky at 7:22 AM on December 25, 2020 [3 favorites]


I love EVERYTHING about this! Random just because projects are the best. In particular I love the line where he hopes it's reassuring to students that there are real life applications of y=mx+c! Right after 5 minutes of rotational matrices.... Which because I do not design control systems is the first actual application I've seen of those in over 20 years. Kiiiind of considering giving this a try.... Not that I need any more projects.
posted by lemonade at 10:19 AM on December 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm surprised that he built a project involving lighting up a plane through a cone-shaped tree and didn't mention conic sections. Missed opportunity, really.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:33 AM on December 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


Speaking of missed opportunities:

I'm surprised that he built a project involving lighting up a plane through a cone-shaped tree and didn't mention conic sections. Missed opportunity, really.

It was a bit elliptic, so you might have missed it -- but, between the hyperbole and the circular references, he did offer a parable about a cone and a plane.
posted by pwnguin at 12:03 PM on December 25, 2020 [13 favorites]


Greatest respect for the DIY spirit and the teaching orientation of the video, which I admittedly skimmed while watching It's a Wonderful Life...

For a little less than $200 you can get smart Christmas lights that have pretty darned sophisticated 3d mapping capabilities. Dare I say there's an app for that?
posted by Sublimity at 12:34 PM on December 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


This is fantastic, thank you!
posted by blue shadows at 1:32 PM on December 25, 2020


The LED strips with the clock line (as used in this project) are much more expensive but the ones without are notoriously hard to drive from a Raspberry Pi. Fadecandy has a solution for that.
posted by sjswitzer at 6:09 PM on December 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


This was fascinating. I really enjoyed listening to how he did this.
posted by kathrynm at 9:44 AM on December 26, 2020


I looked into it a bit and learned that accessing the camera from Python on MacOS has recently become difficult (or maybe impossible?) because of fairly recent (and probably well-advised) security changes. So replicating this exercise on recently-updated Macs might not be trivial.

But I’d love to be wrong because I’ve been thinking of a very similar project and would appreciate any tips to get around the new security measures!
posted by sjswitzer at 8:34 PM on December 27, 2020


« Older "Merry Christmas," the man threatened   |   Cat Spa ASMR Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments