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Colonies

Colonies is a light installation inspired by the combinational strategy game Dots and Boxes.

The rectangular grid that partitions the atrium is colonised by lines of light, that gradually appear and disappear, filling the structure with grouped patterns of colour.

This interactive artwork has been designed with an Internet of Things approach with a programming interface that allows web developers to create programs that can modify and extend the original design and behaviour.

  • Concept and design - Install Archive (Luke Currall, Lee Regan)
  • Lighting design, interaction design and programming - Arup (Francesco Anselmo, Inessa Demidova, Ben Hussey)
  • Fabrication - Keith Parker Fabrications

Work kindly loaned by James Layfield, Founder of Central Working

System Design

The installation consists of many SPI RGB LED strips controlled by six Arduino Yún which sit at the top of the installation.

The SegmentController.ino code provides rudimentary direct control of the hardware and uses FastLED to output SPI. Input is a basic HTTP API used by the upstream server and not intended to be used by end users.

The server component is an node/express/socket.io service which translates from a more user friendly REST API (used by the frontend and by end-users) to communicate with the Yún controllers.

The lighting will turn off automatically outside of 9am to 11pm weekdays or 20 minutes after a user interaction outside these times.

Networking

The six Arduino Yún have a wired ethernet connection to an 8-port switch which is connected directly to the headend server. There is a network port at high level on the cable basket next to the installation which connects directly to the wall port in the office.

The six Yun are configured as follows (wireless MAC, wired IP):

  • Colonies1 - B4218AF06D0B - 192.168.10.101
  • Colonies2 - B4218AF069F6 - 192.168.10.102
  • Colonies3 - B4218AF069F4 - 192.168.10.103
  • Colonies4 - B4218AF06C00 - 192.168.10.104
  • Colonies5 - B4218AF06D1C - 192.168.10.105
  • Colonies6 - B4218AF06D14 - 192.168.10.106

The server runs on a RaspberryPi 4 running Raspbian which is connected to the office wall port. The server also connects to the Bradfield Centre wireless network with a fixed IP to allow users to interact with the installation.

Server configuration:

  • Wired connection - e4:5f:01:4a:00:6a - 192.168.10.1
  • Wireless connection - e4:5f:01:4a:00:6b - 192.168.53.254

SSH to each Yun is possible from the server with: ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss root@192.168.10.101

To port forward to the Yun web interface use: ssh -L 8080:192.168.10.101:80 pi@192.168.53.254

The wireless interface on all of the Yuns was disabled in January 2023 via the following method to reduce 2.4GHz RF noise adjacent to tenants doing IoT work.

  • edit file /etc/config/wireless and change line option disabled 0 to option disabled 1
  • reboot

Wiring

Wiring colours used in the multicore cables within the installation:

  • Yellow/Orange: negative (supplemented with black single core for longer runs)
  • White/Blue/Purple: positive (supplemented with red single core for longer runs)
  • Green/Black/Brown: SPI control signal (connected to each of the three strips running in each tube, 4 strips in sequence in separate tubes)

The colors above connect to wiring from the LED strip as follows: white (negative), red (positive), green (SPI control)

Arduino Development

The Arduino IDE should be used for any changes/development of the controller code. The following libraries are used by SegmentController.ino:

  • FastLED
  • Bridge

Once compiled with the Arduino IDE, the .hex file can be scped onto the Yun (via the Pi) and transferred to the microcontroller with the following commands:

  • /usr/bin/merge-sketch-with-bootloader.lua SegmentController.ino.hex
  • /usr/bin/run-avrdude SegmentController.ino.hex

To fully reset both the linux and microcontroller use reset-mcu and reboot while SSHed into the Yun - run-avrdude also performs a microcontroller reset.

Web Development

Configured as Docker containers with docker installed docker-compose up should start the client (nuxt) in development mode and service (node) in the background.

Deployment

The scripts in setup/ will help bootstrap a server from scratch. The docker image from ghcr is used.

Use bash produp.sh to update and restart the server image.

Support

The installation software is currently being maintained by Ben Hussey (ben@blip2.net). Pull requests are very welcome.