Beacon4

Beacon4 will be the fourth incarnation of the flagpole beacon, for Burning Man 2012. This year the plan is to take a different approach, and light the entire scaffold tower rather than just a beacon on top of the flagpole.

Project Status

• 2012-04-24: Permission received!
• 2012-04-23: Requested permission from NeonBunny to attach LEDs to the tower.
• 2012-04-22: Started putting together idea.

Outstanding Issues

• Software we were thinking of using was QLC (but it only supports 4 universes) or MagicQ (but it's x86-only which means more power draw)
  • If we go x86, the fit-PC might be a good choice, it's a 6-8W x86 box in a small metal enclosure

Ideas/Plans

• Main idea is to cover most of the scaffold tower in addressable LED strips, driven by one or more StrichLux modules
• Art-Net will be used between the controller and the StrichLux box
  • Backup plan is to have a USB hub and one OpenDMX USB interface per universe, driving the StrichLux boxes via IO-DMX input modules
  • IO-DMX input module could be brought along either way and swapped in if someone wants to manually control the "display"
• BeagleBone is being looked at to control the whole display
  • <1W idle, 1.75W full load
  • Comes with onboard Ethernet
• Need to find a fanless very low power 4 or 5 port Ethernet switch
  • Allied Telesis AT-FS705LE V5 might work, it's rugged, low power, and cheap

System Components

• BeagleBone (controller)
• 4-port fanless Ethernet switch
• 1 or 2 StrichLux boxes (transform engine/protocol converter)
  • 1x IO-ArtNet
  • 4x IO-SPI
• Many LED strips (need to work out dimensions)
• Power setup (need to work out power details)
• Debugging terminal (XO-1?)

Power Details

• Power requirements (peak)
  • BeagleBone - 1.75W
  • Ethernet Switch - 1.7W (assuming AT-FS705LE V5)
  • StrichLux box(es) - ???
  • LEDs - 10W/m (need to measure to confirm)

LED Details

• Length required (very roughly until I get real numbers from Skibit)
  • Main vertical bars: 4 * 20ft = 80ft
  • Ladder vertical bars: 10 * 3ft = 30ft (but 2 of those are near ground level)
  • Rigid guys: 4 * 6ft = 24ft
  • Ladder rungs: 8 * 4 * 1.5ft = 36ft
  • Total: 170ft (plus probably want a bit extra just in case, so 11 strips or 180ft)
  • That's 1760 LEDs and 550W peak!