Sean McIntyre · designing tech to create great things

Lunch Beat Light Painting

Sep 20, 2012

My good friend Sarah Reynolds put together the third ever Lunch Beat LIC party this afternoon. I’ve been to every single one so far and they’ve all been a blast: food, nice people, and fun dancing. I really like the concept, too, on how it subverts New York lunch culture of eating quickly and running back to your desk to continue working.

This time, Sarah invited Reid and I to bring the Rainbow Machine to do a little light painting. There wasn’t enough space for our typical full setup, so instead we brought a mobile version like the one I made this summer.


Like the last mechanism, this is just a thin piece of wood with LPD8806 RGB strip, an Arduino, and a 9V battery. The only difference is that we used two handles (made from bolts) instead of one. The space we were in* was too small to twirl the stick around (like this).

At first, I viewed putting two handles on the stick as a negative constraint. The one handle mechanism provided one degree of freedom to the light painter: twirl the stick, damnit!

But upon further thought, I became excited to try the second handle. Two handles would allow the painter to dance with the stick, to create abstract shapes that would bend and weave.

Here are the best photos from today!




















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